David Baron wrote: > > Replying from the digest breaks threads. I eschew KDE 4, so I don't know > > about KMail in KDE4, but KDE3 KMail does not break threads. > > I do not understand the difference. If I hit reply, so I get the > title of the digest which I replace with the desired re: .... Should > not this be OK.
It is not okay because you have not set In-Reply-To nor References properly. That breaks threading. > Or is there some header or marker I should be hitting as well? The inability of people to deal with digest messages these days is the main reason I think digests should be removed as a mailing list option. Since so few people understand how email works it means that the majority of digest users do things that cause problems. I know it isn't malicious. But it causes problems just the same. We should stop offering the option of digest problems. In the old days of UUCP mail a digest was useful to bundle a bunch of mail up into one phone call. In the old days in the mid 1980's one would receive a message digest for a bundle of messages from the mailing list for the entire day all in one phone call rather than individually all throughout the day in possibly several hundred phone calls. It was more efficient and didn't tie up the phone long as long. IMNHO if you don't have a POTS phone line UUCP connection then you don't need digests. :-) Of course if you are still using a POTS phone line and UUCP then a tip-of-the-hat to you for keeping such history alive and running! In order to read a digest (or at least to reply to a message within it) one would "burst" the digest open into individual messages. Or "undigestify" it. This splits the single digest into the same individual messages that we all normally see. It allows your mailer to thread messages into discussion threads. Then reply to the individual message normally. I used a variety of mailers back then and I don't recall which ones handled digests nicely and which did not. Some possibilities were Elm, Emacs GNUS or Emacs RMAIL, and other specialized scripts for dealing with digests. These days digests are so rarely used that most mailers do not include the commands needed to burst the digest open into individual messages anymore. The user base for such a feature would be extremely small. I see it as basically dead technology now. The digest itself will include the Message-Id of each message. When burst apart and replied to individually your mailer will set the In-Reply-To properly to preserve threading. Unfortunately the Debian list digests do not include any References header and so will breaking threading if there are previous missing messages but that is minor. To summarize the above, if you are subscribed to the digest then you should burst it apart into individual messages before replying. Then reply to the individual message. If you understand mail headers and are doing all of that work manually that is okay too. But if you are not doing anything like that then you are causing trouble for all of the rest of us trying to make sense of your replies. Bob
signature.asc
Description: Digital signature
