"Stuart Summerville" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
[EMAIL PROTECTED]">news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> Garth Wallace wrote:
> >
> > Newsgroup threading is done by Message-IDs in the
> > References header, as per the spec, AFAICT.
>
> I think more choices in the way threading is done would be useful.
What would you suggest? The References header
is the only reasonably dependable way of determining
threading--that's what it's for. It contains the MID
of its parent post, and usually several ancestor posts.
You can't get good threading from the subject because
a) A thread starts with a post with subject "<original
topic>" and all replies in the thread that aren't
explicitly retitled have the subject "Re: <original
topic>", so after the first reply you can't determine
parent posts
b) Any reply can be arbitrarily retitled.
Getting good threading from body text has the following
problems:
a) You would need to download the entire body text of
every article in the group to build threads, instead of
just the basic headers.
b) An algorithm to determine parenthood by comparing
quoted text, even when said text is trimmed and/or
broken into sections, would be complex and probably
inefficient.
