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From: jromine@buckaroo.ics.uci.edu (John Romine)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.mh
Subject: Re: Can you associate user-defined status bits with each message?
Message-ID: <27B109FD.656@ics.uci.edu>
Date: 7 Feb 91 08:04:13 GMT
References: <15482:Feb702:26:1891@kramden.acf.nyu.edu>
Reply-To: jromine@ics.uci.edu (John Romine)
Organization: UC Irvine Department of ICS
Lines: 85
Nntp-Posting-Host: buckaroo.ics.uci.edu

brnstnd@kramden.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein) writes:
> I need to keep track of some status bits with each message: e.g.,
>``I've begun reading this,'' ``I've finished reading this,'' ``I've
>sent some responses,'' ``I've finished sending responses,'' etc. I
>should be able to configure the reader to understand these bits and to
>read and set them automatically.  Can I do this easily with mh?

You bet!  However, since MH doesn't use AI, it's going to be hard for
it to decide when you've "finished sending responses", but you can flag
messages easily yourself :-).

I don't know if Jerry Peek mentions this technique in his excellent MH
nutshell handbook, but here's what we do for our sysadmin group at UCI.

First, let me describe our problem.  It's slightly more complex than
what you want to do, but is similar.  Since our sysadmin staff share
our "support" +inbox, we need to to alert staff members that a message
is for them.

We use "anno" to annotate messages with `flags', along with a modified
scan format file to show these `flags' in the scan listing.  I'll show
these as csh aliases, but you could as easily make them shell scripts:

	alias attn 'anno -nodate -comp x-attn -text \!*'

We use a staff member's initials for this flag, so an example would be:

	% attn jlr 43

Indicating that "jlr" (i.e., me) should answer message 43.  The scan
format file has a line added just after the date line which looks like:

	%<{x-attn}%3{x-attn}%|   %> \

So a scan line of a message attn'd to "jlr" looks something like:

  43  17/Jan jlr  Joe Bob User       enhancement request <<blah blah...

If a message hasn't been attn'd to anyone yet, the "initials" scan field
is blank.  If I decide this message isn't for me, and attn it to someone
else, their initials will appear (annotations are put at the beginning of
a message, so the most recent annotation comes first).

We also need a way for a staff member to indicate that he's started
working on a problem.  For this we use a similar alias called "todo":

	alias todo 'anno -nodate -comp x-todo -text \!*'

Change the above scan format addition to:

	%<{x-todo}%3{x-todo}*%|%<{x-attn}%3{x-attn} %|    %>%> \

and after marking message 43 with "todo jlr 43", the scan line looks like:

  43  17/Jan jlr* Joe Bob User       enhancement request <<blah blah...

Obviously, you can make up whatever annotations are appropriate for
your purpose.  "repl" already does an annotation (if you put "repl:
-annotate" in your .mh_profile) and the standard scan listing puts a
"-" flag next to the message number if the message has been replied-to.

"pick" works with these flags as well.  To find messages attn'd to
"jlr", use:

	% pick --x-attn jlr

Numerous variations on this are possible.

Since your particular application is simpler, I'd use an alias like:

	alias flag 'anno -nodate -comp status \!*'

and use some flag letter(s) instead of the initials that we use:

	% flag WIP 43		-or-		% flag W 43

to indicate that message 43 is work-in-progress, etc.  A scan format
addition for this would be something like:

	%<{status}%3{status}%|   %> \

This technique has worked quite well for us.  I'll be happy to
answer any questions about this.
--
John Romine