Re: Even Worse
"For example, if I am included on thread A about something, then start thread B about the same thing but with different people, and later am involved in thread C which reports a problem with the thing implemented by thread B, those things are related in my mind but will not be linked in the software."
You're going to have to do some work but after you've told it what to do it should keep doing that. Say you create a folder, let's call it A-stuff and move thread A into it. When you start thread B you can manually file it in A-stuff. Likewise thread C. What then happens if you open an incoming message in thread A? Your context changes to show you all the threads in folder A-stuff so if need be you can quickly click on a message in one of the other threads in there if you need to check on something. What if you then get a message from fred whose only other messages are in some of these threads but which isn't immediately connected to any thread? It might be unrelated but just in case it is the program could off the option "File in A-stuff?" for you accept or decline. Then there's the incoming message which has the exact same subject header as thread B but no appropriate header lines to link it in - as I said elsewhere, something I've started seeing from a couple of Mac users recently. The program could prompt with a couple of options "File in A-stuff?" "Link to thread B?"
Right now I can, in a somewhat clunky way, do this with Seamonkey/Thunderbird message filters but it's very clunky compared to what it could be and it certainly doesn't automatically navigate to the folder with the thread in it.
As to cross-referencing, yes you would decide initially what cross referencing might be needed but you shouldn't then have to manually apply the cross-referencing rules to subsequent messages.
I'm not suggesting that an email client should be able to make your decisions for you but it should provide an organisational framework which is rich enough to offer you what you need and, once you've made a decision, it should be able to apply it automatically. Existing systems probably provide 70-80% of what's needed.
The other aspect is that the contents of your A-stuff folder are probably related to other stuff you're working on. You might have a specification that actually arrived in an email originally, notes on it, design documents, drawings etc. If you're anyway organised you'll have these in a folder in the OS sense. Wouldn't it be useful if, when you have that folder open with the icons to all those documents showing, there should also be an icon which, when clicked, is opened to show all the threads in the A-stuff folder without all the other clutter of an email client?
Biting the hand that feeds IT
