Re: Rmail: new feature to deal with In-Reply-To and References headers

[rameiko87@posteo.net]

> AFAIU, you should already be able to do that in Emacs 29, by using the 
> new command rmail-summary-by-thread.  After creating that summary, you 
> can use the usual message movement commands to move between messages 
> belonging to a thread.

In fact it's not the case, because the order on the summary buffer 
centered on a given message does not correspond in general to the 
parents-descendants order of the thread containing that given message, 
as defined by moving up on the References header for that message.

>> Move to the previous message in the same thread as the current one 
>> (that is, the message whose Message-ID is the last entry of the 
>> References header, among messages in the Rmail file). Repeat argument 
>> goes back to the n-th last entry of the References header among 
>> messages in the Rmail file.

This feature is not implemented currently unless the parents vector is 
populated with the same order given by the References header. Someone 
remembers how the parents vector is recursively defined in rmailsum.el?

And still, going up on the chain requires regenerating the summary 
buffer by centering every time on the parent.

>> Move to the message which the current message is replying to (that is, 
>> the message whose Message-ID appears in the In-Reply-To header), error 
>> if not present on the Rmail file. Repeat argument iterates the command 
>> n-times, perhaps replacing the messages which it can't find in the 
>> Rmail file by their youngest parent.

This is not implemented currently.

>> Move to the first message of the thread (that is, the first entry of 
>> the References header). With argument n, move to message number n of 
>> the thread.
>> Move to the first message of the thread (as a separate command)
>> Move to the last message of the thread (that is, the last message 
>> whose References header includes the current Message-ID).

On 09.12.2023 16:49, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
>> Date: Sat, 09 Dec 2023 15:35:37 +0000
>> 
>> Rmail allows the user to move among messages by using the Subject
>> header, however the In-Reply-To and References headers provide more
>> accurate information about the email chain, and using them to move 
>> along
>> the conversation thread is certainly more reliable than relying on the
>> Subject header. How about implementing the following commands in 
>> Rmail:
> 
> AFAIU, you should already be able to do that in Emacs 29, by using the
> new command rmail-summary-by-thread.  After creating that summary, you
> can use the usual message movement commands to move between messages
> belonging to a thread.