Sift-Mail Interface Tour

The sifter creation/maintenence program sift-mail starts with the list of sifters that are currently configured:

The File menu is the usual Save and Quit plus a form to configure the mailbox format. Usually you can pick the mailbox format by the mail program you use.

The Sifters menu allows you to add, edit, delete, activate and deactivate sifters. You can also double click on an existing sifter to edit it. Each sifter has a type. Currently there are three types, filter a mailing list, and send out of town notification, and sift-tcl programming. Each type has an editing screen. Here's the one for filtering a mailing list:

This shows it with all the extra configuration options. Normally those are hidden when it first comes up. They normally do not need to be changed.

The last section on the main menu is for reports. From there you can either view the whole sifting log, or view a summary report. Here is the summary report:

This report shows each mail folder in which mail has been filed in and the number of messages that have been filed for the period of the report. It also shows the five most popular subjects in order of frequency which allows you to monitor the discussion in a mailing list without having to read all the messages. This report can be generated automatically and sent as a mail message on a daily basis.

Last, there is a window from which to choose the mail folder format:

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