[TUHS] off-topic list

[Steffen Nurpmeso]

Hello.

Grant Taylor via TUHS wrote in <89e5ae21-ccc0-5c84-837b-120a1a7d9e26 at spa\
mtrap.tnetconsulting.net>:
 |On 06/22/2018 01:25 PM, Steffen Nurpmeso wrote:
 |> True, but possible since some time, for the thing i maintain, too, 
 |> unfortunately.  It will be easy starting with the next release, however.
 |
 |I just spent a few minutes looking at how to edit headers in reply 
 |messages in Thunderbird and I didn't quickly find it.  (I do find an 
 |Add-On that allows editing messages in reader, but not the composer.)

Oh, I do not know: i have never used a graphical MUA, only pine,
then mutt, and now, while anytime before now and then anyway, BSD
Mail.  Only once i implemented RFC 2231 support i started up Apple
Mail (of an up-to-date Snow Leopard i had back then) to see how
they do it, and that was a brainwave because they i think
misinterpreted RFC 2231 to only allow MIME paramaters to be split
in ten sections.  (But then i recall that i have retested that
with a Tiger Mail once i had a chance to, and there the bug was
corrected.)

Graphical user interfaces are a difficult abstraction, or tedious
to use.  I have to use a graphical browser, and it is always
terrible to enable Cookies for a site.  For my thing i hope we
will at some future day be so resilient that users can let go the
nmh mailer without loosing any freedom.

I mean, user interfaces are really a pain, and i think this will
not go away until we come to that brain implant which i have no
doubt will arrive some day, and then things may happen with
a think.  Things like emacs or Acme i can understand, and the
latter is even Unix like in the way it works.

Interesting that most old a.k.a. established Unix people give up
that Unix freedom of everything-is-a-file, that was there for
email access via nupas -- the way i have seen it in Plan9 (i never
ran a research Unix), at least -- in favour of a restrictive
graphical user interface!

 |> Yes.  Yes.  And then, whilst not breaking the thread stuff as such, 
 |> there is the "current funny thing to do", which also impacts thread 
 |> visualization sometimes.  For example replacing spaces with tabulators 
 |> so that the "is the same thread subject" compression cannot work, so 
 |> one first thinks the subject has really changed.
 |
 |IMHO that's the wrong way to thread.  I believe threading should be done 
 |by the In-Reply-To: and References: headers.
 |
 |I consider Subject: based threading to be a hack.  But it's a hack that 
 |many people use.  I think Thunderbird even uses it by default.  (I've 
 |long since disabled it.)

No, we use the same threading algorithm that Zawinski described
([1], "the threading algorithm that was used in Netscape Mail and
News 2.0 and 3.0").  I meant, in a threaded display, successive
follow-up messages which belong to the same thread will not
reiterate the Subject:, because it is the same one as before, and
that is irritating.

  [1] http://www.jwz.org/doc/threading.html

 |> At the moment top posting seems to be a fascinating thing to do.
 |
 |I blame ignorance and the prevalence of tools that encourage such behavior.

I vote for herdes instinct, but that is a non-scientific view.  We
here where i live had the "fold rear view mirrors even if not done
automatically by the car" until some young men started crashing
non-folded ones with baseball bats (say: who else would crash
rearview mirrors, i have not seen one doing this, but a lot of
damaged mirrors by then), and since a couple of years we have
"cut trees and hedges and replace with grass", which is really,
really terrible and i am not living at the same place than before.
Many birds, bats etc. think the same, so i am not alone; i hope
this ends soon.  I can have a walk to reach nightingales, though,
and still.  I would hope for "turning off the lights to be able to
see a true night sky", but .. i am dreaming.

 |> And you seem to be using DMARC, which irritates the list-reply mechanism 
 |> of at least my MUA.
 |
 |Yes I do use DMARC as well as DKIM and SPF (w/ -all).  I don't see how 
 |me using that causes problems with "list-reply".
 |
 |My working understanding is that "list-reply" should reply to the list's 
 |posting address in the List-Post: header.
 |
 |List-Post: <mailto:tuhs at minnie.tuhs.org>
 |
 |What am I missing or not understanding?

That is not how it works for the MUAs i know.  It is an
interesting idea.  And in fact it is used during the "mailing-list
address-massage" if possible.  But one must or should
differentiate in between a subscribed list and a non-subscribed
list, for example.  This does not work without additional
configuration (e.g., we have `mlist' and `mlsubscribe' commands to
make known mailing-lists to the machine), though List-Post: we use
for automatic configuration (as via `mlist').

And all in all this is a complicated topic (there are
Mail-Followup-To: and Reply-To:, for example), and before you say
"But what i want is a list reply!", yes, of course you are right.
But.  For my thing i hope i have found a sensible way through
this, and initially also one that does not deter users of console
MUA number one (mutt).

   --End of <89e5ae21-ccc0-5c84-837b-120a1a7d9e26 at spamtrap.tnetconsulting.net>

Cheerio.

--steffen
|
|Der Kragenbaer,                The moon bear,
|der holt sich munter           he cheerfully and one by one
|einen nach dem anderen runter  wa.ks himself off
|(By Robert Gernhardt)