Uwe Brauer <oub@mat.ucm.es> writes:

>> and they are not ordered monotonically.  So which criterion do you
>> actually want to use for sorting.
>
> Well if the date and time is too messy, I'd say I would like to sort by
> number, but I want it montonically indepent whether threading is on or off

I think, thus should be

(setq gnus-thread-sort-functions '(gnus-thread-sort-by-number)
      gnus-article-sort-functions '(gnus-article-sort-by-number))
      
then.

> But it should be displayed as 
>
>  57606 [  Uwe Braue] Uwe Brauer  [[CV] (was: [Amnu 19])    ] Sun, 28 Apr 2019 11:30:41 +0200 8.8k 6   
>      57609 [ +henar de ] Uwe Brauer  [                         ] Sun, 28 Apr 2019 09:35:45 +0000 10k 13   
>  57585 [  tex-d-l-r] tex-d-l@li  [tex-d-l Nachrichtenkompil] Sun, 28 Apr 2019 00:00:07 +0200 13k 165   
>  57593 [  users    ] oub@mat.uc  [Subject: Digest of users@] Sun, 28 Apr 2019 08:00:27 +0000 (UTC) 38k 11   
>  57621 [  Uwe Braue] Uwe Brauer  [[stuff] (was: [CV])      ] Sun, 28 Apr 2019 16:04:34 +0200 9.4k 16   
>
> That is what Thunderbird does and it looks more natural to me. 
> Did I explain clear enough what I want?

Well, above you've said you want to sort by number and then you present
an example which is not sorted by number... I don't know how thunderbird
sorts, so I cannot come up with a "just like thunderbird" configuration.

>> (setq gnus-thread-sort-functions '(gnus-thread-sort-by-number
>> 				   gnus-thread-sort-by-most-recent-date
>> 				   gnus-thread-sort-by-total-score)
>>       gnus-subthread-sort-functions '(gnus-thread-sort-by-number
>> 				      gnus-article-sort-by-date))
>
> I tried that out did not work.

If it gives a different result for you than for me that's really strange
given that be both seem to use quite similar Emacs/Gnus versions.
Sorry, I don't have any ideas left.

BTW, you can also re-sort the summary buffer interactively using the
commands bound to the C-c C-s prefix.  That's probably quicker to find a
sorting version that suits your needs.

Bye,
Tassilo