X-Handed: Left!

Introduction:

Left handed people are a persecuted minority; Latin calls us Sinstra or sinister, the French call us clumsy and Japanese men used to be able to divorce their wives for being left handed! (Ahhh, isn't wikipedia great:)

Nowadays however, the social stigma isn't so bad, (although I do have an Uncle who was forced through childhood to use his right hand, despite a preference for using his left), but we still live in a World where almost everything is geared towards right-handers. This clearly isn't good enough, and so to help combat the discrimination that we left handers face in our everyday lives, we must show solidarity! Add X-Handed headers to your email today to show others that you're proud to be a lefty - and who knows, we may even be able to discriminate against right-handers for a change!

In the following few paragraphs, I'll show you how to add custom headers to your emails in a variety of clients, so you too can show your left-handedness those with whom you communicate, thereby gaining (even more) respect from your left handed peers!

X-Handed in mutt...

Mutt is - as many people already realise - truly brilliant. I often wonder if it was written by a left hander. This is how to make your mutt add and display X-Handed headers when you write or view email. The following list shows the chnages you need to make to your muttrc.

If, like me you ignore all headers, then you should add the X-Handed: header to the unignore list:
```
unignore X-Handed:
```

If necessary, add it to your hdr_order list. I have:

# ordering of headers in the pager
unhdr_order *
hdr_order Date: From: To: Cc: X-Newsreader: X-Mailer: Organization: 
Organisation: User-Agent: X-Operating-System: X-Handed: X-Message-Flag: 
Newsgroups: Reply-To: X-Spam-Status: x-spam-rule: x-SpamProbe: Subject:

Note: the hdr_order variable should all be on one line.

Add a send hook that says the following:
```
send-hook   .    my_hdr X-Handed: Left
```
Alternatively, if you want to show of your normality, you could use:
```
send-hook   .    my_hdr X-Handed: Right
```
Or if you are one of those rare ambidextrous people, you could put both, neither, or of course ambidextrous.
Make sure you have 'set hdrs' somewhere in your rc file or this won't work.

Another cool thing to do with mutt, is to colour messages on their content. Add the following to your rc file to colour messages based on the X-Handed header:

color index		brightred		default		"~h 'X-Handed: (l|L)eft'"
color index		yellow			default		"~h 'X-Handed: (R|r)ight'"

...Thunderbird...

According to the Linux Gazette, adding extra headers to Mozilla Thunderbird is fairly simple. Just add something like the following to your prefs.js:

user_pref("mail.identity.id2.headers", "tag");
user_pref("mail.identity.id2.header.tag", "X-Handed: Left");

...and Sylpheed

It looks as though it should be possible to add custom headers to Sylpheed's messages using the 'Configuration- > Actions..' menu, so it can't be that hard.



		And Finally
		If you decide to add the X-Handed header to your emails then be sure
		to drop me a line. I'd be especially interested in instructions for
		other email clients, so send them in!
		Whilst this page isn't meant to be at all serious, it's still a fun
		idea, so have a go. I should also mention that the idea was originally
		thought of by my housemate, Joe, who is not a
		left-hander.
		Also, proudly display this left handed sticky on your web page:
		.
		 I used the button maker to
		produce it.


	  
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