Re: Mailing list confusion

[Arend-Jan Westhoff <jpmcyafvmhsl at spammotel dot com>]

At Thu, 24 Mar 2005 00:06:30 -0800 Brian Dessent wrote:
>Arend-Jan Westhoff wrote:
>
>> How come when I look at
>>         <http://sources.redhat.com/ml/cygwin/2005-03/index.html>:
>> 
>> I see the message:
>>         March 24, 2005 07:32 Re: Path confusion Brian Dessent
>> That message lists:
>>         07:17 Path confusion Luke Kendall
>> As its reference, but Luke's message has no Follow Up to Brian's?
>> Also when I look at the thread index:
>>         <http://sources.redhat.com/ml/cygwin/2005-03/threads.html>
>> Luke's message is listed but Brian's is not.
>
>I think you caught the ML archives page at a point at which it was
>re-indexing.  Both URLs above display both messages with the correct
>threading for me.
>
>> An even stronger example:
>> March 24:
>>         06:15 Re: installing identical cygwin configurations on multiple
systems
>> fergus
>> and March 23:
>>         19:56 installing identical cygwin configurations on multiple
systems Greg
>> Vaidman
>> Have neither a Reference nor a Follow Up to the other (though the thread
>> index looks normal?).
>
>The reply email did not contain a "References:" or "In-reply-to:"
>header, so the archives did not know it was a reply.  Proper email
>readers and archive software depend on one or both of those headers to
>preserve threads.  Some brain dead email programs (cough Outlook cough)
>instead just go by subject, and are too ignorant to add the headers that
>preserve the threading.  That means that messages created in those
>programs break threading in the archives, and those programs cannot cope
>with threads where the subject is changed mid-thread.
>
>Brian
>

Thanks Brian, for the clarification. Does this imply that if one is e.g. on
the 
digest version of the mailinglist (as I am, and would like to stay that way), 
that this confusion will be inevitable when one replies to a message or is
there 
a work around? (Actually I'm in fact responding to your reply from the
archive 
since the digest version with your reply has not yet arrived.) 
Would it not be convenient if the archive and mailinglist present a line 
one could copy and paste as the first line of a reply so that threading info 
would be correctly preserved? (Should make it independent of any rogue 
e-mail clients as well.)

(Btw <http://sourceware.org/ml/cygwin/> is apparently a different -- may be 
more proper(?) -- name to refer to the location of the Cygwin archive
(currently 
at IP 12.107.209.250).)

		Arend-Jan Westhoff. 

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