Feature suggestion - answering timeout for mail

Feature suggestion - answering timeout for mail

[Edvard Majakari]

    
A friend of mine had a pretty nice idea, which was that one should be
able to set an answering time for a message. This function could be
called explicitly or if some magic variable were true, when entering
mail Gnus would ask when you should answer to this message. 

Simply put, it would be very nice if you could set time(out) during
which you must answer it. For those people who have to handle a lot of
e-mails for work, this is an important feature. 

Moreover, my friend just bragged about MS OutLook how it can do this
easily.         

How it should be done, I haven't thought about it a lot. For example,
you could specify answering time in format ddmmyy (answer to this mail
before dd mm yy), +n (answer to this mail in n days) or just simply -
mark this article as 'should be answered' and show them as pending
mails each time gnus is started (similar mark compared to '!', but not
tick-mark because that is used for other purposes too). 

Sorry for my messy English, but I've been awake a little too much.. :)

-- 
//Ed               GSM: 040 5960810     URL: http://lodge.ton.tut.fi/%7Eed/
You know, Callahan's is a peaceable bar, but if you ask that dog what his
favorite formatter is, and he says "roff! roff!", well, I'll just have to...

Re: Feature suggestion - answering timeout for mail

[Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen]

Edvard Majakari <ed@a41a.otanner.ton.tut.fi> writes:

> A friend of mine had a pretty nice idea, which was that one should be
> able to set an answering time for a message. This function could be
> called explicitly or if some magic variable were true, when entering
> mail Gnus would ask when you should answer to this message. 

I really don't like programs requiring me to do anything.  Programs
should shut up and do as they are told.  :-)

So I'm not going to implement anything along these lines.

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
  larsi@gnus.org * Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen

Re: Feature suggestion - answering timeout for mail

[Edvard Majakari]

>>>>> "Lars" == Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org> writes:

 Lars> I really don't like programs requiring me to do anything.
 Lars> Programs should shut up and do as they are told.  :-)

Ok. You receive mail from your emploer and know that unless you answer
it in 3 days, it's time to start collecting those empty bottles. Yet
you don't have time to answer it right over, what do you do? :)

Duh. So I have to confess Outlook outmatches Gnus in that respect?
Embarrasing :)

-- 
//Ed               GSM: 040 5960810     URL: http://lodge.ton.tut.fi/%7Eed/
double value;                /* or your money back! */
 short changed;               /* so triple your money back! */
        --Larry Wall in cons.c from the perl source code

Re: Feature suggestion - answering timeout for mail

[Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen]

Edvard Majakari <ed@a41a.otanner.ton.tut.fi> writes:

> Ok. You receive mail from your emploer and know that unless you answer
> it in 3 days, it's time to start collecting those empty bottles. Yet
> you don't have time to answer it right over, what do you do? :)

Start collecting those empty bottles right away.  :-)

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
  larsi@gnus.org * Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen

Re: Feature suggestion - answering timeout for mail

[\yvind M|ll]

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* Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen
|
| Edvard Majakari <ed@a41a.otanner.ton.tut.fi> writes:
| 
| > Ok. You receive mail from your emploer and know that unless you answer
| > it in 3 days, it's time to start collecting those empty bottles. Yet
| > you don't have time to answer it right over, what do you do? :)
| 
| Start collecting those empty bottles right away.  :-)

Or, couldn't scoring by date be used to obtain something like it?  It
would perhaps involve dynamically updating your score file upon
entering a group (or something), but it's doable, I think.  Hairy and
likely to bite you, but doable. ;-)

(Wasn't this kind of score file mistreatment discussed in some other
context earlier?)

-- 
   Øyvind Møll             | abcdefghijklmnosv
   oyvindmo@pvv.ntnu.no    |

Re: Feature suggestion - answering timeout for mail

[jari.aalto]

 98-02-15 Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org> list.ding
| Edvard Majakari <ed@a41a.otanner.ton.tut.fi> writes:
| 
| > able to set an answering time for a message. This function could be
| > called explicitly or if some magic variable were true, when entering
| > mail Gnus would ask when you should answer to this message. 
| 
| I really don't like programs requiring me to do anything.  Programs
| should shut up and do as they are told.  :-)
| 
| So I'm not going to implement anything along these lines.

For all of us that get lot of work messages and deadlines, it would
be very usefull feature. 

- Add a date and possibly time for a message. 
- Set up Gnus daemon to watch out date stamped articles and bring up summary
  of messages that should be addresses, newest first. Users could even
  function to gnus startup hook to get summary every time they start Gnus.

I have 10-20 work groups and I've already lost a count of dates and
things to do. Nowadays I use plain paper near my computer :-)

jari