[mythtv-users] OT: Missing References Header

Michael T. Dean mtdean at thirdcontact.com
Sat Jul 30 17:12:27 UTC 2011


On 07/30/2011 12:32 PM, John Pilkington wrote:
> On 30/07/11 15:36, Michael T. Dean wrote:
>> On 07/30/2011 06:54 AM, Thomas Boehm wrote:
>>> I think I start to understand what you did. You read the list at
>>> Gossamer and then use Thunderbird to create a new message when you
>>> "reply" and copy and paste everything from your browser into your
>>> message. Personally I don't see the advantage in terms of useability,
>>> the opposite is the case. Since you have Thunderbird open anyway, create
>>> a filter to move all messages into one folder, switch to threaded view
>>> and everything is there right in front of you. Then you just hit the
>>> reply button and everything works as it should.
>>>
>> And you can use the "Filter these messages...<Ctrl+F>" search in
>> Thunderbird to find the specific thread you're looking for by
>> copy/pasting the subject from Gossamer, then scan the from addresses to
>> find the one to which you want to reply.
> If I have temporarily disabled delivery and then find in gossamer
> threads a message not downloaded by Thunderbird to which I want to
> reply, can I somehow attach that reply to the original thread?  This
> happened to me a few weeks ago.  I didn't find a solution then.
>

The official mailing list archive (the one referenced below) includes 
the In-Reply-To header in the "mailto" URI.  So, for example go to:

http://www.mythtv.org/pipermail/mythtv-users/2011-July/318748.html

and click the link next to the sender's (your :) name to start a new 
message in your system's default mail client.  For reference, the URI it 
uses is:

mailto:mythtv-users%40mythtv.org?Subject=Re:%20%5Bmythtv-users%5D%20OT%3A%20Missing%20References%20Header&In-Reply-To=%3C4E343218.6060900%40tesco.net%3E


Note that this approach will not include a References header, so if a 
reader had deleted your message, but kept other messages from higher up 
in the thread history, the message won't be threaded properly.  However, 
it's better than nothing.

To do better, you'd have to get the message--including headers--of the 
original message sent by the list, then "manually" add In-Reply-To and 
References headers to the message you send.  It's possible to do this 
using the UI in, for example, Thunderbird, but it's a rather advanced 
topic (one best left for some other forum or as an exercise for the 
reader)--and one prone to error.  Another option is to create your own 
"mailto" link, similar to the one given by the official list archive; 
however, this approach requires some care in properly URI-escaping 
characters since a references header would be something like:

References:<4E33BE4F.1070401 at o2.pl>
	<4E33D248.4040202 at lists.boehmi.net>	<4E33D4FE.90701 at o2.pl>
	<4E33E2E3.4040309 at lists.boehmi.net>
	<4E3416FB.70203 at thirdcontact.com>    <4E343218.6060900%40tesco.net>


(including line breaks) so it gets very ugly in a mailto URI (which is 
likely why the official archive doesn't include it).

In truth, I think most people would be happy to just have the 
In-Reply-To header.  Some clients never send a References header, 
anyway, so a message with only the In-Reply-To header wouldn't be that 
different from a number of messages that hit the list every day.

Mike


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