Re: Easy View for digesting digests
Re: Easy View for digesting digests
- Subject: Re: Easy View for digesting digests
- From: Evan Francois <email@hidden>
- Date: Thu, 9 Nov 2000 13:22:02 -0500
Due to the underwhelming response to my previous post, I'm wondering
what I may be missing here. (Unfortunately, browsing the applescript-
users digest (with its new format) is not as "easy" as it once was).
Can someone advise me as to:
1) Why has the (albiet incomplete) support for Easy View
-- which existed before the recent reorganization --
been stripped from this digest ? To what purpose ?
2) Why are these new filenames (email message names) longer
than 31 characters, and not preset to be alphabetical ?
What's wrong with "AppleScriptUsers-Vol.0001,#0001" ?
There must be good reasons, so please explain how it works now.
TIA,
Evan
--__--__--
Date: Tue, 31 Oct 2000 20:39:57 -0500
Hello. Say, has anybody here at applescript-users ever heard of the
application "Easy View"? (Latest version seems to be 2.62, and it's
scriptable BTW). If you're using your email client or SimpleText to
digest this digest, then you're really missing out. And -- up until a few
days ago -- I was able to maintain reasonable control with my
subscription here, and view this applescript-users digest with Easy View.
But no more. Renaming emails has become twice as tedious, and the
"formatting" is totally lost.
This is absolute **madness** considering we're now in the year 2000 !!!
Digest readers are nothing new. The current packaging of applescript-
users digest suffers primarily from the following two problems:
1) the filename of each issue -- should be alphabetical 2) the format of
each issue -- should contain "setext"
1) Adam C. Engst's TidBITS newsletter subscription service seems to
have a simple naming convention that only takes a few chars:
TidBITS#550/09-Oct-00. So how about we use something like
"AppleScriptUsers-Vol.0001,#0001" ? Increment the volume only once
a year, and keep the number of digests under 9,999 per year. With
this naming convention (using only 31 chars per name), we would get
automatically alphabetized filenames for the next 9,999 years!
I was willing to do minor name adjustments in the past, but if
we're starting over... let's do it right. No?
2) Part of what makes the Easy View application work is to have certain
"formatting" conventions adhered to. One such convention is called
setext. Believe it or not, this very applescript-users digest used
to follow this convention -- for the most part. I'm not suggesting
that **all** the style stuff (bold, italic, underline) is important.
But the basic notation which separates contents, individual messages
and each digest from the other, makes life a lot more productive.
Given a folder filled with hundreds (or thousands!) of digest volumes
that follow these two guidelines... then reading, browsing, searching,
managing, and ABSORBING the vast quantity (and -- normally -- high
quality) information here at applescript-users becomes a total breeze.
I urge the person or persons responsible for maintaining this digest to
kindly PLEASE look into all this. And would anyone else -- with
experience in these subjects, who is reading this -- provide me a little
backup, and post more info? Or, if some new digest reader has replaced
Easy View... then that's something I'd like to hear about too.
Thanks,
Evan
(meanwhile, I offer a few links):
download Easy View 2.61
ftp://ftp.tidbits.com/misc/
download Easy View 2.62 (and other stuff)
http://hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/cgi-bin/NewSearch?key=Easy+View
more info
http://www.tidbits.com/tb-issues/TidBITS-194.html#lnk2
http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=01560
http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=04008
http://www.bsdi.com/setext/