tools/perl-5.8.0/doc/MHonArc/commontasks.html

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<H1><a name="commontasks">Common Tasks</a></H1>

<p>The following section describes how to perform some common tasks with
MHonArc archives beyond those mentioned in
<a href="quickstart.html">Quick Start</a>.  To get a complete picture
of what you can do with MHonArc, see the section
on <a href="resources.html">Resources</a>.
</p>

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<ul>
<li><a href="#chgtitle">Setting the Index Title</a>
<li><a href="#chg-idx-order">Changing Index Listing Order</a>
<li><a href="#rmm">Removing Messages</a>
<ul>
<li><small><a href="#autormm">Automatic Removal</a></small>
<li><small><a href="#manualrmm">Manual Removal</a></small>
</ul>
<li><a href="#layout">Customizing Page Layout</a>
</ul>
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<hr>
<h2><a name="chgtitle">Setting the Index Title</a></h2>

<p>If you read the <a href="quickstart.html">Quick Start</a>
section and ran MHonArc on some of your mail,
you have may have noticed that the titles of the main (date)
and thread index pages are not very descriptive: "Mail Index"
and "Mail Thread Index".  It would be much nicer if the the
titles reflect what type of mail is in the archive.  For example,
if the archive contains messages from a mailing list, the name
of the list should probably be in the title.
</p>
<p>MHonArc allows you to change the titles via the
<a href="resources/title.html"><tt>-title</tt></a> and
<a href="resources/ttitle.html"><tt>-ttitle</tt></a> options.
The <a href="resources/title.html"><tt>-title</tt></a> option sets
main index title, and the
<a href="resources/ttitle.html"><tt>-ttitle</tt></a> option sets
the thread index title.  Example:
</p>
<pre>
    shell&gt; <b>mhonarc <a href="resources/title.html">-title</a> "The Widget List Archive" \
                   <a href="resources/ttitle.html">-ttitle</a> "The Widget List Thread Archive"</b> ...
</pre>

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<hr>
<h2><a name="chg-idx-order">Changing Index Listing Order</a></h2>

<p>By default, messages get listed in chronological order on
the main/non-thread and thread index pages.
</p>
<table border=0 cellpadding=4>
<tr valign=top>
<td><strong>NOTE</strong></td>
<td><p>The chronological order in the thread index is based on
the root messages of each thread.
</p>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<p>For many, the default listing order is
not what is desired.  A common desire is to have
messages in the main index listed in reverse chronological order;
ie. the most recent messages are listed first while the oldest
are listed last.  Or, one may want to list messages by author
since the target audience is more interested in looking up messages
by certain authors than by date.
</p>
<p>Following is the list options available for changing the
listing order on index pages:
</p>

<table border=0>
<tr>
<td align="right"><b>Option</b>&nbsp;</td><td><b>Description</b></td>
</tr>
<tr valign="top"><td align="right"><b><a name="authsort" href="resources/authsort.html"><tt>-authsort</tt></a></b>&nbsp;</td><td>Sort main index by author.</td></tr>
<tr valign="top"><td align="right"><b><a name="reverse" href="resources/reverse.html"><tt>-reverse</tt></a></b>&nbsp;</td><td>Reverse the listing order in the main index.</td></tr>
<tr valign="top"><td align="right"><b><a name="sort" href="resources/sort.html"><tt>-sort</tt></a></b>&nbsp;</td><td>List messages by date in main index.</td></tr>
<tr valign="top"><td align="right"><b><a name="subsort" href="resources/subsort.html"><tt>-subsort</tt></a></b>&nbsp;</td><td>List messages by subject in main index.</td></tr>
<tr valign="top"><td align="right"><b><a name="treverse" href="resources/treverse.html"><tt>-treverse</tt></a></b>&nbsp;</td><td>List thread in reverse order.</td></tr>
<tr valign="top"><td align="right"><b><a name="tsort" href="resources/tsort.html"><tt>-tsort</tt></a></b>&nbsp;</td><td>List threads by date.</td></tr>
<tr valign="top"><td align="right"><b><a name="tsubsort" href="resources/tsubsort.html"><tt>-tsubsort</tt></a></b>&nbsp;</td><td>List threads by subject.</td></tr>
</table>

<p>For example, to get a reverse chronological listing,
do something like the following:
</p>
<pre>
    shell&gt; <b>mhonarc <a href="resources/sort.html">-sort</a> <a href="resources/reverse.html">-reverse</a></b> ...
</pre>

