Re: st: Replying if in digest mode

[Phil Schumm <pschumm@uchicago.edu>]

On Aug 2, 2013, at 5:20 PM, mcross@exemail.com.au wrote:
> Filtering Statalist messages into a separate folder is a great idea, but sorting the threads by date is still difficult since the titles of the threads keep changing (e.g. below). I find it easier to read the threads from the oldest posting to the newest for each topic - so I wish sorting was easier.
> 
> Mike.
> 
> RE: st: RE: Line break in a character string for a ...
> Re: st: Line break in a character string for a bar ...
> Re: st: RE: Line break in a character string for a ...
> st: RE: Line break in a character string for a bar ...


Threading should (in principle) be based on the Message-ID, In-Reply-To and References headers -- not the subject line (though some mailers have the option to fall back on the subject line if the other headers are unavailable).  In my experience, this works well with Statalist, except when people hit Reply and then change the topic, or try to jump into a thread without replying to an existing message from the thread (these happen relatively infrequently).  Thus, you should (in principle) be able to scroll through a list of threads (in chronological order of each thread's most recent post), and, expand a thread to get a list of the posts in that thread in order of datetime.  To get this in Thunderbird, for example, you use View -> Sort By -> Threaded (or use the Conversations Add-On for even greater Gmail-like flexibility), in Apple Mail use View -> Organize by Conversation, and in Gmail use Conversation View.  Unfortunately I have no experience with Outlook, but when I last !
 checked several years ago, it was still threading messages by Subject header only.  Perhaps someone else knows if they have updated their threading functionality.


-- Phil


*
*   For searches and help try:
*   http://www.stata.com/help.cgi?search
*   http://www.stata.com/support/faqs/resources/statalist-faq/
*   http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/