On Sun, 22 Jun 2003 01:17:27 GMT, Walt Reed <exim@???> wrote:
> Um, both news readers and MUA's use the Message-ID and References
> header lines in threading code. The subject is not used except by
> broken clients. Proper clients don't care what the subject line is and
> preserve threading based on "References". Some really broken clients
> don't preserve "References" during replies. If you are using a client
> that does not preserve or honor "References", please upgrade to
> something better.
Dear Walt
Thanks for your info. I have, as yet, never gone into the arcane details
of message threading (haven't needed to!) as it has not been an issue
for me. So, interest aroused, I researched this and quickly confirmed
that you are correct - threading is based on the Message-ID and
References headers. Sorry for any misleading statements re: subjects.
So - wanting to find out what was happening I checked the threading of
the messages in question in GNU Xemacs, which I also use, and found that
it was threading the messages exactly the same as my Xnews client. I
guess people trust Xemacs as a news reader :-)
Then I checked all the headers of the messages in question - it seems
that Tony (innocently) has been using multiple mail clients and servers
to post messages (same original subject twice) and replies to posts which
has completely stuffed things up.
1) First post by Tony by email:
Message-ID: <20030620104531.43298.qmail@???>
2) Second post by Tony by email, with same subject, which started a new
"thread":
Message-ID: <200306201056.h5KAufv13760@???>
3) My reply to his *second* post:
Message-ID: <Xns93A0E0C42BBE1psozinnl@80.91.224.249> (the gmane server)
References: <200306201056.h5KAufv13760@???>
4) Third post by Tony by email in reply to my reply to his second post
(it does not appear refer to any previous messages and it came from
different source, it started *yet another* new thread):
Message-ID: <A9FE1E5CE8EF094495F317279BBA8EEA8283@???>
5) My reply to third post by Tony:
Message-ID: <Xns93A1AAE58B77psozinnl@80.91.224.249>
References: <A9FE1E5CE8EF094495F317279BBA8EEA8283@???>
6) My second reply to third post by Tony:
Message-ID: <Xns93A1C32B87C03psozinnl@80.91.224.249>
References: <A9FE1E5CE8EF094495F317279BBA8EEA8283@???>
<Xns93A1AAE58B77psozinnl@80.91.224.249>
7) Your reply to me - were you using mail client?
Message-ID: <20030622011727.GA28705@???>
References: <A9FE1E5CE8EF094495F317279BBA8EEA8283@???>
<Xns93A1AAE58B77psozinnl@80.91.224.249> <Xns93A1C32B87C03psozinnl@
80.91.224.249>
So the Xnews news reader client was working fine.
Thanks for pointer Walt, glad we were able to sort this out. I think the
lesson here is that:
***********************************************************************
People posting to the list via a mail client need to be careful to use
the same mail client (and server?) when posting and following up messages
and to use a mail client which supports referring to previous messages.
***********************************************************************
This problem could possibly also affect how the archive threads
messages?? Posting via a decent news client will not have any problem as
news readers are setup to follow threads.
Once again I would, IMHO, recommend the Gmane news server it does a good
job and this sort of issue would (should) not occur.
PS
