A tricky question in setting gnus-thread-sort-functions

[Leo]

Hi there,

I got a tricky question in setting gnus-thread-sort-functions. I'd like
top-level threads to sort by most recent number, i.e. a thread with the
most recent article should come first. But within each thread, the
articles should be sorted by number so that it is in a time ascending
order (roughly).

The reason I want this is so that when I reply to multiple articles
within a thread, the cited text appears in a correct order of time which
is essential for other people to understand.

Any idea how I may get gnus to do this?

The following is what I have tried.
--------------------------------

At the moment I am using

(setq gnus-thread-sort-functions '(gnus-thread-sort-by-most-recent-number))

In order to get what I want, gnus-thread-sort-by-most-recent-number
should only be used on the top-level threads and within each top-level
thread use gnus-thread-sort-by-number to sort all articles in it.

I have tried

(setq gnus-thread-sort-functions
      '(gnus-thread-sort-by-number gnus-thread-sort-by-most-recent-number))

An example of a thread is like this:

1  ! +|31-May| Leo             |3.8k|^^|* longlines-mode and visual-line-mode
2  !A |31-May| Deniz Dogan     |4.7k|  |+-> 
3  ! +|31-May| Leo             |4.3k|^^|  |-> 
4  !A |31-May| David Reitter   |5.0k|  |  | |-> 
5  ! +|31-May| Leo             |5.1k|^^|  | | +-> 
6  !A |31-May| Deniz Dogan     |5.4k|  |  | +-> 
7  !A |31-May| Miles Bader     |4.6k|  |  +-> 

But article at line 7 has a smaller number than article at line 3.

Best wishes,

Leo