Adobe Employee

Question

Does threading work for email notifications in your email client?

Forum|Forum|17 years ago
April 10, 2009
13 replies
6999 views

Hi everyone,

We're trying to get a pulse from the community on what email clients and platforms you guys are using, especially in the case where the threading of email subscriptions isn't working. I have heard that threads can be grouped in Entourage on a Mac.

Can anyone Mac/Entourange users confirm this?

Would appreciate everyone's input on what mail client/OS you are using and if threading works for you or not. I know for the majority of you it isn't working, and we're looking at ways this can be addressed.

Thanks!

Here's the first entry: I use Microsoft Outlook on Windows XP and my email notifications don't thread.

This topic has been closed for replies.

S

SD_A

Participant

It doesn't work in mutt via IMAP. Message headers need to conform to RFCs in order for this to work in ANY e-mail client. The subject shouldn't be that important; just use the IN REPLY TO headers properly. If it works in mutt then it should work in any e-mail client. In case you don't know; mutt is a *nix e-mail client. In my case I'm using via shell on a Linux server (Debian).

I've attached an image showing what it would like if the e-mail was threading properly.

J

Jochem van Dieten

Inspiring

SD_A wrote on 2009-04-11 15:19 :

The subject shouldn't be that important; just use the IN REPLY TO headers properly.

Does Mutt need In-Reply-To and References, or is either good?

Jochem

--

Jochem van Dieten

http://jochem.vandieten.net/

S

SD_A

Participant

jochemd wrote:
SD_A wrote on 2009-04-11 15:19 :
The subject shouldn't be that important; just use the IN REPLY TO headers properly.
Does Mutt need In-Reply-To and References, or is either good?
Jochem
--
Jochem van Dieten
http://jochem.vandieten.net/

Jochiem; Either should be good; It's pretty tolerant. In Reply-To is probably more important on true mailing lists managed by software such as Mailman. Thanks for your efforts !

J

Jochem van Dieten

Inspiring

I think there is some confusion here on what is to be considered

threading and what isn't. Since I may have been causing some of that

confusion by not being as exact as I could have been in my many rants

about the subject, allow me to attempt to clarify a bit.

First, lets start with a sequence of messages to define a topic (I am

trying to avoid the word thread here). Somebody starts a topic with

message A. The first reply to message A is message B. The second reply

to message A is message see. In flat view the topic will look like this:

A
B
C

In threaded view it will look like this:

A
-- B
-- C

Now somebody is going to reply to message B in the topic. In flat view

this will look like:

A
B
C
D

In threaded view this will look like:

A
-- B
---- D
-- C

Strictly speaking only such a tree-like view is considered threading.

For instance what Gmail does is not strictly threading (more about that

later). Threading works because every email message has a Message-ID

that is a unique identifier of that message. When an email client

replies to a message it will create a new unique Message-ID for that

message, but it will take the Message-ID from the original and put it in

the References header so email replies have a pointer back to the

original message. If a threading email client receives a message with a

References header and it also has the email message to which that

References header points, the email client will show that message as a

child of the original. (This is still somewhat of a simplification and

skips over multiple IDs and the In-Reply-To header, for the exact

working see RFC 2822 section 3.6.4.)

This is what the whole Mozilla family of email clients does and most of

the old school Unix email clients as well.

What Gmail does (and what you can configure many email clients to do) is

to group messages by subject. Such a group of messages is in Gmail terms

a conversation. Then within that conversation messages are sorted by

date. This is different then threading. If a Gmail user had read

messages A, B and C of our example above and then navigated away, upon

returning to the conversation he will not find message D on the third

position in the conversation, but on the fourth. I think we should (and

I will try to remember to) refer to this behaviour as grouped display,

and not as threaded display.

Now, how can we use this to fix these forums?

The first part is simple: just add a References header to all outgoing

email. Only email clients that are configured to thread will do

something with that, so it will fix threading for those who want to use

threading without breaking anything for the email clients that don't

want to thread.

The impact of this on the Jive advancedemail plugin should be minimal.

Every outgoing email should just set its MessageID to the ID property of

the outgoing ForumMessage then test for the value of the parentMessgeID

property and if it is present set the References header. Append

@mail.forums.adobe.com to all IDs and you are done.

This will not fix the issue for the email clients that use grouping. To

(mostly) fix it for them, the simple solution is to just move the unique

code in the subject line forward until it appears before the "Re: " in

the subject. Email clients that use grouping are aware there might be an

code in the subject to indicate a message is a response (in English

usually "Re: ", other languages use something like "antwoord: " or

"resp: " etc.). They will group based on what is in the subject after

the "Re: " so that will put all the replies together.

It may not entirely fix it though, since the first message in a topic

doesn't have "Re :" it might be you end up with 2 groups, one with just

the first message and one with all the answers.

I already tested this and the Jive email import functionality does

support the code being in a different position, so it is just the

sending part that would need to be modified.

