RE: getting list emails out of order

["Bale, Dan" <D.Bale@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Title: Re: getting list emails out of order

Simon, your understanding of the timestamp is the same as mine.  Sorting by *Sent* is only as good as everyone's clock setting.  Not only do they have to have the time set correctly, but also their GMT offset as well.  Even then, I've seen some email on this list that was sent on January 1, 2000.  Go figure.

 

Dan Bale

-----Original Message-----
From: Simon Coulter
Sent: Mon 8/13/2001 8:33 PM
To: midrange-l@midrange.com
Cc:
Subject: Re: getting list emails out of order

h
Hello Dan,

You wrote:
>The incoming mail is being sorted date/time *received* and not by
>*sent*.  Before last week, I was sorting by *sent*, and it worked better
>than *received* sequence most of the time.

If I recall correctly the SENT timestamp is supposed to be GMT which would
make it more reliable for sequencing than received timestamp.  However, that
relies on people having their computer and/or mail program correctly
configured and from what I see that is not the case.  It seems that most
people do not have their timezone set correctly and thus their local time is
interpreted as GMT which basically stuffs up the entire sort process. 
(Notwithstanding mail programs that pay no attention to the timezone setting
anyway.)

Of course, that doesn't help with the vagaries of the Net where different
items may take different routes and thus later items may take a faster route
and arrive earlier (items in this sense are the complete mail item rather
than the TCP packets which may arrive in any order but are reassembled and
delivered in the proper order).  I see David mentioned in another note that
he is sending each item to 10 people at a time which I think would
contribute to the disordering sequence.

Regards,
Simon Coulter.