Sorting threads ... again.

[Lars-Johan Liman]

Hi!

New to the list, but not to GNUS (close to 15 years), and certainly not
to Emacs (30+ years - TOPS-20, anyone? ;-).

Sorry if this is a FAQ. I often solve most of my problems by Googling,
but I've revisited the following one several times over several years,
but I still haven't solved it. Call me stupid, I've been called worse
things ... ;-)

Sorting threads.

I'd like to have my summary buffer sorted such that:

*) An entire thread is viewed as "one unit".

   The sorting key for the entire thread unit is the "tail" of the
   thread - the highest article number in the thread.

*) The sorting key for a "loose article" (which is not part of a thread)
   is its article number.

*) Thread units and loose articles are seen equal, and sorted in
   increasing order (highest article number last), something like this
   (exaggerated example):


!  1113: [The Boss            ] Announcement
!  1114: [My Friend           ] Thanks for ...
!A 1103: [Foo Bar             ] Issue 1
   1104:     <Baz Bump           > 
   1115:         [Mubbe Mupp       ]      <--- sorting key
   1116: [Customer            ] Invitation to ...
!A 1101: [Foo Bar             ] Issue 2
   1102:     <Baz Bump           > 
   1117:         [Mubbe Mupp       ]      <--- sorting key


I thought I'd be able to use something like

(setq gnus-thread-sort-functions
      '((not gnus-thread-sort-by-most-recent-number)))

... but it doesn't work. Nor does any other combination of the sorting
functions that I've tried.

Any ideas?

Also note that my groups are sometimes very large. My most frequented
group ("inbox-2016") sits at highest index = ~33000, with 12000+ of them
being "not deleted", so if there are any size limitations (besides
processing time) I need to know about, mentioning them would be welcome.
;-) Trying to read the source code, I see mixed recursion limitations of
5000, but I take them to be "size of ONE thread", not "size of group".
Me being wrong on that would explain some behaviour I've seen during my
attempts, though ...

                                Best regards,
                                  /Liman
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