On 12 Mar 2001, at 21:07, Aage Johansen wrote:

To: IBObjects@yahoogroups.com
From: Aage Johansen <aagjohan@...>
Date sent: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 21:07:59 +0100
Send reply to: IBObjects@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [IBO] Re: OT: Messages Out of Sync

> Paul Schmidt wrote:
> Perhaps you need a different mail reader, I get all of the messages,
> individually, however as I type this I am off-line.
> ----------------------------
>
> Reading/writing offline isn't a problem (be it digests or separate
> mails), and my procedure is the same as yours. BUT: I do prefer
> 'digest mode'. There is a lot of traffic on this list, and I find it
> better to have 100 'digest mode' mails than 2500 separate mails (and I
> tend to keep the mails from this list).
>

You have a point there, I have seen a lot of digests that must be
designed by a brand new CompSci graduate with less then 5 minutes of
real life experience. The digest should have three abilities:

1) A method to get individual messages retrieved so that you can
reply to them easily. A command Email address is a good way to do
this.

2) A sane organization, many people like to follow threads, so
sorting the digest by subject by posting time (corrected to GMT)
makes it much easier to follow. The digest needs to know that if it
sees RE or AW that it's a reply to a message, and to ignore this
string in the sortation order.

3) Digest generation should be time based, so we generate a digest
message, say every 6 hours. This could be zero messages or more,
depending on traffic levels. This way if traffic is low, we don't
get stale messages in the digest. How about 00:00, 06:00, 12:00 and
18:00 (all GMT), then users can figure roughly when digest messages
are going to come in, and monitor their email accordingly. The
digest should send out a message saying nothing has been received if
there is no traffic.

Outside of the digest, there should be a command email address, that
allows you to switch digest mode on and off, subscribe, unsubscribe,
change your email address (it's amazing how many lists make this
impossible). Get individual emails knowing the digest message
number. Search the threads for a specific subject, this returns a
email list of threads. Some people may prefer a web site, but that
makes off-line processing more difficult.

Here is another idea, when a thread hasn't had a message for a while,
say 30 days, the whole thread gets merged into a single digest like
message this then gets compressed and stored in an archive. The
thread name stays in the thread search list, so that if your looking
for information about say, GeneratorLinks, you can find and retrieve
old threads from the archive, in this case you get the whole thread,
as a single message. This then reduces the storage requirements for
the list, and eliminates everyone having to store this stuff
somewhere.

Paul










Paul Schmidt,
Tricat Technologies
Email: paul@...
Website: www.tricattechnologies.com