ADSL/eth0 problems

[Tim]

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.