Re: [tlug] OT Thread Hijacking

[Curt Sampson <cjs@example.com>]

On 2010-02-22 12:01 +0000 (Mon), Godwin Stewart wrote:

> GMail relies entirely on the Subject: header (modulo the usual add-ons like
> Re: and Fw:) to group messages together in conversations, and on the
> timestamp in order to order them.
> 
> As you pointed out, that is *not* threading. It is merely "grouping" by
> subject, and GMail have resorted to Microsoft's tactics of renaming
> something that's been around for years and touting it as an innovation.

Hm? They appear to be using neither a previously used name nor a
previously used technique, so I think it is an "innovation."

(Perhaps the Plato system, or something like that, called threads
"conversations," but it's certainly not been a term used in any recent
(i.e., in the past twenty years) major system. And the same is true for
the technique of sorting by subject [presumably with some special sauce
to deal with "Re:", "Fwd:", etc. prefixes] but, within that sort, using
the date and time as a secondary key.)

Whether we need such an innovation is another question. [References
to an enormous slew of patents deleted. --Ed.] But an innovation it
certainly appears to be.

cjs
-- 
Curt Sampson         <cjs@example.com>         +81 90 7737 2974
             http://www.starling-software.com
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism
by those who have not got it.    --George Bernard Shaw