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<hr>
<h2><a name="rmm">Removing Messages</a></h2>

<p>There are two ways to delete messages from an archive:
automatic and manual.
</p>

<h3><a name="autormm">Automatic Removal</a></h3>

<p>MHonArc supports the ability to automatically remove archive messages
that are older than a specified time period, are older than
a specified date/time, or the number of messages have reached the maximum
number specified.
</p>

</p>For example, if you want an archive to only
contain messages that are less than a month, you can do something
like the following:
</p>
<pre>
    shell&gt; <b>mhonarc <a href="resources/expireage.html">-expireage</a> 2635200 <a href="resources/add.html">-add</a> <a href="resources/outdir.html">-outdir</a> /path/to/archive mailbox</b>
</pre>
<p>Here, we used the <a href="resources/expireage.html"><tt>-expireage</tt></a>
option
to tell MHonArc to remove messages older than 2635200 seconds (30.5 days) when
adding new messages.
I know, having to use seconds to specify the expiration age seems cumbersome.
A table is provided in the <a href="resources/expireage.html">EXPIREAGE</a>
reference page listing common time periods to their equivalence in seconds.
</p>

<p>A less used option that will cause automatic deletion is the
<a href="resources/expiredate.html"><tt>-expiredate</tt></a> option.
This allows
you to specify an exact date/time where any messages older than the
given date/time, will be automatically removed.  For example:
</p>
<pre>
    shell&gt; <b>mhonarc <a href="resources/expiredate.html">-expiredate</a> "1 Jan 1999 00:00:00" <a href="resources/add.html">-add</a> <a href="resources/outdir.html">-outdir</a> /path/to/archive mailbox</b>
</pre>
<p>In this example, before MHonArc adds any new messages, it will delete
any messages with a date earlier than January 1, 1999.  See the
<a href="resources/expiredate.html">EXPIREDATE</a> reference page for
more information and for the correct expiration date syntax.
</p>

<p>An archive can also have a maximum number of messages limit.
When the maximum number is reached, the oldest messages are automatically
removed.  The following is an example of setting the maximum size
of an archive:
</p>
<pre>
    shell&gt; <b>mhonarc <a href="resources/maxsize.html">-maxsize</a> 500 <a href="resources/add.html">-add</a> <a href="resources/outdir.html">-outdir</a> /path/to/archive mailbox</b>
</pre>

<h3><a name="manualrmm">Manual Removal</a></h3>

<p>Sometimes it becomes necessary to remove specific messages from archive.
For example, their may be some spam messages and you do not want them
cluttering your archive (and providing free advertising).  Or, there
may be archived messages that you believe are not appropriate for
the archive's intended audience.
</p>
<p>To remove specific messages, use the
<a href="resources/rmm.html"><tt>-rmm</tt></a> option.  For example:
</p>
<pre>
    shell&gt; <b>mhonarc <a href="resources/rmm.html">-rmm</a> 24 28 39 48</b>
</pre>
<p>will delete messages 24, 28, 39, and 48.
</p>
<p>You are now asking, "How do I know what a message's number is?".  One
way is to look at the number in the message's filename.  I.e.  Each
converted message is writting to a filename containing the number of
message.  For example, <tt>msg00024.html</tt>,
<tt>msg00028.html</tt>, <tt>msg00039.html</tt>, and <tt>msg00048.html</tt>
denote messages 24, 28, 39, and 48.
</p>
<p>Checking filenames can be awkward, so one alternative is to use
the <a href="resources/scan.html"><tt>-scan</tt></a> option.  For example:
</p>
<pre>
    shell&gt; <b>mhonarc <a href="resources/scan.html">-scan</a> <a href="resources/outdir.html">-outdir</a> /home/ehood/html/archive</b>
    Reading database ...
    117 messages in /home/ehood/html/archive:

