[mythtv-users] Posts from digest subscribers

[Mark Perkins]

________________________________
From: Yeechang Lee <ylee at columbia.edu>
Sent: Monday, 18 May 2020 5:46 am
To: mythtv-users at mythtv.org
Subject: Re: [mythtv-users] Posts from digest subscribers


James Linder says:
> I don’t use, and don’t understand the detail of threaded mail.
>
> So a few lines summarizing what to do would be most appreciated, EG
> I always thought that keeping the reply intact maintained the
> thread.

Every message has a Message-ID: header line, normally hidden by one's mail client. It contains a special code guaranteed to uniquely identify that message. If a reply to another message, the message also has a References: and/or a In-Reply-To: header line, also normally hidden. Most mail clients correctly generate these header lines when replying to a message based on that message's Message-ID: header, and use the three header lines to connect the message to other, related messages. Even if the subject line changes, the hidden headers connect related messages together.[1]

A digest is a separate mail message with its own Message-ID: that is not connected to any other message, including the messages the digest compiles. When you reply to a digest, the reply contains a References: and/or In-Reply-To: header that does not contain data that allows other mail clients to connect the reply to previous messages in the real thread. Some mail clients do attempt to associate such orphan messages with others using subject lines as a backup method, but that's an inherently inaccurate and imperfect solution.

Please change your options to not receive a digest unless one a) has a mail client that can correctly burst digests into individual messages (what I do), or b) never plans to reply. If your issue with wanting to receive a digest is that the volume of traffic in mythtv-users is too high, set up an automated system in your mail client to group incoming mythtv-users messages together until you're ready to read them. Apple Mail calls this Smart Mailbox.

[1] This is the cause of the related but opposite issue, in which someone decides to post to mythtv-users or another mailing list on a new topic, not by creating a new message from scratch, but by replying to an existing one and changing the subject line. The hidden headers connect the message to the message it was a reply to and all the ones that message is connected to, confusing others.

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