I'm sorry I didn't include more detail at first; just after I hit send, I thought it probably would have been helpful to tell you that I'm subscribed to two lists: lwip-devel and lwip-users
I'm also running Outlook 2013 for Windows, as that's our mail client here at work. (Which makes it hard to reply inline to your comments when in "plain text mode".)
What I just saw was that the digest contains attachments of all the messages back and forth. I can open one of those and then reply that way from Outlook. That will actually work just fine. That digest with the attachments came so much later than other digests I got that same day for the same list (but without individual message attachments, which were probably blocked by our spam filter) that I didn't think I was setup correctly.
That said, the reason I like digest, instead of individual E-mail, is because I don't care about most of the traffic back and forth. But I totally get what you're saying about it being legacy and causing problems!
Ideally, if it were possible (for lwip-users, anyway), I'd like to subscribe just to threads that I've created or replied to. Most of the rest is just curiosity so I can keep current on things; but I don't want my Inbox filled up with ancillary bulk. (The devel list I only want digested because I will probably rarely or never reply to a particular thread, but I'd like to know what's going on so I can decide if I want a new version or not.)
Is there a way to subscribe to just individual threads instead of the whole list?
Again, thank you for your very quick reply. I think I am up and running now and look forward to productive discussion on the relevant lists!
-----Original Message-----
From: Bob Proulx [mailto:address@hidden
Sent: Tuesday, 10 May 2016 03:10
To: Greg Smith <address@hidden>
Cc: address@hidden
Subject: Re: Replying to a Thread
Hello Greg,
Greg Smith wrote:
> I'm fairly new to these mailing lists. I've submitted a thread via
> E-mailing directly to the list. There have been replies to the thread
> and I would like to reply myself, but I do not know how.
> When I click the 'reply' button on the webpage for a thread, it opens
> my mail application with a blank E-mail sent directly to the person
> who wrote the reply I'm looking at.
The GNU mail archives are really intended only as an archive. It isn't a full mail interface.
> Instead, I'd like to reply back to the thread with history so that I
> can reply to specific parts. How do I do that?
The mailing lists are generally intended to be particated in by subscribing to them and reading the email in your normal email reader.
Then just following up to messages received there.
If you don't want to subscribe then you might want a better web email browser. For that you might find Gmane to be a more complete interaction. Not all mailing lists are archived at Gmane but most are.
Type in the name of the mailing list there. After searching there and finding the desired mailing list select the frames and threads interface to view it.
On the web, [using frames and threads].
Gmane is a full featured web email interface to a large selection of mailing lists. Many people use it to read mailing lists without being subscribed to them.
Out of curiousity what mailing list are you participating in?
> In my main mail client, I only see daily digests; I don't get
> individual messages. If that matters:
I personally hate the digests. They were designed to reduce the number and duration of phone calls during the UUCP phone modem networking days. Instead of having dozens of phone calls one for each message and each phone dialing needing to sync up with the remote end a daily digest would produce on phone call daily. This reduced long distance phone charges.
To use a digest one needs to "burst" the digest apart before reading and replying to one of the individual messages. Mail readers designed to work with digests have a digest burst action available.
Since these days almost no one knows how or had the capability to handle digests properly they tend to cause people trouble. And that gets reflected in people following up to the mailing list using the digest subject line instead of the individual message subject line.
Additonally Mailman has a variety of bugs associated with digests.
And so I really hate digests these days. I wish Mailman did not make that option available.
> 1) Do I need to change my options to get individual messages
> instead of digests?
Yes! These days there is no reason for a daily digest anymore.
> 2) How can I reply to threads for which I did not get
> individual messages? (From the web interface? With a
> specially crafted E-mail?)
Normally one "bursts" the digest apart into individual messages and then reads and replies to the individual messages normally. If your mailer does not do this then you should subscribe to the normal feed and not the digest feed.
Bob
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