<<That's the big issue for us. While we have folders, we all share a common
email box. All email is read using Virtual Access
(http://www.virtual-access.org/) which allows us all to see conversations
going on. >>

Had a quick shuftie at the website. Basically, from what they say it sounds as though they are simply threading the emails as a newsreader does - not
difficult as long as you have Message-ID and In-Reply-To tags in the header. But when I mentioned mailboxes I didn't mean separate tables. My current
app (not TMaN) uses that approach - I copied it from Eudora/OE and it stinks. In your case I'd say that a "mailbox" is a conversation.

<<This is important as some people are part time, or may be away
for a few days. We don't want the email sent to one person that says they
need an answer by noon to be not responded too. By all sharing the same
database, we don't miss this.>>

Again think of a newsreader - especially the one in TMaN.

Roy

Matthew

<<It is most interesting. There is a mention of "if you don't like it,
change the source". Is that option available?>>

Yup - you'll need DBISAM and a few of my homebrew components

<<There are a few things I'd
want to sort - reading some of our email got me an error message,>>

This is an old version - I'll email you the current one when TMaN is working again. M$ and my PC had an argument yesterday which ended up with the
index file being corrupted and with 180k records and full text indexing with custom filtering a repair takes "forever". ElavateDB looks as though it will
speed things up a LOT.

<< and I can't see how to move suspicious email to the inbox.>>

You can't Remember this is single user. If you've read it to decide its not suspicious you've read it enough to do something with it <vbg>. I have
an "Attention Needed" mailbox for items like that that I don't want to action at the point of reading.

<<And it started
downloading all the images for spam emails, but once I found the option to
turn that off, it didn't download when specifically asked.>>

How do you mean specifically asked? This could be one of the many big fixes between then and now.

A lot of the design of TMaN was intended to reduce network traffic (I'm particulary proud of some of the anti-spam stuff which won't be appropriate in
many firms) especially the image downloads. I hated the way OE would dial-up and download fresh images (ads) from Yahoo from some of the mail
groups I subscribed to every time you looked at the email.


<< Also, one email
with multi-part display only showed the footer and not the main body.>>

I'd like to see that. One problem with email is that standards exist but they are complex and worse M$ allowed OE to accept and read all sorts of crap.
Unless I have encountered one of the awkward ones TMaN probably doesn't know how to handle it. With Techniques (my recruitment app) it took about
18 months in total to get to where it coped with most things. Them SPAM with deliberately malformed emails started......

<<But
it would be good to have a play with it further. I have no budget for it
of course. 8-(>>

What not even a nice bottle of wine

Joking aside. My code you can have for free but you'll need to spend money on the commercial components.

<< I'd like to know where you are going with it too - for a
pet project it has obviously developed a long way.>>

OK - roadmap (without timescales)

1. Techniques morphs into TfR (Techniques for Recruitment)
1a. Convert TfR in present state from current component set to TMS pretty looking stuff
1.b Convert TfR in present state from DBISAM to ElevateDB

2. Strip some functionality from TfR to create TfP (Techniques for [sales] Prospecting)
3. Strip out some more functionality and add newsreader in to make Tf(I haven't decided yet)


Stage 1 is moving a lot of the functionality from TMaN into TfR replacing the current email stuff based on TMail2000, THTMLEdit will be replaced by
WPTools as the editor

Stage 3 is where TMaN gets thrown away.


Roy


/Matthew Jones/

TVM for the offer of source. The best email address to send to is
mattjones at cix dot co dot uk as the one above will actually be
redirected there anyway (if it had a proper first name instead of
nospam!).

> <<And it started
> downloading all the images for spam emails, but once I found the option
> to turn that off, it didn't download when specifically asked.>>
>
> How do you mean specifically asked? This could be one of the many big
> fixes between then and now.

I mean there is a button to fetch images, and clicking it didn't do
anything (apparently).

I note that your bayesian filter uses a standard table. If you are
interested in the code for my spam filter version, then you are welcome.
It uses a memory mapped file with fixed record size to speed it all up.
The filter details are at www.epanoopy.com, but the company no longer
sells it (I closed it down as filtering was integrated into VPOP3 and I
didn't have any time for developing it).

> What not even a nice bottle of wine

I'm sure that could be arranged! 8-) Do you prefer red or white?

> OK - roadmap (without timescales)
....
> THTMLEdit will be replaced by
> WPTools as the editor

Interesting as I have it, but we pretty much use plain text emails only
and so that may not matter to us. I realise that this would take some
picking up, but my aim (if I spend any time on this) would be to strip out
a lot of the things that aren't needed by us, like news, and add a load of
things that would make it handy for us. One thing we use a lot for example
is creating a message and putting it on hold so someone else can edit or
review. Since you mention button changes etc, I'd probably use the Raize
ones, but that's not important.

In any case, I'll let you know of any issues I find. I can't give you the
problem email as it is quite confidential, but I'll see if I can run it
alongside and spot another and then I can send you one.

