How threading works (was Re: Root Cause Re: 202401102221.AYC Re: Streamline The CG-NAT Re: 202401100645.AYC Re: IPv4 address block)

Sun Jan 14 08:53:51 UTC 2024

On 1/14/24 1:01 AM, William Herrin wrote:
> Respectfully, your MUA is not the only MUA. Others work differently.

Bill, I use multiple MUA's, among them Thunderbird, mutt, kmail and even the
zimbra web interface.  All follow and implement RFC5822 as it pertains to
threading.

Note, threading works fine in the list archives too, but only displays two
levels deep.

> GMail, for example, follows the message IDs as you say but assumes
> that if you change the subject line in your reply (more than adding
> "Re:") then you intend to start a new thread from that point in the
> discussion. It groups messages accordingly.

Gmail is therefore in violation of the RFC5822.  It's quite clear how it
should work per the RFC appendix.

> This is not an unreasonable expectation: if you merely want to
> continue the current conversation without going off on a new tangent
> then there's no need for a different subject line.

I think it's quite unreasonable to expect others to compensate for an MUA
which doesn't implement 25+ year old standards properly.
-- 
Bryan Fields

727-409-1194 - Voice
http://bryanfields.net