On Sat, 2007-07-21 at 18:56 +0800, Pepper & Joe wrote: > I'm still not sure if I am replying properly to this reply to my request > for help but I am doing it from evolution which I am assuming IS MIME > capable as my digest looks entirely different. In any case, I now have a > connection to the internet through Linux and solved the problem by going > out and buying a $30 router. Everything just fell into place after that. Good to hear you've resolved your networking problems. But since you mention it, your message wasn't seen as a reply to something, it's lacking the headers to do so. MIME is to do with emails with different parts to them, with headers about those parts (this part's a text message, that part's a HTML alternative, this part's an attached image/jpeg file, and so on). The MIME headers describe what the content is, and receiver deals with that data, no matter how it's named, knowing that it's an JPEG file by the description. The same technique that MIME uses is extended to other things, since the technique is useful beyond e-mail. Such as web servers, they tell you that the data you're receiving is text/html or image/gif, etc., so the receiver knows how to handle it. MIME in the context of a digest means that each section has the headers of the original post, allowing a direct reply to that section (amongst other things they're useful for). As opposed to a plain text digest, where it's just one huge e-mail, and replies are to the digest, itself. This means that replies aren't threaded along with the rest of the post, by everyone else. Headers used for threading are the "in-reply-to" header (which lists the unique ID of the message it's a reply to), and the "references" header which lists other messages that are part of the same thread. Mail clients can, then, use that information to sort all the related messages together. Sorting messages with the same subject line together is not the way to do threading, no matter what some people believe (e.g. those twits that wrote the Outlook Express program at Microsoft). Have a look at the message source, or just the headers, for some mail, and you'll get to see how it works. You can make tests by sending e-mails to yourself, some being replies, others not being so. -- (This box runs FC5, my others run FC4 & FC6, in case that's important to the thread.) Don't send private replies to my address, the mailbox is ignored. I read messages from the public lists.
