Bug 91308

Summary:	virtual threading to add sent emails to a thread
Product:	[Applications] kmail2	Reporter:	Andy Parkins <andyparkins>
Component:	message list	Assignee:	kdepim bugs <kdepim-bugs>
Status:	REOPENED ---
Severity:	wishlist	CC:	kant_75780, luigi.toscano, me, pancho.s
Priority:	NOR
Version:	unspecified
Target Milestone:	---
Platform:	Debian testing
OS:	Linux
Latest Commit:		Version Fixed In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description Andy Parkins 2004-10-14 12:05:59 UTC

Version:            (using KDE KDE 3.3.1)
Installed from:    Debian testing/unstable Packages
OS:                Linux

Okay, this is probably a bit too big to be a wish; and it's probably impractical to implement, but what the heck...

KMail has a sent mail folder defined for every account - right?  So it knows all the messages I've sent.  This is as it should be, mostly one doesn't want sent mails mixed up with incoming mails (at least I don't).

At times however, it would be useful to have those sent messages in the same folder as the outgoing messages - particularly for a series of back-and-forth messages in a thread... e.g.

Me:  What time is the meeting? 
You: I have no idea, what would be good for you?
Me:  How does 10:00am grab you?
You: That's fine.

In the current (and traditional) folder system - this will make two threads - one in the Sent mailbox and one in the <whatever> mailbox.

<Sent mailbox>
Me:  What time is the meeting?
 `-> How does 10:00am grab you?

<Whatever mailbox>
You: I have no idea, what would be good for you?
 `-> That's fine

So, that's the problem, my imagined solution is the following.  KMail maintains an internal cache of all the "In-Reply-To:" headers in the Sent folder.  Now when reading the <whatever> mailbox, and coming accross a "Message-Id:" header that matches one of these (or vice versa), a virtual copy of the Sent mail appears in the Whatever mailbox.  This makes the thread read correctly:

What time is the meeting? (virtual)
 `-> I have no idea, what would be good for you? (real)
  `-> How does 10:00am grab you? (virtual)
   `-> That's fine (real)

This strikes me as being not a million miles different from the "Last Search" virtual folder; so I assume the underlying facility exists already.

Comment 1 Till Adam 2004-10-14 13:22:13 UTC

On Thursday 14 October 2004 12:06, Andy Parkins wrote:
> At times however, it would be useful to have those sent messages in the
> same folder as the outgoing messages - particularly for a series of
> back-and-forth messages in a thread... e.g.

Which is why since KMail 1.7, I believe, we have a "keep replies in this 
folder" option, per folder, which allows you to store replies to mails in a 
folder in that same folder. Does that help?

(I realize your wish goes beyond this, and I believe it's a duplicate of an 
already reported wish. If you want to do us a real favor you could try to 
find it and close this bugreport and vote for the other one.)

Till

Comment 2 Andy Parkins 2004-10-14 13:30:53 UTC

That option does help - thanks.

I would still be in favour of the virtual method I outlined above; and will do my best to find the duplicate.

Comment 3 Tom Albers 2004-10-14 14:21:05 UTC

I could not find the duplicate. Maybe I closed one to many in the past.

Comment 4 Tom Albers 2005-01-10 09:21:07 UTC

*** Bug 96679 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 5 kant 2005-01-12 05:48:23 UTC

This doesn't seem to work with IMAP accounts, does it  ?

Comment 6 Till Adam 2005-01-12 08:29:14 UTC

Sure, I  use it every day.

Comment 7 Yuan Jue 2005-09-08 13:16:20 UTC

Has this wish come true? It seems that Gmail has acheived this goal exactly.How about kmail?

Comment 8 Jean-Philippe Monteiro 2006-09-26 06:54:12 UTC

I am using systematically "Keep Replies in Folder", for all the 13 accounts of my organization. Does the trick fully, trully. Any conversation like the sample you gave gets treated exactly as you wish.

Comment 9 Myriam Schweingruber 2012-08-18 08:12:01 UTC

Thank you for your feature request. Kmail1 is currently unmaintained so we are closing all wishes. Please feel free to reopen a feature request for Kmail2 if it has not already been implemented.
Thank you for your understanding.

Comment 10 Luigi Toscano 2012-08-19 00:48:12 UTC

Instead of creating a new feature request, please confirm here if the wishlist is still valid for kmail2.

Comment 11 Bernd Oliver Sünderhauf 2012-08-24 11:17:22 UTC

Still applies to kmail2, component: message list.

Comment 12 Yuri Gorshkov 2022-07-01 21:45:16 UTC

Would it be difficult to integrate this possibility into KMail? I'd say (just to clarify), this is something akin to symlinks for replies. I have not much more to add, but still would be nice if this was a feature after um... 17 years of waiting (wow... i'm old! :).

PS. Sorry for necrobumping.