From: Austin Ziegler Date: 2005-04-18T00:53:46+09:00 Subject: Re: Proper MUA use [Was: Re: Newbie Ruby and C question] On 4/17/05, Eric Hodel wrote: > On 16 Apr 2005, at 17:14, Austin Ziegler wrote: >> To be honest, this is tiresome and unfriendly to users -- >> especially new users. >> >> Modern mailers -- obviously not yours -- also don't just blindly >> use the In-Reply-To or References field to determine threading. >> Indeed, while a mailer should clear IRT if certain conditions are >> met, a sensible mailer should also ignore IRT if it doesn't make >> sense. This is usually the case when the subject of the message >> changes. > The only mailer I know of in common use that has this misfeature > is Outlook (whose threading support is so dismal that it is > unusable). I won't buy into the culture of Outlook, where we have > to drop to the lowest common denominator. I've more frequently > seen the subject change when branching off from an existing > thread's topic than to ask a new question. > In-Reply-To and References are not something new (RFC 822 as of > 1982). People are just being lazy when they abuse their reply > buttons, and they need to stop that. Sure, they're being lazy. But your one man "crusade" isn't going to help anything. MUAs should be more intelligent. Generally, if I reply to something and change the subject more than a particular percentage (maybe with Levenshtein distance), I'm *probably* not going to want it to be in the same thread. On the other hand, an receiving MUA could use the same sort of logic to determine whether a message should be part of an existing thread, or whether IRT and References should be honoured. I know how old References and IRT are -- I've argued long and hard with an MUA developer on the need to properly respect them, but also on the need to be smarter than your MUA is apparently being. I, for one, use Gmail. I don't notice these "bad" threads. -austin -- Austin Ziegler * halostatue@gmail.com * Alternate: austin@halostatue.ca