What is "sort by date" supposed to do?

What is "sort by date" supposed to do?

[Laura Conrad]

It doesn't seem to sort the older messages before the newer ones.

This morning in rec.music.early, I have:

R                          [  22: Andrys D Basten     ] Re: Bartoli's Vivaldi/Perlman-Argerich CD
R      [  23: tlsterry@tpgi.com.au] Re: Bartoli's Vivaldi

where the first of these is:

From: andrys@netcom.com (Andrys D Basten)
Subject: Re: Bartoli's Vivaldi/Perlman-Argerich CD
Newsgroups: rec.music.opera,rec.music.classical.recordings,rec.music.early
Date: 21 Dec 1999 01:26:36 GMT
Organization: Netcom

and the second is:

From: tlsterry@tpgi.com.au
Subject: Re: Bartoli's Vivaldi
Newsgroups: rec.music.opera,rec.music.classical.recordings,rec.music.early
Date: Sun, 19 Dec 1999 17:54:25 +1100
Organization: Newsfeeds.com http://www.newsfeeds.com 73,000+UNCENSORED Newsgroups.

I was hoping that what the xemacs misc=>sort=>Sort by Date (^C^S^D)
menu item would do is sort articles entirely by date, ignoring any
threading.  Obviously, this isn't what's happening.  Is this a bug or
a feature, and if the latter, is there a way to get the feature I
want?

This is xemacs 21.1, gnus 5.8.2.  
-- 
Laura (mailto:lconrad@world.std.com , http://www.world.std.com/~lconrad/ )
(617) 661-8097	fax: (801) 365-6574 
233 Broadway, Cambridge, MA 02139

Re: What is "sort by date" supposed to do?

[Kai Großjohann]

Laura Conrad <lconrad@world.std.com> writes:

> I was hoping that what the xemacs misc=>sort=>Sort by Date (^C^S^D)
> menu item would do is sort articles entirely by date, ignoring any
> threading.  Obviously, this isn't what's happening.  Is this a bug or
> a feature, and if the latter, is there a way to get the feature I
> want?

It is a feature.  Think of it as follows: first all articles are
sorted by date, then we go through each article, and if it is part of
a thread, we move it up (or, in rare cases, down) to its parent.  This
means that thread roots are sorted by date.  (I think the actual
algorithm that's used is different, but I hope the above description
is close enough and understandable.)

You can turn off threading (`T T' toggles it), then sort by date to
get what you want.

kai
-- 
A preposition is not a good thing to end a sentence with.