Viewing answers to one's nntp posts in Thunderbird

Cameron Simpson cs at zip.com.au
Wed Oct 7 01:09:28 UTC 2009


On 07Oct2009 00:28, gilpel at altern.org <gilpel at altern.org> wrote:
| Cameron Simpson wrote:
| > On 06Oct2009 08:42, gilpel at altern.org <gilpel at altern.org> wrote: | > On
| > | There is no mention of who the poster is. So, the newsreader would
| > | have to check every message to see who posted it. Lots of work!
| >
| > Um, if you're after replies to your own messages it is only necessary to
| > note the message-ids of your own messages and look for them in the
| > References: header.
| 
| It makes sense. It would then even be possible to specify how "deep"
| you're willing to go. For instance, if somebody is replying to somebody
| who is replying, etc. to somebody who's replying to your message, you
| might not be interested.

Yes.

| If you see any way of implementing this in Thunderbird with a very common
| server name like aioe or motzarella, I'm interested.

I suspect this isn't feasible with Thunderbird alone (unless it has
funkiness of which I'm not aware - I'm not a TBird user).

Measuring indirectness is tricky with most mail filter rules; you need
to see your message-id specificly and then count ids past that. For a
fixed limit (eg "more than 3 replies beyond mine") that's easy enough
with a regexp, _provided_ you can embed your post's message-id in it.
That means a rule per post, or a humungous rule with all your
message-ids. Nasty. And of course the rule needs to be constantly
updated...

So the only efficient approach needs intergrating into your mail/news
system, which for you probably means entirely within TBird.

| > I also saw that the References field is not always present. So maybe |
| Cameron Simpson could explain us how "A quick '/~P~Q'" manages to do
| the trick.
| 
| What does '/~P~Q' stand for in Mutt?

>From "man muttrc":

  ~P           message is from you (consults $alternates)
  ~Q           messages which have been replied to

so the above is a search for messages from me which have been replied to
(there's an implied "AND" between the conditions). And the replies are
then very easy to see, being adjacent.

If does mean you need to keep your own messages in the folder where the
discussion is taking place, but then I do that anyway. (And I also have
mutt configured to collapse threads where all the messages are "read",
so such threads consume only one line of display. Example:

  05Oct2009 01:07 Patrick Welche  N ┌─>
  29Sep2009 03:17 Patrick Welche  N ssl trouble
  02Oct2009 22:20 Joost Kremers   - (5) Regexps suddenly case-sensitive?
  01Oct2009 22:05 Beifus Kobi-BKB - Portable Email Client
  30Sep2009 15:59 Andrey Zhidenko - (3) Send message to address list, located in file
  30Sep2009 08:54 Gary Johnson    - Error in mutt man page?
  29Sep2009 11:40 Charlie Kester  N               ┌─>
  29Sep2009 11:30 Charlie Kester  N             ┌─>
  29Sep2009 07:03 James Michael F N           ┌─>
  29Sep2009 06:14 Charlie Kester  N         ┌─>
  27Sep2009 17:15 James Michael F N       ┌─>
  27Sep2009 17:08 James Michael F N       ├─>
  27Sep2009 16:36 bill lam        N       ├─>
  27Sep2009 16:20 Coeus Wang      N     ┌─>
  29Sep2009 00:39 Gary Johnson    N     │     ┌─>
  29Sep2009 07:59 Coeus Wang      N     │   ┌─>
  27Sep2009 17:29 James Michael F N     │ ┌─>
  27Sep2009 17:40 bill lam        N     │ ├─>
  27Sep2009 17:13 Gary Johnson    N     ├─>
  27Sep2009 15:27 James Michael F N   ┌─>
  27Sep2009 14:36 bill lam        N ┌─>
  27Sep2009 01:58 Coeus Wang      - How to highlight a mail which sent to me ONLY?

Those (3) and (5) lines near the top are collapsed "read" threads
with 3 and 5 messages respectively.
There is colouring too, indicating what's read/unread/from-me/flagged.
I read email backwards to avoid missing replies (specificly, to avoid
replying early to a thread where someone else has already made whatever
point I had in mind).

| > I take the position that if the References field is not present in a
| > usenet article, it is not a followup.
| 
| I thought that Outlook didn't have this field but I rechecked ad can't
| find any. My error, I suppose.

I'd expect Outlook to get this stuff right these days.

Cheers,
-- 
Cameron Simpson <cs at zip.com.au> DoD#743
http://www.cskk.ezoshosting.com/cs/

I will be a speed bump on the information super-highway.
        - jvogel at math.rutgers.edu (jeff vogel)




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