Re: [notmuch] Threading

Subject: Re: [notmuch] Threading

Date: Fri, 8 Jan 2010 16:12:38 +1300

To: notmuch

Cc:

From: martin f krafft


also sprach Carl Worth <cworth@cworth.org> [2009.12.11.0639 +1300]:
> On Wed, 9 Dec 2009 16:21:34 -0700, Mark Anderson <markr.anderson@amd.com> wrote:
> > I was wondering if there's a way in notmuch to group un-associated
> > threads into a single thread.
> 
> There's certainly nothing like that in notmuch currently.
> 
> Sup had user-level functionality in the interface for stitching
> messages into a single thread, and I definitely think that that
> doesn't make any sense.

Why doesn't it make sense? Mutt does it too, and stitching means
actually (re)writing In-Reply-To and References headers.

I think this is one of the most useful "productivity features" in
mutt.

I also think that threading is a preference thing. As Carl said in
a later message:

> Just this morning I sent a mail to the notmuch list, which was
> a reply, (and legitimately so), but also potentially of interest
> to everyone on the list, (since it was regarding a bug fix
> unrelated to the original topic of the thread I was replying to).
> 
> So I was stuck on whether I should break the thread or not, (at
> the sending end). I guess I could have just sent a quick "this is
> pushed" reply, and independently composed a separate message
> telling people about the fix.
> 
> I ended up keeping the threading intact in that case, (which
> I think is right).

I often thread forwarded messages (and their followups) with the
thread because all my information management currently is
thread-oriented.

I think being able to freely break and tie threads in a trivial way
is a definite plus!

> But I still have a hard time justifying user operations to
> manipulate threading. The whole point of threading is to make it
> faster to process and read messages. But manual operations like
> joining and splitting threads seem like the user just doing more
> work, and that *after* having read the messages. So that seems
> mostly backwards to me.

Reading is one thing. Information storage and organisation is
another. After a message is delivered (and read) to my mailbox, it's
really mine and I can (and should be able) to affix it and integrate
it into my organisational scheme any way I want, don't you think?

-- 
martin | http://madduck.net/ | http://two.sentenc.es/
 
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