[Users] Assign out-of-thread mail to a thread

[H.Merijn Brand]

On Mon, 6 Jun 2016 08:30:20 +0200, "Paul Rolland (ポール・ロラン)"
<rol at witbe.net> wrote:

> Hello,
> 
> On Sun, 5 Jun 2016 22:40:41 +0200
> Patrick Boettcher <patrick.boettcher at posteo.de> wrote:
> 
> > Some people's mailers seem to break thread-replies. It
> > happens all the time that replies are not assigned to their
> > thread-hierarchy. 
> > 
> > Would it be possible to add an option or functionality to manually
> > re-assign them to their thread - ideally by drag and drop? 
> > 
> > It would be really useful for, e.g, archiving reasons.
> > 
> > Or is there something which already exists?  
> 
> Have you tried the following configuration:
>  - View > Thread View: selected
>  - View > Sort > By thread date: selected
>  - View > Sort > Attract by Subject: selected

Of course :)

But that still leaves a (lot of) mail that falls outside of the thread
because the mail client used by the sender doesn't know how to follow
the RFC's for correctly sending a reply.

Some history:

On Mon, 9 May 2005 17:37:59 +0200, "H.Merijn Brand" <h.m.brand at xs4all.nl> wrote:

> Some people just can't use mail clients. There's just no way teaching them.
> Some people do it right, and some people use Internet Mail Service and just
> don't manage to get threading right.
> 
> I also got this in Becky, where someone posts message A, you reply with
> message B, and the poster of message A replies to B with C, but C get
> threaded with A as parent. Very annoying if you want to safe it in the right
> place (with B as parent) if the thread turns out to be a large one with a lot
> of different branches
> 
> In becky I was able to drag a message to another message (only when in thread-
> view mode), at which point Becky would ask me to confirm to force re-thread
> message C to be hooked to B being it's new parent.
> 
> Would such a thing be possible in SC?

That one did not get a single reply

On Tue, 16 Jan 2007 21:51:30 +0100, "H.Merijn Brand" <h.m.brand at xs4all.nl> wrote:

> On Tue, 16 Jan 2007 20:00:34 +0000, Paul <claws at thewildbeast.co.uk> wrote:
> 
> > On Tue, 16 Jan 2007 19:32:40 +0000
> > John G Walker <johngwalker at tiscali.co.uk> wrote: 
> >   
> > > A question on this: how does claws-mail decide what thread a specific
> > > email message belongs to? This case implied that it uses the subject
> > > line, but this does not accord with my experience in other cases, when
> > > a change of subject does not affect threading,  
> > 
> > It uses the In-Reply-To and References headers.
> > 
> > Some automated mailers, (scripts, etc), and some bad MUAs don't
> > properly added these headers, so we have the option to thread
> > using Subject in addition to those header, which is further controlled
> > by the hidden option thread_by_subject_max_age, a value in days.  
> 
> Which reminds me of a long-missed feature Becky! was offering:
> Manual re-threading. One could drag mis-threaded posts to a new
> parent message, and whatever header Becky used was changed or
> added so the new position was remembered..
> 
> Certainly with some MUA's we won't name, mis-threaded messages
> are quite common.
> 
> > In the Compose window you can use '/Options/Remove references' if
> > you 'resourcefully' clicked reply on a message to get the correct To
> > address but are really starting a new thread.   
> 
> And that was a right-click option: break thread

That one did not get a reply either

On Wed, 31 Jan 2007 16:12:37 +0100, "H.Merijn Brand" <h.m.brand at xs4all.nl> wrote:

> Is there a hook available that is triggered if one message is dropped
> on another message?
> 
> What I want (to achieve) is to alter the dropped message to add or
> replace the In-Reply-To: header to contain the Message-ID: of the
> message the message is dropped on, optionally changing the Subject:
> on the fly to prepend Re: if needed.
> 
> This seems to me a very easy way to implement a drag-and-drop thread
> repair tool.

Answered by Colin:

On Wed, 31 Jan 2007 19:19:12 +0100, Colin Leroy <colin at colino.net> wrote:

> > Is there a hook available that is triggered if one message is dropped
> > on another message?  
> 
> nope, there isn't.

On Sun, 4 Mar 2007 17:13:45 +0200, Axel Palm <axelpalm at mail.ee> wrote:

> am suggesting another useful feature namely (like a feature in mutt)
> unlinking messages from thread that someone has stold (by applyng
> reply button, but actually starting his own thread).
> 
> It would be also useful to link together into threads mails that
> are related content, but are not threaded. For example:
> you had mail conversation with boss of the business partner and
> he ordered his secretary to mail you some documents. I would
> like to link boss'es and secretary's e-mails together. 

A total of 8 replies in that thread

On Thu, 13 Nov 2014 08:58:57 +0100, "H.Merijn Brand" <h.m.brand at xs4all.nl> wrote:

> I'd like to create a plug-in that enables me to "correct" threads.
> 
> Even in 2014, almost 2015, there are numerous people that have no idea
> how mail works, and they reply in ways that completely ruin the normal
> flow of a discussion.  If they do it on purpose, or if it is the fault
> of their MC of choice I don't know, but I quite often want to keep the
> mail, but IN THE RIGHT SPOT in the discussion.
> 
> I envision a plug-in that enables drag-and-drop a mail on another mail
> in the list-view that modifies (or adds) the In-Reply-To header in the
> dragged mail to the Message-Id in the dropped-on mail.
> 
> This has been a feature I used quite often in Becky!, a MC on Windows.
> 
> I have done some coding in CM,  but I have no idea yet how above could
> be achieved yet. Any guidance would be appreciated.
> 
> If someone else likes the idea and implements that him/herself, I will
> not be offended :)

Probably the most interesting thread to read with a total of 10 replies

> Best,
> Paul

-- 
H.Merijn Brand  http://tux.nl   Perl Monger  http://amsterdam.pm.org/
using perl5.00307 .. 5.23   porting perl5 on HP-UX, AIX, and openSUSE
http://mirrors.develooper.com/hpux/        http://www.test-smoke.org/
http://qa.perl.org   http://www.goldmark.org/jeff/stupid-disclaimers/
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