So, how complicated would it be to add emailing out a threaded version of the digest instead of the 'as sent' time stamp ordered version that is now on offer?

If i'm not mistaken (which i may be) it would require sending the digest as HTML, instead of plain text, in order to get the nesting indentation. If we were to reuse the forum's hierarchical view, that HTML transformation would generate links and styling which would not work as-is in an email export. All links would need to be made absolute and the whole site's skin's css would need to be exported along with the HTML because we have no way of selectivity emitting just subsets of it.

And then there's the problem that any given part of a digest can be a part of a completely different thread. How do you render an arbitrary number of partial threads in a sensible way?

i.e. there's a lot more to it than simply reordering the collected posts.

(Pardon brevity... writing from a phone.)

You might want to consider getting individual messages instead of the digest.

IIRC the individual messages have a valid in-reply-to header that can be used by your mail program to thread the messages. The ability to see a threaded view depends on your email client (IIRC outlook can't do it). Thunderbird and maybe GMail can do it along with a host of command line email readers.

Another possibility is to read it using RSS. Sadly you won't get threading (it looks like neither RSS nor ATOM formats support fields for this). But with a good reader, it may be better than email.

IMO the best way to read material like this is with a threading newsreader, but those days are long done.

Stephan's concerns with HTML in email are valid. Email readers often do not handle CSS and other web stuff well. For example, using something other than tables to layout HTML email is a recent improvement.

Thankyou for the prompt response folks.

your responses are informative from a technical perspective (i am learning how CSS get's used in the Fossil UI) and from a QA perspective ( Once, again, i have left out vital information that exists only in my mind. ;-) ).

I am not looking for a reproduction of the fossil thread UI.

What I am looking for a view that looks almost exactly like the current view, only it has 'unique'd' the subject lines so that only the initial post appear in each digest mail that contains posts relevant to the thread.

An added but not essential feature would be to decorate the ones that have more than one post in them - i think some people would want to know it but for me it's not essential - i see something that i think i should read and if i click on it to discover multiple posts on the topic then its a pleasant surprise and so much for the better.

I would point out that this feature would shrink the amount of data sent out to the collection of subscribers and thus infinitesimally dimimish our collective contribution to the heat death of the universe. :-)

Tnx for reading!

johnu