From: "Dennis Sakva" 
To: 
Reply-To: "Dennis Sakva" 


Hello!

> From: Mark Holm 
> Subject: Re: ATM atm-digest{at}shore.net
>
> A couple of years ago I wrote a program to convert digest
> messages into HTML.
> My version starts with a .txt version of each digest message.
> That is something
> of a drawback because it is one more step to have to save the
> message as text.
> It would be nice if the program would suck the digest right out
> of the mailbox
> file, but then it becomes dependent on the particular format of a
> particular
> e-mail program's files.
My program starts with the same. It reads *.txt versions. I used a macro in
Microsoft Outlook to save all digests in one folder. Here it is:

Sub SaveMessagesAsText()
 Dim Em As MailItem
 On Error Resume Next
 For Each Em In Application.ActiveExplorer.Selection
  Em.SaveAs "C:\Digests\" & Em.Subject & ".txt", olTXT
 Next
End Sub
When you've done that you need to save digest only once a day.

> There are some advantages to converting to HTML.  These are
> essentially all
>...
>       2. One can add navigation links between individual
> messages.  Two of the most
> useful (though a bit challenging to implement) are next-in-thread and
> previous-in-thread.  If the programmer is ambitious, (I haven't been this
> ambitious yet.) he can make the thread links work between digest
> messages as
> well as within.
Main purpose of my program is not to convert digest to HTML but rather
convert it into database. It splits digests on separate messages, find
questions and answers, compare them to each other. In program you can view
it as a tree form with questions as first level and answers on each
question that appears after pressing on + sign (like in Explorer). Moving
to next thread and to next answer in thread are already working. And while
exploring this tree you can save a question with all answers in single HTML
file to view them all in single page.

>       1. Another step to perform before reading the message.
Once a day... I don't think it's too bad.
>       2. Duplication of information content of files takes up disc space.
This is true. My database with digests from 3172 to 3494 eats 32 Mb of
space. With any modern HDD it's not a problem.

> Actually I would like to see the list manager program offer the
> option of an
> HTMLized digest with the features listed above.  It would
> actually be easier
> from a programming point of view to do the conversion as the
> messages come in
> rather than having to parse the elements out of a concatenated
> digest.
There are too many single emails. Receiving a single digest for me is more
convenient. My biggest problem was converting dates. Their formatting is
very inconsistent in ATM-digest (unlike in Yahoo-groups, which my program
can eat too).

So... Do any of you can put packed digests somwhere in the internet?

Thanky you!
Dennis Sakva.

--- BBBS/NT v4.01 Flag-4