Digest or not?

[Andrew Buc <abuc@ibm.net>]

When I first subscribed to the list around New Year's of 1997, I was
receiving my E-mail thru CompuServe. I was concerned about my mailbox
filling up and my incoming QList mail getting bounced, so I s*bscr*bed to
the digest.

Three months ago I signed up with a regular Internet service provider,
uns*bscr*bed from the digest, and s*bscr*bed to the regular
one-msg-at-a-time list. Now, to compare and contrast the two ways of being
on the list:

Digest thru CSi:

CSi navigation software (in my case, Golden CommPass for OS/2) stores all
incoming mail (from QList, other lists, my buddy in San Francisco, you name
it) as a single ASCII file and relies on characteristic msg headers to
display one msg at a time on the screen. I do a text search to find the
Q-digests in the file, then search for "Subject:" to see whether the
individual posts hold any interest. If I want to reply to a post, I have
to remember the original subject header and type it in to replace the
"quattro-digest #xxxx" header. If a given post is archive-worthy, I select
it with the mouse, copy it to the clipboard, check to see if my dedicated
QList archive folder already has a file it could reasonably be appended to.
If yes, append to file. If not, create new file. Delete individual digest
after reading, go on to next digest, do whole song & dance again.

Non-digest thru ISP:

Internet mail client (Post Road Mailer for OS/2) lets me set up filter to
move all QList postings into dedicated folder--no need to dig thru all my
mail to find them. I don't feel a need to have posts containing "Torsen"
or "A8" sent straight to the bit bucket w/o my ever seeing them, but I
could do this if I wanted to. PRM can sort posts by subject, so I can easily
find groups of posts that might interest me, and delete the rest. If I
respond to a post, the subject header will be right w/o my having to
worry about it. PRM has built-in facility to move msgs into archive
folders--no fiddly cutting and pasting.

In short, it comes down to the mail software. Granted, I'm generalizing from
two specific programs, but from what I've heard, I think the generalization
is valid: netmail clients in general are more full-featured than dedicated
CSi/AOL software. I only regret that I didn't change sooner. If E-mail
is all you want from an ISP, there are ISP's that will give you what should
be enough time for $9.95/month. And then there are the free E-mail services,
some of which can be accessed with a standard netmail client.