Re: What is a "virtual" group?

[Leonidas Tsampros <ltsampros@upnet.gr>]

Dave Abrahams <dave@boostpro.com> writes:
> on Mon Apr 22 2013, Leonidas Tsampros <ltsampros-AT-upnet.gr> wrote:
>
>> Dave Abrahams <dave@boostpro.com> writes:
>>> on Thu Jan 31 2013, Eric S Fraga <e.fraga-AT-ucl.ac.uk> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Dave Abrahams <dave@boostpro.com> writes:
>>>>
>>>>>> I am trying to figure out how to contribute a really cool (and for me,
>>
>>>>>> essential) piece of functionality to Gnus: the ability to, given a
>>>>>> message-id, find and display the message in the context of the entire
>>>>>> thread in which that message participates, even across groups.  Of
>>>>>> course I'm presuming you think that's worth having in Gnus, but I could
>>>>>> be wrong.  If so, just tell me and I'll stop pestering you.
>>>>
>>>> Dave,
>>>>
>>>> I cannot help with this but did want to add my vote: I would love to
>>>> have this feature in gnus.
>>>
>>> You could help by lobbying Lars to respond to my questions of Dec 25th
>>> in this thread :-)
>>
>> Are you referring only to a specific backend? I guess this will have to work
>> differently if we have to cross backends.
>
> No, it works across backends.  It doesn't even take all that much code.

Ok, I'm willing to test anything you send.

I did ask however because I had a similar idea the other day while
looking at Gmail's IMAP X-GM-EXT-1 extensions. They provide an
X-GM-THRID attribute that works like this:

a008 FETCH 1:4 (X-GM-THRID)
* 1 FETCH (X-GM-THRID 1278455344230334865)
* 2 FETCH (X-GM-THRID 1266894439832287888)
* 3 FETCH (X-GM-THRID 1266894439832287888)
* 4 FETCH (X-GM-THRID 1266894439832287888)
a008 OK FETCH (Success)

a009 UID SEARCH X-GM-THRID 1266894439832287888
* SEARCH 2 3 4
a009 OK Search (Success)

The above examples were copied from
https://developers.google.com/google-apps/gmail/imap_extensions

So theoretically it seems quite simple really to find 'a gmail-like
thread/conversation/whatever-marketing-decides-to-call-it-tommorow' on
an imap-gmail server.