R devel - Jul 2011 - Suggestions for R-devel / R-help digest format

Hello,

I am passive reader of both R-devel and R-help mailing lists. I am 
sending the following comments to r-devel as it seemed more suitable. I 
am aware that this list uses GNU mailman for the list management. I have 
my options set that it sends a email digest. One thing I find is that 
the digest consists of emails that ordered temporarlly. For eg lets say 
there are two threads t1 and t2 and the emails arrive as e1 of t1, e2 of 
t2, e3 of t3  . The digest lists them as e1,e2 and then e3. Is it 
possible to somehow configure it as T1 : e1,e3 and then T2 : e2 ?

This is the digest format that google groups uses which is incredibly 
helpful as you can read all the messages in a thread. Additionally, it 
also helpfully includes a header that lists all the threads in digest so 
that you can jump to the one you are interested in. I checked the 
mailman options but could not find any.

Does anyone else have the same issue? It is not a big issue in R-devel 
but R-help is a much more high traffic mailing list. I am interested in 
hearing how you read/filter your digest mails in either R-help or other 
high volume mailing lists.

Regards,
Saravanan

Hi,

On Thu, Jul 7, 2011 at 12:44 PM, Saravanan
<saravanan.thirumuruganathan at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I am passive reader of both R-devel and R-help mailing lists. I am sending
> the following comments to r-devel as it seemed more suitable. I am aware
> that this list uses GNU mailman for the list management. I have my options
> set that it sends a email digest. One thing I find is that the digest
> consists of emails that ordered temporarlly. For eg lets say there are two
> threads t1 and t2 and the emails arrive as e1 of t1, e2 of t2, e3 of t3 ?.
> The digest lists them as e1,e2 and then e3. Is it possible to somehow
> configure it as T1 : e1,e3 and then T2 : e2 ?
>
> This is the digest format that google groups uses which is incredibly
> helpful as you can read all the messages in a thread. Additionally, it also
> helpfully includes a header that lists all the threads in digest so that
you
> can jump to the one you are interested in. I checked the mailman options
but
> could not find any.
>
> Does anyone else have the same issue? It is not a big issue in R-devel but
> R-help is a much more high traffic mailing list. I am interested in hearing
> how you read/filter your digest mails in either R-help or other high volume
> mailing lists.
I solve this "issue" by having set up 1 mailing-list only gmail
account I use for, well, all of mailing lists. I  configure each
mailing list to send me all emails to this address as they come (not
as digest) and setup filters in gmail to tag each email for each group
with an appropriate group label, eg. all R emails get an "R" label,
bioconductor gets a "bioconductor" label, etc.

This way, I can check each mailing list with the frequency I desire
and my "normal" email boxes don't get flooded. gmail then takes
care
of the threading as you'd expect for each mailing list ...

Maybe you'd find that setup helpful.

-steve

-- 
Steve Lianoglou
Graduate Student: Computational Systems Biology
?| Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center
?| Weill Medical College of Cornell University
Contact Info: http://cbio.mskcc.org/~lianos/contact

On Thu, 2011-07-07 at 11:44 -0500, Saravanan wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I am passive reader of both R-devel and R-help mailing lists. I am 
> sending the following comments to r-devel as it seemed more suitable. I 
> am aware that this list uses GNU mailman for the list management. I have 
> my options set that it sends a email digest. One thing I find is that 
> the digest consists of emails that ordered temporarlly. For eg lets say 
> there are two threads t1 and t2 and the emails arrive as e1 of t1, e2 of 
> t2, e3 of t3  . The digest lists them as e1,e2 and then e3. Is it 
> possible to somehow configure it as T1 : e1,e3 and then T2 : e2 ?
> 
> This is the digest format that google groups uses which is incredibly 
> helpful as you can read all the messages in a thread. Additionally, it 
> also helpfully includes a header that lists all the threads in digest so 
> that you can jump to the one you are interested in. I checked the 
> mailman options but could not find any.
> 
> Does anyone else have the same issue? It is not a big issue in R-devel 
> but R-help is a much more high traffic mailing list. I am interested in 
> hearing how you read/filter your digest mails in either R-help or other 
> high volume mailing lists.
This really has nothing to do with R, but rather mailman.

I use folders, filtered on the server using SIEVE and/or procmail.  No
digest required. I get the mails immediately, not later in the day or
the next day,  and can use all my various email clients easily to
read/respond.

mailman supports a MIME digest format that includes a table of contents
with links to each MIME part.  mailman does not support a threaded
digest, to the best of my knowledge.

Regards,

   - Brian

-- 
Brian G. Peterson
http://braverock.com/brian/
Ph: 773-459-4973
IM: bgpbraverock

Thanks Steve and Brian !

Probably, I will create a gmail account for mailing lists and let it 
take care of the threading.

Regards,
Saravanan

On 07/07/2011 12:02 PM, Brian G. Peterson wrote:
> On Thu, 2011-07-07 at 11:44 -0500, Saravanan wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> I am passive reader of both R-devel and R-help mailing lists. I am
>> sending the following comments to r-devel as it seemed more suitable. I
>> am aware that this list uses GNU mailman for the list management. I
have
>> my options set that it sends a email digest. One thing I find is that
>> the digest consists of emails that ordered temporarlly. For eg lets say
>> there are two threads t1 and t2 and the emails arrive as e1 of t1, e2
of
>> t2, e3 of t3  . The digest lists them as e1,e2 and then e3. Is it
>> possible to somehow configure it as T1 : e1,e3 and then T2 : e2 ?
>>
>> This is the digest format that google groups uses which is incredibly
>> helpful as you can read all the messages in a thread. Additionally, it
>> also helpfully includes a header that lists all the threads in digest
so
>> that you can jump to the one you are interested in. I checked the
>> mailman options but could not find any.
>>
>> Does anyone else have the same issue? It is not a big issue in R-devel
>> but R-help is a much more high traffic mailing list. I am interested in
>> hearing how you read/filter your digest mails in either R-help or other
>> high volume mailing lists.
> This really has nothing to do with R, but rather mailman.
>
> I use folders, filtered on the server using SIEVE and/or procmail.  No
> digest required. I get the mails immediately, not later in the day or
> the next day,  and can use all my various email clients easily to
> read/respond.
>
> mailman supports a MIME digest format that includes a table of contents
> with links to each MIME part.  mailman does not support a threaded
> digest, to the best of my knowledge.
>
> Regards,
>
>     - Brian
>