Re: [Evolution] Annoyance with "next message" order

[Milan Crha <mcrha redhat com>]

On Fri, 2015-03-20 at 08:54 -0400, Paul Smith wrote:
>   --> Joe1     v help with this        Today 00:57
>       Bob1         help with this      Today 02:43
>       Joe2       v help with this      Today 01:14
>       Bob2           help with this    Today 02:52
>
> Basically, shouldn't the algorithm be: find all messages which are
> direct replies to this message and order them by date (or whatever order
> the user chooses).  Then go through each message in that list and repeat
> this algorithm.  When a message has no direct replies, go to its sibling
> and try that.

        Hi,
one of the problem is that the Joe1 is a direct parent of Bob1 and 
Joe2 (I renamed the messages a bit). When you remove Joe1, then the 
thread is constructed from indirect references, thus an artificial 
thread root is chosen. It can cause (it causes) thread "breakage", 
reorder of it in an unexpected way (unexpected by a user).

The other part is the ordering of the threaded view as such. There had 
been some ideas in the bugzilla (I'm sorry, I do not have exact links 
to bug report(s)) to use user's sort order only on the thread root 
nodes and sort the submessages of the thread in a different, fix 
order. That might be by Date header, oldest at the top. It may make 
sense for Date/Receive-only sort, but not necessarily for sort by 
Subject. Or maybe even there, I'm not sure.

With respect of the thread ordering by Date, note of the thread-latest 
option in GSettings' or.gnome.evolution.mail. It says:

  Whether sort threads based on latest message in that thread

  This setting specifies whether the threads should be sorted based
  on latest message in each thread, rather than by message's date.
  Evolution requires a restart.

That option influences ordering too. The default value is 'true'.
        Bye,
        Milan