/Matthew Jones/

Matthew

Source will be sent when TMaN has been repaired

I thought I'd be clever and move it lock, stock and barrel to the Vista notebook I bought from Tesco so that I could keep working at my day job
(recruitment) without the repair slowing everything to a crawl. I think that was a big mistake

normal machine - 3.2Khz P4 1Gb RAM - XP sp2 - HP Pavilion zd8000
PC from Tesco 1.6 GHz Celerom 0.5Gb RAM Vista - Gateway

Big mistake - 24 hours later and its up tp 52% repaired. My normal machine takes c14 hours in total (and that was in the days when it "only" had 0.5Gb
RAM). So we're talking about 4 times as long on a machine that is about half the speed. I wonder how much slowdown is caused by the pretty OS?


<<I mean there is a button to fetch images, and clicking it didn't do
anything (apparently).>>

I think that's one of the things that got fixed.

<<I note that your bayesian filter uses a standard table. If you are
interested in the code for my spam filter version, then you are welcome.
It uses a memory mapped file with fixed record size to speed it all up. >>

I'd be interested in seeing it. My current table has 273k entries, its updated when I bomb emails, and I'll be moving to a multi-user model with a corporate
rather than individual spam filter so I'm not sure how suitable memory mapped is. I do recognise that its a bit of a performance bottleneck and in the next
incarnations I'm goin to move to drag the emails / news in using a holding table and pass across to a thread to decode, analyse etc.

> What not even a nice bottle of wine

<<I'm sure that could be arranged! 8-) Do you prefer red or white?>> alcoholic

> OK - roadmap (without timescales)
....
> THTMLEdit will be replaced by
> WPTools as the editor

<<Interesting as I have it, but we pretty much use plain text emails only
and so that may not matter to us. I realise that this would take some
picking up, but my aim (if I spend any time on this) would be to strip out
a lot of the things that aren't needed by us, like news, and add a load of
things that would make it handy for us. One thing we use a lot for example
is creating a message and putting it on hold so someone else can edit or
review. Since you mention button changes etc, I'd probably use the Raize
ones, but that's not important. >>

OK check the About and see which components you'll need to acquire. You will need something to display incoming emails and I'd suggest getting the
freebie HTMLView component.

<<In any case, I'll let you know of any issues I find. I can't give you the
problem email as it is quite confidential, but I'll see if I can run it
alongside and spot another and then I can send you one. >>

How about export it to a text file, hack the text so the content's safe (including any addresses), zip it and send it?

Roy

> normal machine - 3.2Khz P4 1Gb RAM - XP sp2 - HP Pavilion zd8000
> PC from Tesco 1.6 GHz Celerom 0.5Gb RAM Vista - Gateway
>
> "only" had 0.5Gb RAM). So we're talking about 4 times as long on a
> machine that is about half the speed. I wonder how much slowdown is
> caused by the pretty OS?

RAM will be the main cause in that it will start to thrash I'd expect, but
Vista will probably also have more in memory too. Some days I really hate
computers, particularly the one I make my living from when it stops me.


> <<I note that your bayesian filter uses a standard table. If you are
> ...
> I'd be interested in seeing it. My current table has 273k entries, its

I'll put the code together for you. It will be for internal/integration
into your product/gaining ideas from use only, not for re-distribution or
sale as a separate product. I'll treat your code on the same basis.

> <<In any case, I'll let you know of any issues I find. I can't give you
> the problem email as it is quite confidential, but I'll see if I can
> run it alongside and spot another and then I can send you one. >>
>
> How about export it to a text file, hack the text so the content's safe
> (including any addresses), zip it and send it?

Yes, I thought I could work on that. Perhaps worth doing when I've seen
the new one in case you've fixed it already? Would the new one install
over the old?


/Matthew Jones/

You have mail...

/Matthew Jones/

Matthew

Thanks - its up to 75% now so 48 hours was rather optimistic.

If you need full text indexing on the messages I'd suggest jumping to ElevateDB straight away.

Roy

Matthew

Sorry for the delay - the repair is now up to 93% shouldn't be to much longer.

Roy

>Let's say I have a database with records that a number of readers must
>read. Readers can be of any number, and added at any time. Each one may
>read the records any in any order. There will be thousands of records in
>the main table. What is the best way in space and efficiency to keep a
>record of which records that each reader has read? SQL or direct is quite
>acceptable.
>
>I have an idea, but it isn't fully formed, and I'd like suggestions
>untainted by my thought.
>
>/Matthew Jones/

Matthew,

An intersection table between the email message table and the user
table as Harry mentioned is the best solution.   It is the best
balance between space and flexibility.

I read more of the conversation and as far a mailboxes are concerned,
you could do pretty much the same thing, create a mailbox table with
an FK in your messages table that links the message to the mailbox,
then create an intersection table between the mailbox table and the
users authorized to view those mailboxes.  This would allow for both
private and shared mailboxes.  A couple of joins and viola!!!

- Bill

Bill,

Just catching up on things, and thank you for that comment. I think I'll
have to study this idea further, and will probably come back when I've
worked it out.

/Matthew Jones/