Fun with Header Weeding

[Allister MacLeod <amacleod@xxxxxxxx>]

I posted in a thread about this a few weeks ago, but on reinspection,
I find that the subject line of those posts includes "[OT]" so I
figured it might be better to just start a new thread . . .

Anyway, I found, by experimentation, that repeated ignore and unignore
statements work the way I would expect for specific expressions.  That
is, I can indefinitely toggle the appearance of something like
"Mail-Followup-To:" by issuing 'ignore mail-followup-to' and
'unignore mail-followup-to'.  Apparently the part about what I had
tried before that doesn't work is the partial-match nature of ignore
patterns.  So:
  ignore *
  unignore x-
  ignore x-spam-
  unignore x-spam-level
doesn't show X-Spam-Level: because the ignore x-spam- match still
exists, since the second unignore doesn't match it directly.  At least
I think this is the way it works.. and I assume that * is treated as a
special case for which subexpressions can be unignored correctly.

So, I tried being as permissive as possible, by not using * or
unignore at all, and building a gargantuan ignore list.
Unfortunately, I discovered that my liking for an uncluttered header
area far outweighs my curiosity about strange X-Killed-The-Cat
headers.  So it's back to 'ignore *' 'unignore From To CC Subject'

One thing I thought of was to put together a set of macros that lets
me change the level of weeding of headers.  That way I could hit H or
something to change from spartan 4-header mode to show-me-the-X's
mode, while still keeping out noise like Received headers.

Before I start, though, I need to know a couple of things.  First,
what's the best way to do ignore/unignore from a macro?  Second, if
I'm doing it in the pager, what's the best way to get the headers to
be redisplayed?  Just <display-toggle-weed> twice?

Thanks,
 Allister

-- 
Allister MacLeod <amacleod@xxxxxxxx>
 Elen síla lúmenn'omentielvo.