Lafite message header status flags

[Herb Jellinek]

Hello,

I've written code to parse Laurel and Lafite mail folders and translate them to mbox format.  Lafite's format is based on Laurel's, which specifies that each message begins with a "stamp" that looks like

*start*
01659 00024 UU_

The two 5-digit numbers are lengths.  The final three characters mean:

- deleted/undeleted (D/U)
- seen/unseen (S/U)
- space (ASCII 32) - believed unused, described as "any.char" in Lafite source code

In the process I've discovered a number of messages where the final character is not a space but rather some other character.  In the message sample I've examined, it's one of 'a', 'f', and 'h'.

Can anyone point me to documentation or code that says what those values mean?

                Herb

[Nick Briggs]

It's the "MARK" field -- all messages are space by default, "f" forwarded, "a" answered, "h" (probably) hardcopied, it can be any character at all with little meaning except to the human that marked it.

-- Nick

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[Herb Jellinek]

I noticed it's called MARK, but the sources I read didn't give a hint of the meaning of its contents.

In the process of reviewing Bill Stumbo's work on the bibliography last night I ran across A User's Guide to Lafite, where I found this on p. 99, confirming your note:

Message Marks

? Means that a message has not yet been displayed.
a Means that a message has been answered.
f Means that a message has been forwarded.
h Means that a message has been hard-copied.
m Means that a message has been moved to another folder.

Note: Only one mark is present at a time; each mark replaces the previous one.

I'd guess that ? was based on some combination of the Seen/Unseen flag and the MARK byte.

                 Herb