Re: [Nmh-workers] Format function to create wrapped header lines?

[Paul Fox]

robert wrote:
 > FWIW, when I see a draft with References that is getting a bit long,
 > I just (manually) delete all the stuff in the middle) - that is, leave
 > in the oldest (one or two) and the most recent (one or two) and delete
 > everything in between - no-one has ever complained about my messages
 > breaking any threading schemes (in fact, does anyone actually use
 > References for that, rather than just In-Reply-To and Subject ?)

in fact, they do.  i think mutt is particularly good at doing
threading that way, and in my experience those users are particularly
vocal about how everyone else is doing it wrong. :-)  some mailing
list archives use References for threading as well -- in my opinion
they usually make the archive harder, not easier, to read.

 > I did that here (though there weren't really enogh refs to require it, and
 > I would not normally have bothered.)
 > 
 > Sometimes I even add entries to References, when I am reply to one message
 > and quote from another that is not in the current thread.  No-one seems
 > to object to that either.

i guess i'd ask a similar situation to yours:  does anyone actually use
References to track mail in the way you're suggesting?

 > ....
 > ps: my assumption about the way that References ought to be used, in a
 > really good MUA mail reader (particularly a GUI reader) is to generate a
 > menu of related messages for the user to go read - once at one of those,
 > the user can go forward/backward in the thread to find others that weren't in
 > the References of the original message.   Ideally, when sending a message
 > the thread head, most recent (same as in-reply to) and any messages that
 > contain content actually referred to in the message would be in References,
 > and nothing else .. but getting that right (even manually) is HARD.

it's the going forward/backward that always seems to be broken, since
the References headers form a tree, not a linear sequence.

(and all of this is, of course, entirely unrelated to whether the
header line should be wrapped or not.)

paul
=----------------------
 paul fox, address@hidden (arlington, ma, where it's 56.5 degrees)