Re: Helpful subject lines
On Wed, 12 Feb 2003, Jonathan Peterson wrote: > I've always wondered about adding the "was Re" appendage. I mean, if you > are following the old thread it should be obvious what's happening. If > you haven't been following the old thread, then it doesn't help you to > know that the new one grew out of the old one. *shrug* I liked it because, independent of your particular mail client's threading capabilities (or lack thereof), it allows you to put things in cognitive context. If I'm reading from message to message in Pine, seeing a "new" subject that quotes old material can be confusing, but having that 'was re:...' text in there puts it back in context without necessarily having to go back out to the message list to see how things were threaded. I suppose it can be redundant, but good redundancy can be good UI, no? -- Chris Devers[EMAIL PROTECTED] cursor address, n. "Hello, cursor!" -- from _The Computer Contradictionary_, Stan Kelly-Bootle, 1995
Re: Colostomy bags for Aardvarks .. was Re: Helpful subject lines
On Wed, Feb 12, 2003 at 04:28:50PM +, Simon Wistow wrote: > I suppose I could upgrade the Perl on my colo to 5.6.1 but I'm not sure > if I could be arsed. All other things being equal, I'd suggest upgrading it to 5.8.0, given that 5.8.x is actively being maintained, and 5.8.0 isn't slow if you don't have a UTF8 locale. Nicholas Clark
Re: Colostomy bags for Aardvarks .. was Re: Helpful subject lines
On Wed, Feb 12, 2003 at 04:23:24PM +, Mark Fowler said: > I actually got bit by this last month, as Mr Cantrell had started more > than one thread with the subject "books" and pine's very immature > threading couldn't cope. Perhaps one could modify the algorithm so that if the mails were, say, more than a day apart. Or both without 'Re:' then it wouldn't group them. Simon Cozens has written a pure Perl implementation of JWZ's threading algorithm but I can't test it cos it relies on a later version of Mail::Mbox which in turn requires Perl 5.6.1 which I don't have. I suppose I could upgrade the Perl on my colo to 5.6.1 but I'm not sure if I could be arsed. Simon -- the test for truth is still quicker than the addition
Re: Colostomy bags for Aardvarks .. was Re: Helpful subject lines
On Wed, 12 Feb 2003, Simon Wistow wrote:
> His 5th step is "If any two members of the root set have the same
> subject, merge them. This is so that messages which don't have
> References headers at all still get threaded (to the extent possible, at
> least.)"
I actually got bit by this last month, as Mr Cantrell had started more
than one thread with the subject "books" and pine's very immature
threading couldn't cope.
Mark.
--
#!/usr/bin/perl -T
use strict;
use warnings;
print q{Mark Fowler, [EMAIL PROTECTED], http://twoshortplanks.com/};
Re: Colostomy bags for Aardvarks .. was Re: Helpful subject lines
On Wed, Feb 12, 2003 at 04:06:26PM +, robin szemeti said: > most MUA's use the 'References:' or the 'In-reply-to:' line in the header to > do the threading ... off hand I can't think of any that use the subject line /me coughs and points at http://www.jwz.org/doc/threading.html which lists headers you should look at. I believe Mutt's threading algorithm is based on this technique but I could be horribly wrong. His 5th step is "If any two members of the root set have the same subject, merge them. This is so that messages which don't have References headers at all still get threaded (to the extent possible, at least.)" Read the rest of that step for exactly how to thread based on 'Subject:' -- the test for truth is still quicker than the addition
Re: Helpful subject lines
On 12/02/2003 at 14:51 +, Mark Fowler wrote: Whee, I'm having fun doing the summary this week. Everything's going all over the place. It'd just make doing the summaries (and finding posts in the archives) easier. Finding posts in the archives would be much easier if there was an X-Suggested-Archive-URL header (or similar), and if archiving software honoured it. Mind you, I said this a year and a half ago and nothing happened about it then either. I just thought I'd chuck the concept about again and see if it stuck any harder this time. On 12/02/2003 at 15:25 +, Jonathan Peterson wrote: I've always wondered about adding the "was Re" appendage. I mean, if you are following the old thread it should be obvious what's happening. If you haven't been following the old thread, then it doesn't help you to know that the new one grew out of the old one. It does if threads break. Which brings us to... In fact, I daresay clever modern software does message threading based on something smarter than pattern matching the subject line (oh, tell me that's true), so we could (steady now) change the subject every time we replied, subtly changing it to reflect (radical I know) the contents of the message: Most modern software supplies either References: or In-reply-to: headers. However, the most popular modern software (guess whose) doesn't supply these. Then there's webmail, which tends to be spectacularly crappy too. Some people still even read mail in non-threaded apps. The classic mail threading algorithm would still appear to be jwz's one outlined at http://www.jwz.org/doc/threading.html - although it could now be surpassed by something less famous. If you want to see how often threading fails, just visit the web archives: http://london.pm.org/pipermail/london.pm/Week-of-Mon-20030210/thread.html -- :: paul :: we're like crystal
Colostomy bags for Aardvarks .. was Re: Helpful subject lines
On Wednesday 12 February 2003 15:25, Jonathan Peterson wrote: > In fact, I daresay clever modern software does message threading based > on something smarter than pattern matching the subject line (oh, tell me > that's true), so we could (steady now) change the subject every time we > replied, subtly changing it to reflect (radical I know) the contents of > the message: most MUA's use the 'References:' or the 'In-reply-to:' line in the header to do the threading ... off hand I can't think of any that use the subject line ... -- Robin Szemeti
Re: Threading (was Re: Helpful subject lines)
On Wed, Feb 12, 2003 at 03:41:57PM +, Roger Burton West wrote: > On Wed, Feb 12, 2003 at 03:25:48PM +, Jonathan Peterson wrote: > >In fact, I daresay clever modern software does message threading based > >on something smarter than pattern matching the subject line (oh, tell me > >that's true), > > Well, mutt(1) does; it uses In-Reply-To: and References: headers. But > many mail clients not only fail to supply those but strip out any they > find. I'm sure we know whom to blame here. And then other mail clients do it just fine, but then the users (hello. do I mean you? I may do) send messages to mailing lists by hitting reply on an existing message, replace the subject, and delete any quoted text from the body. But the headers survive, and threading mail readers (including Netscape, which some of these culprits use) slot the new message into the old thread. Please start new threads by cut&pasting the e-mail address into a NEW MESSAGE. Thanks. Nicholas Clark
Threading (was Re: Helpful subject lines)
On Wed, Feb 12, 2003 at 03:25:48PM +, Jonathan Peterson wrote: >In fact, I daresay clever modern software does message threading based >on something smarter than pattern matching the subject line (oh, tell me >that's true), Well, mutt(1) does; it uses In-Reply-To: and References: headers. But many mail clients not only fail to supply those but strip out any they find. I'm sure we know whom to blame here. Roger
Re: Helpful subject lines
On Wed, 12 Feb 2003, Jonathan Peterson wrote:
> In fact, I daresay clever modern software does message threading based
> on something smarter than pattern matching the subject line
Yes all well written modern software does, it uses various headers in the
mail. For example, your message quoted my message id:
References: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Meaning that clever software can handle it. Unfortuatly, some people are
stuck using Outlook which isn't very clever at all and breaks threading
all over the place. Silly software.
This is why it's helpful to include the old subject in there for
completeness sake.
Do what you think is best.
Mark.
--
#!/usr/bin/perl -T
use strict;
use warnings;
print q{Mark Fowler, [EMAIL PROTECTED], http://twoshortplanks.com/};
