Geo Carncross wrote:
I happen find that to be about as easy as searching for anything else in Thunderbird.
That's not a positive affirmation. I could easily say look for a message by searching for a Received header that looks like this:
Received: from [193.129.90.57] (193-129-90-57.bdmedia.co.uk [193.129.90.57]) by pop.bdmedia.net (8.12.3/8.12.3/Debian-6.6) with ESMTP id j2FEbTX9013497 for dovecot@dovecot.org; Tue, 15 Mar 2005 14:37:30 GMT
which is just as unique, and just as unsupported by mail clients.
FWIW: Outlook and Outlook Express can also search Message-IDs. So can grep.
Yes, but since Outlook 2003, the Outlook client doesn't even _set_ a Message-ID at all and it relies on the SMTP or POP server to add one. And not all SMTP servers set a Message-ID, because you'll find out in RFC-2822 that Message-ID is an _optional_ field. There is a very important difference between "widely supported" and "part of a ratified standard."
Until such time as Message-ID's are supported by mail clients as a builtin feature (in the canonical URL form mid:12345blah@example.com probably, see RFC-1111), they will continue to be useless to _me_ personally, and I believe the vast majority of users. I'm done with this conversation.
John
-- John Peacock Director of Information Research and Technology Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group 4501 Forbes Boulevard Suite H Lanham, MD 20706 301-459-3366 x.5010 fax 301-429-5748