[offtopic] Gmail "conversations" splitting up from time to time

[offtopic] Gmail "conversations" splitting up from time to time

[Philippe Vaucher]

Hello,

I noticed that my Gmail threads started to be all split up.

I traced this to some clients change the subject line to "RE: foo"
instead of "Re: foo" like this other clients.

Drew, I think in all my cases it comes from your client :-/ Is there
something you can do to fix this? Or GMail users, do you know of a
fix?

This is visible on
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2020-05/threads.html,
we see that Drew's messages are with "RE" but the mailing list
software is not as broken as Gmail.

This is annoying because it's then hard to follow a thread properly.

Re: [offtopic] Gmail "conversations" splitting up from time to time

[Yuri Khan]

On Wed, 6 May 2020 at 03:16, Philippe Vaucher
<philippe.vaucher@gmail.com> wrote:

> I noticed that my Gmail threads started to be all split up.
>
> I traced this to some clients change the subject line to "RE: foo"
> instead of "Re: foo" like this other clients.
>
> Drew, I think in all my cases it comes from your client :-/ Is there
> something you can do to fix this? Or GMail users, do you know of a
> fix?

I am on Gmail, and I see threads broken after every 100 messages. That
Drew’s message is first in the continuation threads may or may not be
a coincidence.

RE: [offtopic] Gmail "conversations" splitting up from time to time

[Drew Adams]

> Drew, I think in all my cases it comes from your client :-/ Is there
> something you can do to fix this? 

Not that I know of.  I'm using the Outlook client
provided by my employer, and my employer's mail server.

> we see that Drew's messages are with "RE" but the mailing list
> software is not as broken as Gmail.

I don't understand what you're saying, there.

Yes, I see that my replies have "RE:", not "Re:".
I don't know if that's a problem, and anyway I
don't see a way to change it.

> This is annoying because it's then hard to follow a thread properly.

I don't understand that part either.

Re: [offtopic] Gmail "conversations" splitting up from time to time

[Philippe Vaucher]

> > This is annoying because it's then hard to follow a thread properly.
>
> I don't understand that part either.

Because the threads in my Email client get split into two or three
conversations, it then becomes really hard to remember in which one X
said Y and you have to open all of them.

Re: [offtopic] Gmail "conversations" splitting up from time to time

[Andreas Schwab]

On Mai 05 2020, Philippe Vaucher wrote:

> I noticed that my Gmail threads started to be all split up.
>
> I traced this to some clients change the subject line to "RE: foo"
> instead of "Re: foo" like this other clients.

Threads are defined by In-Reply-To and References headers, not by
Subject.

Andreas.

-- 
Andreas Schwab, schwab@linux-m68k.org
GPG Key fingerprint = 7578 EB47 D4E5 4D69 2510  2552 DF73 E780 A9DA AEC1
"And now for something completely different."

Re: [offtopic] Gmail "conversations" splitting up from time to time

[tomas]

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On Tue, May 05, 2020 at 11:02:46PM +0200, Andreas Schwab wrote:
> On Mai 05 2020, Philippe Vaucher wrote:
> 
> > I noticed that my Gmail threads started to be all split up.
> >
> > I traced this to some clients change the subject line to "RE: foo"
> > instead of "Re: foo" like this other clients.
> 
> Threads are defined by In-Reply-To and References headers, not by
> Subject.

Sometimes. Ideally. Some MUAs fudge it whenever the above are missing.
Some MUAs totally b0rk it :-)

Cheers
-- t 

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Re: [offtopic] Gmail "conversations" splitting up from time to time

[Richard Copley]

On Tue, 5 May 2020 at 22:04, Andreas Schwab <schwab@linux-m68k.org> wrote:
>
> On Mai 05 2020, Philippe Vaucher wrote:
>
> > I noticed that my Gmail threads started to be all split up.
> >
> > I traced this to some clients change the subject line to "RE: foo"
> > instead of "Re: foo" like this other clients.
>
> Threads are defined by In-Reply-To and References headers, not by
> Subject.

For instance, Drew's reply
<0c88192c-3c33-46ed-95cb-b4c6928016e3@default> to Eli's message
<83imhbojx6.fsf@gnu.org> has "In-Reply-To:
<<83imhbojx6.fsf@gnu.org>>". It should be "In-Reply-To:
<83imhbojx6.fsf@gnu.org>". The References header is similarly
corrupted. I have no suggestion about why this is happening. Some of
Drew's replies are affected and some are not.

Re: [offtopic] Gmail "conversations" splitting up from time to time

[Stefan Kangas]

Andreas Schwab <schwab@linux-m68k.org> writes:

>> I noticed that my Gmail threads started to be all split up.
>
> Threads are defined by In-Reply-To and References headers, not by
> Subject.

Unfortunately no one has explained this to the GMail developers.

Best regards,
Stefan Kangas

Re: [offtopic] Gmail "conversations" splitting up from time to time

[Richard Copley]

On Tue, 5 May 2020 at 22:15, Stefan Kangas <stefankangas@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Andreas Schwab <schwab@linux-m68k.org> writes:
>
> >> I noticed that my Gmail threads started to be all split up.
> >
> > Threads are defined by In-Reply-To and References headers, not by
> > Subject.
>
> Unfortunately no one has explained this to the GMail developers.

It mostly seems to work fine. Bugs can creep in here and there, but I
don't think we can pin this one on Google Mail.
In the case of the reply from Drew I mentioned earlier, the copy
received by the GNU list server has the same mangled message-id. It
can be seen at <https://lists.gnu.org/archive/mbox/emacs-devel/2020-05>.

In an ideal world, Drew's organisation's IT department might like to
take it up with Microsoft.