----- Original Message -----
Sent: Monday, August 13, 2001 10:20
PM
Subject: 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.
midrange.com
