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SubjectRe: 2.1.123 and fbcon.c
On Wed, 30 Sep 1998, David Lang wrote:

>As someone else who get hundreds of messages a day (almost 90,000 this
>year) and doesn't use procmail (any longer) I have one comment.
>
>If you really have to read all the mail anyway it is easier to deal with
>in in one folder (and then move it if it is worth keeping) rather then to
>have to keep checking several folders during the day.

I disagree. When I get all 3000 mails a day in one folder, I
can't find the "must respond" messages very easily. A friend
might send me a message, or whatnot, and not get a response from
me. Reason? I don't see that they've sent me the message until
I wade through 3000 or more emails, or until I do a manual search
for their email address in the huge inbox. To do this for 15-20
different "friends" daily is a pain in the ass at best. People
stopped emailing me at all because they didn't get replies in a
reasonable amount of time.

Solution: I learned about procmail, joined the procmail mailing
list, and learned how to set up some simple filters. I then
created another inbox called FRIENDS, and made a recipe for each
person that I consider a friend, or close acquaintence. When I
started reading my mail, I would go to that folder first.

Next problem was the mixed up mail from various lists. I would
sometimes respond to a message as being an off topic post because
I thought it was posted to one list (that I just read 4 posts
from), but it was from another - that the post WAS on topic for.
In short, it was much more work to wade through the INBOX trying
to find individual things.

Solution: Every time I join a medium to high volume list, I
create a new procmail recipe in my ".procmailrc-mailing-lists"
file, which is included in my main procmailrc. Then I edit
.pinerc and add the relevant lines to make a new folder for the
inbox.

The procedure takes only a few minutes per list, and saves TONNES
of time immediately.

My duplicate filter destroys tonnes of duplicate emails daily, I
know because I have it file them, and I manually purge it once a
week or so after looking at it.

Granted, learning procmail may take some time, but I just asked
"how do I ..." on the procmail mailing list, and someone else
solved my problems. After reading the docs over and over, and
looking at other peoples filters, now I can usually make my own
easily.

> I don't know if this
>is Linu's reason for not using procmail, but procmail is not the answer to
>all problems.

Procmail may not be the answer to all problems, but it is the
answer to many. Not using it at all because one problem out of
50 doesn't get solved, is not a very good reason IMHO...

I honestly can't see how anyone that receives a large volume of
email daily, *CAN'T* benefit from using procmail. Perhaps the
real reason is that it can be fairly cryptic to set up, and they
don't have the time.

It's usefulness is tried and true however.

--
Mike A. Harris - Computer Consultant - Linux advocate

Linux software galore: http://freshmeat.net


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