Mailinglist Archive: opensuse (4498 mails)

[Randall R Schulz <rschulz@xxxxxxxxx>]

Ed, Carlos,

On Tuesday 31 October 2006 19:11, Ed McCanless wrote:
> Carlos E. R. wrote:
> > Me too... my "interesting" folder keeps growing. I'd like a way to
> > edit saved emails, like changing the subject to reflect the real
> > reason why I stored each one. Does somebody know a "MUA" with such
> > an ability?
>
> Don't know anything about "MUA", but I just copy and paste to a word
> processor, then file it.

MUA is "Mail User Agent." The technical term for what we commonly call 
an email client or user interface. They form the periphery of the 
store-and-forward SMTP/POP/IMAP network. The interior nodes are called 
MTA's: Mail Transfer Agents.

To answer Carlos' question, Eudora has the ability to edit messages and 
their subject headers. When you do so, you don't affect the original 
message, but rather alter the header information in the per-mailbox 
table-of-contents file, which is separate from the mailbox file. At 
least that's what happens for header editing. I'm not so sure about 
body editing, but I think in that case it creates a new entry in the 
mailbox file and simply points the TOC entry (which is what drives the 
mailbox listing display) at the edited copy of the message.

I occasionally made use of that feature when I used Eudora on the Mac 
and later on Windows.

Of course in KMail filter actions can invoke external processing, so you 
can probably cobble some sort of message editor together, though for 
minor tasks such as tagging a Subject: header it wouldn't be as simple 
as Eudora's approach.

(Also note, tangentially, that Eudora always strips attachments from 
message bodies, unlike KMail.)


>                 -- ED --


Randall Schulz