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Date:	Fri, 27 Aug 2004 22:55:24 PDT7
From:	Peter Skye <pskye@peterskye.com >
Reply-To:	scoug-help@scoug.com
To:	scoug-help@scoug.com
Subject:	SCOUG-Help: Netscape for email (was: A basic browser display question)

Content Type: text/plain

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> Peter Skye wrote:
> >I use Netscape 2.02 for email

Colin Campbell wrote:
> Is there some advantage to using the Netscape for e-mail?

Well hey there Colin,

I like the threaded message display which Netscape 2.02 has. MR/2,
PMMail and Polarbar all lack that capability (seems strange that they
do, they're all good programs).

As for the various Netscape/Mozilla versions and why I'm still using
Netscape 2.02:

-- 1. Netscape 4.04 and 4.61 were unstable. I didn't like having my
email client "blow up" because I browsed to a web page that had a
malformed gif image, so I kept Netscape 2.02 as my email client.

-- 2. My Netscape filter file (the sort.dat file) has about 500 lines in
it (I'm a filter nut). I've been searching for a writeup on how to
filter messages in Mozilla (or Thunderbird) but so far I haven't found
the writeup. Everybody else knows where it is, but they ain't tellin'.
I asked SCOUG's staunchest Mozilla mail advocate Ray Davison about
filtering and he wouldn't tell me either.

Colin, I see you're using Mozilla for email. Where can I find the info
on writing Mozilla/Thunderbird email filters? I'm using Mozilla 1.0
which doesn't come with any .inf or .hlp files (and a "DIR *FILT* /S"
finds nothing). I see that Mozilla has a rules.dat file and I know that
Netscape 2.02 has its filters in its sort.dat file, but the formats of
these two files are very different. So I'm kinda stuck.

What I'd _like_ to be able to do is have a master database of my email
filters, and then run a utility (which I'll write) that generates the
filters in the favored format of whatever email program I'm using.
Netscape 2.02 filters don't allow for logic so I would certainly like to
switch to something better if I can find it. When I checked on Polarbar
I found that the filters couldn't be imported from elsewhere (although
you can write/generate external Java code to do the filtering, which is
one workable solution). I don't remember how filters are written for
MR/2 or PMMail.

I generally filter on five different heading lines: From, To, Cc,
Subject, Reply-To. I occasionally filter on things like Date,
X-BeenThere, Message-Id. And I use Junk Spy to catch spam so I have a
dozen or so Junk Spy filters which separate the spam messages by Junk
Spy classification (I find it's easier to wade through them looking for
false positives if they've been separated like this).

Of all the email clients available, I like Polarbar the most -- it seems
the most capable and I really like its "virtual folders". But
Polarbar's lack of threaded viewing is the skunk in the basement.
There's also a minor quirk with Polarbar in that you can't write
individual filters for different folders; the only workaround I could
come up with is to forward each folder to a different account (within
Polarbar) and use different filters on each of these different accounts
(or perhaps the custom Java filters which Polarbar allows can identify
which folder is supplying the messages, which would then allow for
custom filtering of each folder).

I'm assuming ("never assume" - Mr. Know It All) that Mozilla/Thunderbird
has the threaded email view which Netscape 2.02 has.

- Peter

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