A reason for threading errors in Mail.app

[Alex Tweedly]

James Richards wrote:

> This is rather a late contribution to this discussion, but my brain 
> has been working slowly.
>
> Firstly, those who receive the digest (as I do) and then join in the 
> discussion must completely 'throw' any kind of threading based on 
> fingerprinting.  The most accurate threading for this list would 
> normally be on the basis of subject line (thrown occasionally by the 
> odd failure to edit the subject line).
>
Not if they use a mail client which understands, and respects, the 
standards. It would allow either "burst"ing the digest to separate 
messages, or replying to an individual item from within a digest.  
rfc1153 (the de facto standard for digests, even though not an official 
IETF standard) specifies that the message-ID must be retained in the 
digest, so the ability to do basic threading is available to all mail 
clients - but many of them fail to supply that capability to their users.

> Secondly, I had always previously understood the instruction about 
> starting new topics to mean that I should no start an interesting 
> discussion about global variables under a subject line referring to 
> mail threading, but should change the subject line to match the 
> discussion.  I can't be the only person who uses the 'Reply' command 
> to get a new message all set up and then edits the subject line to 
> reflect the topic.  Indeed I do this all the time since any attempt to 
> reply to the digest (even on an existing topic) always produces a 'Re: 
> use-revolution Digest, Vol ##, Issue ##' subject.
>
For most people, the only advantage of using Reply rather than New 
Message (or equivalent command/buttons) is that it fills in the 
destination address. Most modern mail clients allow some form of 
"address completion" so (for me), a new reply involves typing 4 extra 
characters "H" "o" "w" TAB

> It seems to me that the standard is not well adapted to a mailing list 
> of this kind.
>
The standards were designed to allow for the use of mailing lists and 
digests. In fact, mail lists and digests only exist because they are 
defined in the standards - and the standards allow for almost all 
commonly desired operations.

However, the standards define the file and message formats, not the user 
presentation or user facilities, and unfortunately, most mail clients 
decided that providing a way to access features weren't important.

-- 
Alex Tweedly       http://www.tweedly.net



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