[nukkad] An advantage of not sending out composite responses

["indian rediff" <>]

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Dr. Gupta's recent mail extolling the virtues of sending out composite mails
forced me to respond.

In e-mails, especially in the Unix world, as well as certain e-mail clients such 
as Eudora and most definitely in the Unix e-mail clients such as Pine etc. there
is a feature that helps to organize e-mails by THREAD. 

Now I am not 100% certain how these threads are organized. Some of the clients 
organize e-mails by threads distinguished by something like e-mail identifier. 
This must be some number that is available in the e-mail detailed header that 
allows the client to distinguish an e-mail as being a response to another one.
It could be a composite of numbers. I am not certain. 

Another way in which e-mail threads are organized are by the contents of the 
SUBJECT. This is a much looser definition of THREAD and sometiems clients can 
get confused by responses to two different threads and clutter up the e-mail. 

A third way is to view the e-mails as a combination of e-mail identifiers and
Subject. This way the client uses some 'intelligence' to sort the folder so 
that e-mails are organized as close to being correct as possible. Hence, if the 
identifier matches, it would override the Subject. If the identifier does NOT
match, it would still attempt to thread by Subject.

Maybe this concept is difficult for non-geeks to grasp. However, it becomes 
crystal clear when you go to www.mumbai-central.com's NUKKAD archive and look
at e-mails by THREAD. 

DO take a look. The beauty of responding to each individual e-mail will become
obvious. To simplify things for you please click on http://www.mumbai-central.com/nukkad/jun2002/threads.html and you will see that a composite reply will NEVER make it to a thread!! 

Indian (Sai)

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