Date: 01 Mar 1999 20:27:00 +0200
From: kaih@khms.westfalen.de (Kai Henningsen)
To: drums@cs.utk.edu
Message-ID: <7C18Dxpmw-B@khms.westfalen.de>
In-Reply-To: <v0410470db2f4a27b6dd1@resnick2.qualcomm.com>
Subject: Re: References and In-Reply-To (section 3.6.4)
MIME-Version: 1.0
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Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
Organization: Organisation? Me?! Are you kidding?
References: <7BDhXar1w-B@khms.westfalen.de> <v04104702b2f1fc45e496@resnick2.qualcomm.com> <36CC5877.6A74F226@mozilla.org> <9276.919402389@munnari.OZ.AU> <v0410470db2f4a27b6dd1@resnick2.qualcomm.com>
Comment: Unsolicited commercial mail will incur an US$100 handling fee per received mail.

presnick@qualcomm.com (Pete Resnick)  wrote on 20.02.99 in <v0410470db2f4a27b6dd1@resnick2.qualcomm.com>:

> On 2/20/99 at 2:31 PM +0200, Kai Henningsen wrote:
>
> > For the mail recipient, this means how to show the user a map of related
> > messages, and how to allow him to navigate that map.
> >
> > Thanks to news usage, it is very well understood (even though an appalling
> > number of MUAs just ignore this feature) how to do this in case of single
> > parents.
>
> Let me start by denying this assertion. Though I have seen countless
> examples of how to do this when there is a simple thread, I believe
> once a thread has multiple branches most of these navigation
> utilities are as incomprehensible to the average user as multiple
> parent presentation would be. At least I know that they're
> incomprehensible to me once you get around 5 branches coming off of 5
> replies to a single message.

I must say I find this completely unbelievable. I cannot see how the  
number of branches is relevant at all in this respect.

> Presentation: Those of us who write graphical MUAs can use the same
> kind of viewing engine that we've got in the class-hierarchy browsers
> in our development environments: boxes representing each message,
> lines representing the thread "inheritance". Click on a box, open the
> message. Perhaps we can display a portion of the hierarchy in the
> message window or in a separate floating palette showing where you
> are in the tree.

"Tree" being the operative word here. That's more or less what I'm using  
right now, except no clicking is involved. (And no floating palette  
either. No silly graphics in this thing.)

And it breaks horribly if there is no tree.

Just as an illustration, this is the current tree:

--- snip screenshot ---
  XPoint  Wartung  Nachricht  NeTcall  Fido  EDit  Config  Zusatz
  Adresse  Halten  Löschen  Kill  BrettBrief  PM  Info  Sonstige           Esc
                                                                          kaih  
 Bezugsnachrichten zu "References and In-Reply-To (section"
        996 18.01  Robert Elz (PM)          Re: References and In-Reply-To (sec
       4129 28.01  +-Jamie Zawinski (PM)
       1439 29.01    +-Robert Elz (PM)
       2137 28.01      +-Bart Schaefer (PM)
       1532 28.01      +-Jamie Zawinski (PM)
  +    2551 18.02      +-Pete Resnick                             /»Killed-Mail
  +    2541 18.02        +-Jamie Zawinski
  +    2063 19.02        | +-Robert Elz
       3338 20.02        |   +-Pete Resnick (PM)
  +    3352 20.02        |   | +-Pete Resnick                     /»Killed-Mail
·>+     564 20.02        |   | +-D. J. Bernstein                  /»Killed-Mail
 >        0 20.02        |   | | +-D. J. Bernstein                    /»Replies
 >        0 20.02        |   | +-Pete Resnick                         /»Replies
 >        0 20.02        |   | +-Pete Resnick                         /»Replies
 >      506 21.02        |   | +-Jacob Palme (PM)            URLs in References
 >        0 21.02        |   | | +-Jacob Palme                        /»Replies
·>+    1337 21.02        |   | +-Pete Resnick                     /»Killed-Mail
 >     1426 21.02        |   | | +-Bart Schaefer (PM)
 >        0 22.02        |   | | | +-Bart Schaefer                    /»Replies
 >     1805 22.02        |   | | | +-Jamie Zawinski (PM)
 >        0 22.02        |   | | |   +-Jamie Zawinski                 /»Replies
 >        0 22.02        |   | | +-Pete Resnick                       /»Replies
·>+     966 22.02        |   | | +-Brad Knowles
·>+    1865 22.02        |   | | +-Jamie Zawinski
 >        0 22.02        |   | |   +-Jamie Zawinski                   /»Replies
   !   2688 01.03        |   | +-Kai Henningsen (PM)
·>+    1539 20.02        |   +-Kai Henningsen
                                                                                
S1-FndMdg.BTM C1-Userwechsel/khms C2-kaih@khms C3-postmaster@khms C5-SigCheck
--- snip ---

(The stuff in "Killed Mail" is because cs.utk.edu is in ORBS, and the  
stuff in "Replies" is from my reply detector. And the think with the "!"  
marker is the current, yet unsent message. And (PM) is this program's way  
of saying "email". ">" is still unread.)

I might add that this tree can very easily be navigated by right/left/up/ 
down indicators (for example, cursor keys). The moment you do multiple  
parents, you lose a comprehensible display, and you lose a comprehensible  
navigation.

MfG Kai