[Email App] Grouped/Threaded/Conversation view

Feature Requests
#1

Email app should (optionally) offer the display of email not as a list, but as a “threaded” or “conversation” view.

Grouped view: For emails in the same folder, which can be determined to be related, show the mails as a group, i.e. with a top element containing the subject (and maybe a list of participant names), and a collapsible list below this top element which contains the mail messages.

Threaded view: Like Grouped view above, but presented as a tree-like structure. Like classic mailing list archives, or USENET readers, and indeed some mail readers do.

Conversation view: the more complex variant, same as “Grouped” above visually, but the content are emails from any folder which can be determined as logically related (e.g. INBOX mails mixed with replies from the Sent folder)

References: :wink:

  • the References: mail header will be useful here
  • IMAP would offer the b UID SEARCH HEADER REFERENCES command, (but is the email app an IMAP client, or a viewer for a database populated by an IMAP client?)
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#2

I have never seen threaded view work properly.
It is kind of like dark mode… if it “only” works 95% of the time i’d rather not have it at all because the non-working minority of cases is just so much worse if you have this expectation.

#3

You’re right, and my main request is the first variant, grouping. Maybe even ignore any notion of References, and just group by Sender, Date, Subject…

OTOH, as I think on SFOS the mails are in a database (they are, right?) rather than pure IMAP, theoretically it could be easier to do the latter two than with what IMAP offers (assuming the DB schema and SQL are more powerful).

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