OT: threading list messages

[Alex Oren]

ATTN list owner.

My email reader has problems keeping the list messages properly threaded.

There are two reasons for this:
1. Appending "[MUD-Dev]" to the subject, and
2. The number of spaces between the "[MUD-Dev]" and the subject is not constant.

So far, the format of the messages is: "[MUD-Dev]", followed by one or two
spaces, followed by an optional "Re: ", followed by the real subject.

However, my email/news reader (agent) starts another thread when the subject
changes (because I find it more convenient for other mailing lists and for
newsgroups -- alas, the option is global) so all [MUD-Dev] threads get
fragmented.

E.g.: The following subject got fragmented to 4 (four!) threads:
(switch to a fixed width font)

Subject: [MUD-Dev] Prepositions and parsing
Subject: [MUD-Dev] Re: Prepositions and parsing
Subject: [MUD-Dev]  Prepositions and parsing
Subject: [MUD-Dev]  Re: Prepositions and parsing

To add insult to injury, some subjects get truncated, embedded spaces multiply,
etc. (switch to a fixed width font):

Subject: [MUD-Dev] MUD Design Fundamentals  (Was: Looking for books...)
Subject: [MUD-Dev]  MUD Design Fundamentals  (Was: Looking for books...)
Subject: [MUD-Dev] MUD Design Fundamentals	(Was: Looking for
Subject: [MUD-Dev]  MUD Design Fundamentals  (Was: Looking for

Now, I wouldn't mind exporting my message DB to a text file, running an AWK
script or something similar on it to demangle the subjects and re-importing, but
only if I have to do it once.  I do have a large number of messages and it is a
lengthy process.

Suggestions to JCL:

* Remove the "[MUD-Dev]" artifact.  Filtering can be done on one of the 
  following fields: X-Listname, To, Sender, Reply-To, Return-Path.

* Add some more preprocessing: remove leading "Re" prefixes, reduce embedded 
  spaces, etc.

Thanxalot!

--
Have fun,
Alex.