Re: Mailing List

Arnt Gulbrandsen wrote:

> So, we need a requirements specification, don't we? I take this 
> heaven-sent opportunity to suggest Requirement Number One: "For ease of 
> automated processing, all important header fields should be copied or 
> abbreviated into the subject field."

For the sake of my sanity I'm going to take that as humour, but it does
raise the interesting idea of co-designing mail-ng 'headers' and MUAs to
provide a lot more information to the end user by default.

Eg:
	
Sender is authenticated (+ authentication type)
Message anonymized
Mail is person-to-person
Mail is from automated source
Mail is from list
Message requires payment
Message expires shortly
Message redirected
Message has PICs rating

and so on...

The actual list of 'headers' or whatever mail-ng ends up using is
entirely open to debate, as is the combination of colours/icons/fonts
etc in the MUA, but the presence of agreed, MUA-compatible metadata
provides the potential for far more rapid sorting, both by automated
methods and visually.

Equally, there is potential to use the IM convention of denoting online
users in the mail sending agent.

In other words (and assuming the MSA/MTA/MUA boundary remains), mail-ng
should consider enhancements at each of these levels.

	Wechsler