Subject: Re: Cygwin Mailing list
From: Brian Dessent <[email-masked]>
To: "'Cygwin List'" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 17 Feb 2004 11:02:10 -0800

utomo wrote:

> I can catagorize my email using [email-masked] as rules. But it is a
> suggestions.
> In many mailing list (I guess more than 70%) they use a subject as
> indicator. I think it also one of the good way to do. We did not need to
> be a different, or do somethings which others did not do.

Please look at the headers of any message on this list.  There are
already tons of unique identifying headers that are easy to filter on:

Mailing-List: contact cygwin-help AT cygwin.com; run by ezmlm
List-Unsubscribe: <mailto:cygwin-unsubscribe-(my address) AT cygwin.com>
List-Subscribe: <mailto:cygwin-subscribe AT cygwin.com>
List-Archive: <http://sources.redhat.com/ml/cygwin/>
List-Post: <mailto:cygwin AT cygwin.com>
List-Help: <mailto:cygwin-help AT cygwin.com>,
<http://sources.redhat.com/ml/#faqs>

(note above: s/@/ AT /g;)

Any of those make good filters.  I use "Mailing-List contains
cygwin.com".  That filters almost every message correctly with hardly
any false negatives or positives.  If you're having problems filtering,
I suggest you do something similar.  If your mail program can't filter
on arbitrary headers then I suggest you use one that has the features
you require.

As far as "other lists do it", that's a bad argument.  I too am on many
other lists, and am THANKFUL that cygwin does not mutilate the subject
line.  Having a tag in the subject is just noise once the message has
been filtered to its destination.  It takes up screen real-estate.  You
can read more of a subject line in limited column width if there's no
stupid tag on every message taking up space.  Its only purpose is for
mechanical filtering, not human consumption, and thus it should be in a
location where only automated programs see it, such as the
already-present headers.

Brian

--
Unsubscribe info:      http://cygwin.com/ml/#unsubscribe-simple
Problem reports:       http://cygwin.com/problems.html
Documentation:         http://cygwin.com/docs.html
FAQ:                   http://cygwin.com/faq/