Re: how to set message priority

[Peter Bloomfield <PeterBloomfield bellsouth net>]

On 12/09/2016 07:30:23 PM Fri, Jack Ostroff wrote:
> Hi Peter,
>
> On 12/9/2016 6:27 PM, Peter Bloomfield wrote:
> > Hi Jack:
> >
> > On 11/28/2016 05:45:53 PM Mon, Jack wrote:
> > > Am I missing something?  I cannot find any way to set a message
> > > priority when composing a new message?  Is it not possible?
> >
> > AFAICT it's not implemented, although I don't see any technical
> > roadblock. I guess it could be on the compose window's "Options" menu:
> > perhaps a radio list like:
> >
> > X  Priority normal
> > O  Priority urgent
> > O  Priority non-urgent
> >
> > separated off from the other options. Opinions?
> >
> > Peter
> First thanks for confirming that I wasn't missing something.  It's been a while, but I know I've received some messages (not many) with either urgent or low 
> priority.  I seem to recall seeing low priority also called "bulk" but I would probably stick with "low priority" "normal" and 
> "urgent".  I also think I would order low normal high rather than low high normal (top to bottom at least).   Options menu looks like the best place. 
>  I only wonder if there isn't some nice visual way to indicate if a non "normal" priority has been set.  Also - I just looked at another mail 
> program, and I see it has five levels.  (lowest, low, normal, high, highest) I don't know if that list is arbitrary or specified in an RFC.

Well: if we're going to set priority on sending, I guess we should also display priority on receiving--I'm not sure where or how. 
As to standards: neither RFC 822 nor any of its direct descendants describes how to set priority, AFAICT. RFC 4021 
<URL:https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4021> describes a "Priority:" header, with values that I listed above, but it 
links to RFC 2156 <URL:https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2156>, which is about X.400 relaying, and does not seem to be a general 
email standard.

So it looks like we need to move carefully and deliberately!

Peter