    Msg #  YYYY/MM/DD  From             Subject
    -----  ----------  ---------------  -------------------------------------------
       62  1996/07/30  Kwin Kramer      Reading STDIN not from keyboard -- or, Syst
       23  1996/07/31  Christopher M.   Re: Setting @INC to include my own modules
        9  1996/08/01  Dan Kirkwood     object as hash key loses methods
        2  1996/08/01  James F'jord Ly  Re: We're HIRING hot hackers!
        1  1996/08/01  Christopher Cha  Curious Multi-Dimensional array behavior
       14  1996/08/01  I R A Aggie      Re: Patch for arithmetic bug in 5.003 ?
        3  1996/08/01  Bernard Bellon   Re: How do you grab a URL in perl?
       38  1996/08/01  Mohammed Dewan   Help needed badly win3.1 and perl.
       59  1996/08/01  Mohammed Dewan   Using file in perl.
        4  1996/08/01  Dan Gildor       Re: Threaded Discusion groups embeded in We
        5  1996/08/01  kendall shaw     addicted to emacs lisp
        6  1996/08/01  Ye He            Q: Sybase extension to Perl
       83  1996/08/01  I R A Aggie      Re: Browser/Page matching CGI script
        7  1996/08/01  Chris Schleiche  Re: Simple program looks good, but gives er
       13  1996/08/01  Steve McCullagh  Perl 5.002 and $| errors
    ...
</pre>

<p>With <a href="resources/scan.html">-scan</a>, you can get a listing
of an archive to your terminal.  The listing can be used to determine
the message number for a message if you know the message's subject and
author.
</p>

<p>The <a href="resources/rmm.html"><tt>-rmm</tt></a> also supports
the ability to specify message number ranges and message-ids.  See
the <a href="resources/rmm.html">RMM</a> reference page for
more information and examples.
</p>


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<hr>
<h2><a name="layout">Customizing Page Layout</a></h2>

<p>One of the most powerful features of MHonArc is the ability to
customize the layout of pages generated by MHonArc.  Here, we give
a quick introduction on how customization can be done.  For more
information, see the <cite><a href="layout.html">Page Layout</a></cite>
section.
</p>

<p>In this introduction, the task we will be performing is to
add a footer at the bottom of each page in the archive to
contain the following markup:
</p>
<pre>
&lt;hr&gt;
Please visit &lt;a href="http://www.mhonarc.org"&gt;www.mhonarc.org&lt;/a&gt;.
</pre>

<p>To modify page layout, we will need to create a
<a href="resources/rcfile.html">resource file</a> and give it a
filename "<tt>myresource.mrc</tt>".  The name we give the file is
completely arbitrary.  There is nothing special about the name
"<tt>myresource.mrc</tt>".
</p>

<p>Within <tt>myresource.mrc</tt>,
we add the following to tell MHonArc to include our footer at the
bottom of each page:
</p>
<blockquote><pre>
&lt;!-- Define a custom resource variable representing our link. --&gt;
<b><a href="resources/definevar.html">&lt;DefineVar&gt;</a></b>
MY-FOOTER-LINK
&lt;hr&gt;
Please visit &lt;a href="http://www.mhonarc.org"&gt;www.mhonarc.org&lt;/a&gt;.
<b>&lt;/DefineVar&gt;</b>

&lt;!-- Modify appropriate resources to print our link at the bottom
     of MHonArc generated pages. Notice how the custom resource
     variable defined above can be used to include our link. --&gt;

&lt;!-- Main index pages --&gt;
<b><a href="resources/idxpgend.html">&lt;IdxPgEnd&gt;</a></b>
$MY-FOOTER-LINK$
&lt;/body&gt;
&lt;/html&gt;
<b>&lt;/IdxPgEnd&gt;</b>

&lt;!-- Thread index pages --&gt;
<b><a href="resources/tidxpgend.html">&lt;TIdxPgEnd&gt;</a></b>
$MY-FOOTER-LINK$
&lt;/body&gt;
&lt;/html&gt;
<b>&lt;/TIdxPgEnd&gt;</b>

&lt;!-- Message pages --&gt;
<b><a href="resources/msgpgend.html">&lt;MsgPgEnd&gt;</a></b>
$MY-FOOTER-LINK$
&lt;/body&gt;
&lt;/html&gt;
<b>&lt;/MsgPgEnd&gt;</b>
</pre></blockquote>

<p>Now, when we invoke <tt>mhonarc</tt>, we tell it about our resource
file so our footer will show up:
</p>
<pre>
    shell&gt; <b>mhonarc <a href="resources/rcfile.html">-rcfile</a> myresource.mrc</b> ...
</pre>

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<address>
$Date: 2002/06/07 17:38:04 $ <br>
<img align="top" src="monicon.png" alt="">
<a href="http://www.mhonarc.org/"><strong>MHonArc</strong></a><br>
Copyright &#169; 1997-1999, <a href="http://www.mhonarc.org/~ehood/"
>Earl Hood</a>, <a href="mailto:mhonarc@mhonarc.org"
>mhonarc@mhonarc.org</a><br>
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