Re: What does `gathering loose threads' mean?

[prj@po.cwru.edu (Paul Jarc)]

Kai.Grossjohann@CS.Uni-Dortmund.DE (Kai =?iso-8859-1?q?Gro=DFjohann?=) writes:
> If I have two messages with the same subject (but otherwise
> unrelated), they will be displayed near to each other in the summary
> buffer.
> 
> Where does this come from?

Testing whether two articles are in the same thread is controlled by
the variable gnus-summary-thread-gathering-function.  Loose threads
are a somewhat separate matter, regarding the sorting of articles
within a thread, IIUC.

> This lead me to thinking that Gnus looks at the References header of
> message 1 and at the References header of message 2 and if MsgId foo
> occurs in both headers, then the two messages are in the same
> thread.

If that's what you want, you can do:
(setq gnus-summary-thread-gathering-function
      'gnus-gather-threads-by-references)
By default, it's set to gnus-gather-threads-by-subject.

> Maybe the documentation should be changed to more explicitly point out
> that loose threads gathering does NOT look at the References header,
> but ONLY at the Subject header.

gnus-summary-thread-gathering-function is documented at the end of the
`Loose Threads' node.

> What is the minimum configuration that will do loose threads
> gathering?  (I think it is sufficient to set
> gnus-summary-make-false-root to a non-nil value, but I'm not sure.)

That controls the insertion of dummy lines for missing articles in the
thread.  If you just want articles with common References: to be in
the same thread, without filling in gaps with dummy lines, then
setting gnus-summary-thread-gathering-function should suffice.


paul