[Mailman-Developers] Parsing and Rendering rfc8222

[Mark Sapiro]

Brad Knowles wrote:

>Ethan said:
>
>> I plan on using [2] to generate mbox thread indexes for rapid navigation
>> of lists. Any suggestions for more robust variants would be welcome;
>> feedback on how to handle threading for message-id-less messages would
>> also be welcome.
>
>All messages should have message-ids -- this is one of the most basic
>requirements of the Internet e-mail related RFCs.  If nothing else, the
>local MTA on the Mailman server should have provided a message-id.

I interpreted Ethan's concern to be messages that lack References: and
In-Reply-To: rather than a Message-ID: per se. Also, generating a
Message-ID: at archiving time does no good (at least in the absence of
an archive interface to allow replying to an archive post) because
it's too late to get that id into References: and/or In-Reply-To: of
email replies.

Also there is a related issue if A posts, B replies, A replies off list
to B, and B replies on list. If threading relies solely on References:
or In-Reply-To:, and either A's or B's MUA generates only In-Reply-To,
this thread is broken at the 'missing' post. I don't have any really
good suggestions for alternative threading algorithms however. I think
there was something on this not too long ago on mailman-users or maybe
mailman-developers - I looked and found what I think I remember. The
relevant post is at
<http://mail.python.org/pipermail/mailman-developers/2005-January/017660.html>
and points to a description of an algorithm at
<http://www.jwz.org/doc/threading.html>.

-- 
Mark Sapiro <msapiro at value.net>       The highway is for gamblers,
San Francisco Bay Area, California    better use your sense - B. Dylan