[SLUG] Mailing list use

[Al Girling]

On Sun, Nov 28, 2004 at 07:08:44PM GMT, Stephen O'Neill wrote:
> 
> Do threading clients use the subject line, or a field in the mail
> headers? I can't see anything in the mail headers, so presume they use
> the subject?

My understanding of how this works comes from my use of Mutt.  How this
all works with other MUA's I'll leave for others to say as you quickly
descend into a whole standards issue.

>From the Mutt manual;

"When replying to messages, if you remove the In-Reply-To: field from
the header field, Mutt will not generate a References: field, which
allows you to create a new message thread."


Although in practice I could only break the thread completely when I
removed the Message-Id: header as well.

> My point is, I may sometimes hit the 'reply' button for convenience, but
> with the intention of clearing the subject line before sending. Is this
> adequate to avoid such wonderful internet-ified tongue lashings?

As you can see hitting 'reply' becomes far from convenient when you need
to edit several header lines.  I'd stick with creating a new message.  I
guess the convenience part is not having to enter a To: address.  I
don't know about Evolution or Thunderbird (the two MUA's you appear to
use), but I'm sure there will be some sort of aliasing of e-mail
addresses available.  Using Mutt I type slug in the To: field and it
expands to the full address for the LUG.  I'd be very surprised if you
couldn't do something similar.

Regarding the tongue lashing, well, further transgressions will involve
a LUG outing to Sea World where the offender will be pelted with fish
before being thrown to the Penguins! :p

Toodle pip,

Al

-- 
Al Girling
Linux User: #290080            <http://counter.li.org>
Scarborough Linux User Group   <http://www.scarborough.lug.org.uk>