Re: Bug tracker breaks rmail-next-same-subject

[Don Armstrong]

On Fri, 12 Dec 2008, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> From: Don Armstrong <address@hidden>

> > In the absence of them, you can try to track threads using
> > subject, but that's never the first option.
> 
> I don't want to memorize two different ways of following a subject. 

So follow threads instead of subjects. I don't use Rmail, so I can't
tell you how to get it to do that. Try trmail or perhaps someone else
knows. I use mutt which handles this all perfectly.

> As long as there are loads of broken MUAs, using the Subject line
> will always be more reliable than references. Until now.

No, it's always less reliable. You can use the Subject: as a fallback
when you don't have References: or In-Reply-To:, but Subject: doesn't
tell you which message a message is in response to, nor how to elide a
subthread, or any of a huge number of things you can do with threads
that aren't possible when you "group" by subject.

> Btw, the bug tracker seems to keep only one reference in
> References:, which doesn't help too much to follow a thread by that.

It works perfectly fine if your MUA is sane.

> > If you want to follow a thread, References: and In-Reply-To: are
> > the way to do that; Subject: may approximate it, but it's never as
> > accurate.
> 
> What other use cases will break it? Until now, I didn't see any.

Any time someone changes the subject, or uses a method of quoting that
doesn't keep it intact.
 

Don Armstrong

-- 
The beauty of the DRUNKENNESS subprogram was that you could move your
intoxication level up and down at will, instead of being caught on a
relentless down escalator to bargain basement philosophy and the
parking garage.
 -- Rudy von Bitter _Software_ p124

http://www.donarmstrong.com              http://rzlab.ucr.edu