Re: Attaching notes to messages

[Harry Putnam <reader@newsguy.com>]

Hannu Koivisto <azure@iki.fi> writes:

> Greetings,
> 
> Has anyone thought about or, even better, implemented some way of
> attaching arbitrary notes to messages?  Many times I mark some
> messages with important URLs or other information persistent and
> ticked, but usually their subjects don't give any indication of the
> reason why I saved them, so I can't later find them just by
> interactively searching for something in the summary buffer.

This may be too amateurish for what you are after but it is a method
I've used for some time on groups where 'gnus-edit-article' is
allowed.

Editing is also possibe in News groups with  `C-u e'

Add a "Keywords:" header where you can put brief comments or single
words that will allow you to grep that topic later.
(G for gnus)

Keywords: $TOPIC  edit articles attach notes annotate messages

Where $TOPIC is a few characters.

You can then easily scan the "Keywords" lines with grep or rgrep,
or get a file number to use in gnus summary buffer with "j".

rgrep -r "^Keywords: $TOPIC" ~/Mail
To see all keyword lines for that topic.

A more developed method is possible esp. if you don't care to save
the original form.  But even if you do, below should be getting close
to what you describe.

I have code pieced together with help from Kai and Lars (the
botchiness is all mine) That allows the user to save an edited message
from  any gnus editing mode to any group with a few key strokes. And
leaves the original in place untouched.

It also allows a way to do this:

Press "F" or "R" on a message you wish to keep and annotate

Type in your annotation between [] or similar, then save that portion
to file with M-x save-to-file.

Remove the annotation with C-w then attach it with 'C-c a'

Save the Message plus attachment (to desired group) with the code I
mentioned above then kill the edit buffer.

The result of all this is an annotation attached to a copy of original
message, saved in a special group.  While leaving the original message
untouched in its group.

I'll post the code on a web site or here if you'd like to see if its
useful to you.