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From: tom@ismdqa.intel.com (Tom Soukup ~)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.elm
Subject: Re: Can headers be stripped when saving/printing mail?
Message-ID: <4059@mipos3.intel.com>
Date: 8 May 89 15:57:29 GMT
References: <4030@mipos3.intel.com> <25536@amdcad.AMD.COM>
Sender: news@mipos3.intel.com
Reply-To: tom@ismdqa.UUCP (Tom Soukup ~)
Organization: Microprocessor Component Group, Intel Corp., Santa Clara, CA
Lines: 37

In article <25536@amdcad.AMD.COM> indra@hobbes.AMD.COM (Indra Singhal) writes:
>In article <4030@mipos3.intel.com> tom@ismdqa.intel.com (Tom Soukup ~) writes:
>>about mail is can they save or print a mail message without the header.  
>
>A shell script is provided as part of the utilities called: printmail
>It prints mail separated either by a line of dashes or a page break.
>The amount of header information is just adequate.
>
>If you really really really dont want ANY header information, you can use the
>'readmsg' utility with the '-n' flag. Infact, you could modify the 'printmail'
>script to invoke readmsg with the -n flag. (By the way, how would you know who,
>when and where the mail came from if you dont have any headers? But that is your
>concern.)

Unfortunatly, I have found that the majority of users that I deal with
expect that the applications that they use to be simple and convienent to
use.  This means that all the options that they need are included in the
application.  In this case, for example, they do not want to have to
remember that there are additional applications which will strip mail
headers for them.  The decision to save the message with or without headers
is made while in elm, reading the message.  The user doesn't want to have
to remember that messages x, y and z need to be saved after they finish
reading all of their mail and exit elm.  

As to why someone might want to do this, most of the mail that is sent
around here is reports or memos which already have to, from subject and cc
information.  The information in the mail header is usually redundant and
often not understood by the casual user.

Thanks for the info on readmsg and printmail however.  I had not seen them
yet.  I'll probably make use of them myself, even though they are not
exactly what I need for other users.

Regards,
Tom
________________________________________________________________________________
DISCLAMER:  Intel doesn't agree with much of anything that I say.