Re: Bug tracker breaks rmail-next-same-subject

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> Date: Fri, 12 Dec 2008 15:57:51 -0800
> From: Don Armstrong <don@donarmstrong.com>
> 
> So follow threads instead of subjects. I don't use Rmail, so I can't
> tell you how to get it to do that.

There is no such functionality in Rmail, so the only way is to code
it first.

> > As long as there are loads of broken MUAs, using the Subject line
> > will always be more reliable than references. Until now.
> 
> No, it's always less reliable. You can use the Subject: as a fallback
> when you don't have References: or In-Reply-To:, but Subject: doesn't
> tell you which message a message is in response to, nor how to elide a
> subthread, or any of a huge number of things you can do with threads
> that aren't possible when you "group" by subject.

You are talking about treating email as news group discussions.  I
don't need to go that far; if I did, I'd probably switch to Gnus.

All I want is to find the messages related to a certain subject.  I
don't care much to build a tree-like structure out of them, because
the body of the messages has that information, and that is normally
enough for my needs.

> > > If you want to follow a thread, References: and In-Reply-To: are
> > > the way to do that; Subject: may approximate it, but it's never as
> > > accurate.
> > 
> > What other use cases will break it? Until now, I didn't see any.
> 
> Any time someone changes the subject, or uses a method of quoting that
> doesn't keep it intact.

Well, I have yet to find such cases, then.

Anyway, we are repeating ourselves.  It is quite clear that you don't
see a problem in what the tracker does, while I do, because it
interferes with the way I'm used to read mail for many years.  I guess
we will have to agree to disagree on that.