[Users] Message-ID

[RW]

On Thu, 31 Jan 2013 20:40:05 -0500
Rich Pieri wrote:

> On Fri, 1 Feb 2013 01:25:36 +0000
> RW <rwmaillists at googlemail.com> wrote:
> 
> > How is that consistent with your statement that "Message-IDs are not
> > necessary for threading"? How do you identify the first message in a
> > thread without looking at its Message-ID header?
> 
> The first message of a thread will have no In-Reply-To or References
> headers. Children of this parent may have references to it in their
> In-Reply-To and References headers. This is not required by RFCs 822
> and 2822.


Ok, lets talk about USENET headers (which have long since been the de
facto standard for email threading anyway).

How do you identify the first mail in a  USENET thread without looking
at its Message-ID?

The answer is that you can't, and if can't be done in USENET how can it
possibly work in email.

> From this point on you really should look at JWZ's threading
> algorithm.

I'm guessing you haven't, or you would have long-since answered the
question.


On Thu, 31 Jan 2013 19:33:56 -0500
Rich Pieri wrote:

> BTW, Jamie Zawinski devised a fast, bullet-proof mail threading
> algorithm back in the mid 1990s. A descendent of that algorithm is in
> Evolution and Balsa if you want to take a look at it. So I stand by my
> statement that Message-IDs aren't required for thread coherency.

That would make sense if it were called "a bullet-proof mail threading
algorithm that doesn't use Message-ID". As it stands this statement is a
non sequitur.