George at Clug wrote: > I do not fully understand "email threading", even after reading up on it. I > don't use email threading, and I do not think my email client does either. > Thanks for pointing the matter of "email threading" out to me. This will be > some homework for me.
email threading is simple and wonderful. It enables each mail client to put every mail message into a thread, which trivially is a single message, with a Message-ID header and a Date header. Any replies to that message should have their own Message-ID, Date and a References (or In-Reply-To) header which contains one or more other Message-IDs, which this message is in response to. The end result is that after several exchanges, any participant can look at the thread and see who responded to whom, and who responded to that, without confusion as to whether a later message is in response to participant A or B. The complete algorithm is here: https://www.jwz.org/doc/threading.html and is implemented in every good email client: there are no good email clients which don't use it. It's a prerequisite to being considered "good". > [email protected] sure is getting busy, I am getting more emails > coming in than I have time to read. I will try to keep my emails to a > minimum. Another requirement for a good email client is the ability to automatically filter incoming messages, before they have been read, to specific mailboxes or folders, and letting the user know that there is new mail there. (There is always new mail.) -dsr-
