Neil wrote:
On Thu, Jan 28, 2010 at 2:39 PM, LuKreme<[email protected]> wrote:
On 28-Jan-2010, at 12:24, Lachlan Hunt wrote:
It doesn't screw it up if proper In-Reply-To and References headers are set in
the mail, and refer to the message IDs correctly. These header fields are
defined to accept 1 or more message IDs in RFC 2822, and so responding to
multiple messages is a perfectly reasonble thing to do.
Do *any* clients support multiple In-Reply-To message IDs?
I was under the impression that In-Reply-To is usually just one
Msg-ID, since it indicates the parent email and is generally used in
building tree-style threads. However, RFC 2822 does _explicitly_ say
that multiple Msg-IDs are permitted in the In-Reply-To field. I'm not
quite sure how you'd place that in a tree-thread, however.
This an an issue where we can get innovative, because if it can work, it
will be a rather useful feature. Here's a few ideas.
Take this example message thread:
Subject | From
-----------------------+---------
+--Kittens | Jack
| |
+--Re: Kittens | Sam
| | |
| +--Re: Kitens | Daniel
| |
+--Re: Kittens | Cameron
Say, for examle, John wants to reply to the messages from Sam and
Cameron and his mail client sets the In-Reply-To header to point to the
message IDs for Sam and Cameron's messages.
e.g.
In-Reply-To: <[email protected]> <[email protected]>
The receiving mail client can then render this in a number of possible
ways. It could either place it in the hierarchy below Sam's message,
after Daniel, which is what I believe most clients would do (since that
message ID comes first).
Subject | From
-----------------------+---------
+--Kittens | Jack
| |
+--Re: Kittens | Sam
| | |
| +--Re: Kitens | Daniel
| | |
| +--Re: Kittens | John
| |
+--Re: Kittens | Cameron
One possibility here is that when John's message is selected, both Sam's
and Cameron's messages could be highlighted in some way to indicate that
the selected message is a reply. The mail client may even say something
at the top of the message pane like:
"Replied to multiple messages: _Sam_, _Cameron_
Where each of those are links that when clicked, take the user to the
specific mail. This method is seems like the simplest approach, and
will most likely work the best when the reply is to messages in the same
thread.
Another alternative is to place the same e-mail multiple times in the
heirarchy, below each message to which it's a reply, and somehow
indicate that in the UI with some type of icon or perhaps a lighter
colour for the subject. The idea is to convey to the user that the
message itself is not really located there, but access is provided for
convenience. It's a sort of ghost message.
(Since this mail is plain text, I'll use square brackets below to
indicate this.)
Subject | From
-----------------------+---------
+--Kittens | Jack
| |
+--Re: Kittens | Sam
| | |
| +--Re: Kitens | Daniel
| | |
| +--Re: Kittens | John
| |
+--Re: Kittens | Cameron
| |
+--[Re: Kittens] | [John]
The latter copy may even be collapsed by default so it doesn't waste
screen real estate, but still accessible by expanding the tree if the
user wants to.
Then, when either copy of the message subject is selected, the mail
client client can indicate that it's the same message by highlighting
the other copy in some way. Both copies should maintain the same states
(including read/unread status, tags, markers, etc.). The advantage of
this method is that it's more robust in cases where the user responds to
messages across multiple threads.
This would also be useful when replies to one message are located in a
different folder. The thread view could show the ghost copy of the mail
in the list, to provide quick access to it, and the client could make it
easy to switch to that other folder.
--
Lachlan Hunt - Opera Software
http://lachy.id.au/
http://www.opera.com/
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