This does have a huge downside for the email clients that use neither

threading nor grouping (such as webmail clients like Squirrelmail and

IMP). If you use such a client and do a simple sort on the subject now

it will sort more or less correctly. If the code moves forward the

sorting there will disappear.

The last and final step / option is to change the Jive email import

functionality not to depend on that code but instead to depend on the

References header that an email client will put in the reply. That is a

significant change on the Jive side (and if Jive is going to do that I

have more suggestions to improve their core email system). Then

everybody can thread, group and sort however he likes, but Jive would

need to define a backup strategy for messages where an email client

fails to include a References header.

Jochem

--

Jochem van Dieten

http://jochem.vandieten.net/

Mark_A__Boyd

Inspiring

Jochem, kudos on your entire post!

Jochem van Dieten wrote:
In threaded view this will look like:

    A
    -- B
    ---- D
    -- C

Strictly speaking only such a tree-like view is considered threading. For instance what Gmail does is not strictly threading (more about that
later).
[Later]
What Gmail does (and what you can configure many email clients to do) is to group messages by subject.

The above threaded "tree" is, IMHO, the most useful of all methods. And your explanation of Gmail's grouping method makes me glad I don't have an account with them.

Now, how can we use this to fix these forums?
[snip good suggestions]

I hope Jive/Adobe are in direct communications with you .

Jesper_G__O__Møller

Participating Frequently

Well... somthing has changed

mails frome this discusion looked like this

[Forum Comments] New message: "Does threading work for email notifications in your email client?" [mia21-9Nd-7Uau]

now look like this

[Forum Comments] "Does threading work for email notifications in your email client?" [mia21-9Nd-7Uau]

the new message is gone on the lates notification

Now they only have to get rid of that [number]....

And putting the [forum] last woud help readability..

i think the shud look like this

Re: Does threading work for email notifications in your email client? [Forum Comments]

PjonesCET wrote:
If they would remove the extranious information inside the []'s (the serial numbers every mail/news Reader on the Planet would work. As it stands none of them will. When you add the []'s and the serial numbers inside That makes each an unique subject.

Yes ... And most email client woud understand that "Re: some post" is a response to "some post" and tread them thogethet.

Mark_A__Boyd

Inspiring

That was interesting. Not one of the 3 bolded subject lines in your message made it to my email. I wonder why they got filtered?

Yes ... And most email client woud understand that "Re: some post" is a response to "some post" and tread them thogethet.

Message threading is not - should not be - based on subject lines. It is based on the actual messages as referred to by their message-IDs. The References: header was created for exactly this purpose and works just fine. Why the resistance?

As for the subject lines themselves, I do prefer the forum name in front. Though shortening it as JC said he is working on, would be better. When reading multiple forums, I think it helps to be able to see the forum the message came from (if I can't see the entire subject line).

Jesper_G__O__Møller

Participating Frequently

Mark A. Boyd wrote:
Message threading is not - should not be - based on subject lines. It is based on the actual messages as referred to by their message-IDs. The References: header was created for exactly this purpose and works just fine. Why the resistance?

Sorry ... but im not that into how the mailsystem actualy works .. I can only speek out of what i see/experienc

with "message-IDs" do you meen the "Message-Id:" i see if i chose long headers when looking at mails??

I took a look at the headers of old forum mails and cud see that te "message-ID:" was the same in those but not in the new forummails

As for the subject lines themselves, I do prefer the forum name in front. Though shortening it as JC said he is working on, would be better. When reading multiple forums, I think it helps to be able to see the forum the message came from (if I can't see the entire subject line).

Well - Shoten them woud be great to...

Main thing for me is to have them more readable. Hard to read when 2/3 or more of the actualy subject is cut of (not all have highress screens, or use full screen windows)

This is how it looks in my mail

Mark_A__Boyd

Inspiring

I didn't see anybody mention it, so I just set it up in Opera 9.64 on WinXP Pro.

No threading here, either. I don't know this for certain, but I think Opera uses the References: header for threading.

[Edit]

Yep. Confirmed by changing subject lines in test emails to myself from different accounts.

Phillip M Jones

Inspiring

If they would remove the extranious information inside the []'s (the serial numbers every mail/news Reader on the Planet would work. As it stands none of them will. When you add the []'s and the serial numbers inside That makes each an unique subject.

Obiviously no one from Jive is listening. Its not needed Or they need to figure a way to strip that out before sending out, the email Notifications.

And the notifications only need the link to the message.

Mark_A__Boyd

Inspiring

I don't think decent email clients thread on the Subject header - unless you specifically tell them to. That is what the "References:" header is for - and maybe the "In Reply To:" header in some cases. Otherwise, how would you discern all of the message threads with the subject of "Help"?

Or, [Forum Comments] New message: "Help" [Yada-yada-B1RD] in this case

And please tell me, if you know, how do I get my iPhone to thread emails - subject or otherwise? Of course, it may not qualify as being on the Planet.