Re: Threads and &

[Kyle Wheeler <kyle-mutt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

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On Thursday, June 18 at 05:13 PM, quoth Marianne:
>>> I tag a mail with "t" and attach it to a thread with "&". After 
>>> that i quit mutt saving changes. I open my mail box with mutt 
>>> again but my thread is not saved. How to save this ?
>>
>> I noticed that it only happen when I attach mails that are not supposed 
>> to be in the thread. In fact I make groupe of discussions.

I've had a similar problem before, only not with unrelated messages 
but rather with messages that don't contain certain headers (e.g. 
Message-ID). I think the reason is because mutt uses Message-ID to 
link threads---if a message doesn't HAVE an ID, mutt simply fails to 
link the messages, rather than attempt to give the message a 
Message-ID header.

There might be good reasons for this, but I don't know what they are. 
I think it's probably more complicated to add a header to both 
messages than it is to modify an existing header in a single message, 
but I don't know the details.

> Are you doing this on a Gmail IMAP folder?
>
> I had issues using mutt to link threads in Gmail as well, as described 
> here:
>
> http://does-not-exist.org/mail-archives/mutt-users/msg17790.html
>
> I received no replies about this, and for all I know the problem still 
> exists, but I've stayed away from linking threads in Gmail folders 
> ever since, so I don't know.

My guess here is that it's either related to the problem I mentioned 
above OR it's related to the fact that Gmail doesn't implement IMAP 
correctly.

That's right, I said it. Gmail's IMAP implementation is *awful*, and 
broken in lots of important ways. Some of these are at least somewhat 
understandable, because Gmail is attempting to change the way email 
storage works while still supporting a "good enough" version of IMAP. 
But "good enough" isn't always "good enough" to allow everything mutt 
wants to do. For example, Gmail doesn't like "deleting" messages (even 
though they claim to technically allow it, as of somewhat recently). 
Unfortunately, many of the more creative and powerful tricks mutt can 
perform with messages (e.g. connecting threads) rely on being able to 
modify messages on the IMAP server---which (because IMAP provides no 
method for modifying a message directly (for very good reasons)) 
involves copying messages and DELETING the old ones. It is no surprise 
to me that this can be a problem, given how loathe Gmail is to grant 
users the power of deletion.

Of course, some of the Gmail IMAP bugs are just flat out wrong and 
Google should be embarrassed about them (see all the various encoding 
bugs).

I recommend that if you have a problem using mutt with Gmail, try 
doing the same thing with some other IMAP client (ANY other IMAP 
client). If it doesn't work there either, chances are it's a Gmail 
problem, not a mutt problem!

And putting a filter, like offlineimap, between mutt and gmail means 
it's even harder for mutt to perform creative message modification 
correctly, because mutt cannot detect when something doesn't work and  
thus cannot attempt a second way of doing it. When you run into 
trouble while using something like offlineimap, my first suggestion 
would be: try doing it without offlineimap. If it works, then you have 
isolated the problem: it's an offlineimap problem. If it still doesn't 
work, then you have eliminated a potential cause, and you've made 
progress toward figuring out what the real problem is.

~Kyle
- -- 
Hanging on to resentment is letting someone you despise live rent-free 
in your head.
                                                         -- Ann Landers
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