🚀 go-pugleaf

Tim Pierce discusses the fundamental organization of threads inside trn.
Since the presenting question for this discussion, as well as my response,
was a usage question, not one of internals, it will help if I define the
terms I'm using.

When I say "topic" I mean the subject displayed in the list presented
by trn on entering a newsgroup in the "normal" way.

It is:
letter to access a thread; blank for selected or not (+), number of
messages, topic of each message.

I call a "thread" a group of messages identified by a single access letter.

The problem has been that until a particular bug was fixed (recently,
according to the author of the patch, who posted in a related newsgroup),
when one started a new topic "Are you starting a new topic?", trn
displayed the new topic name under the same letter as the existing
"thread." Thus one couldn't just read such new topics by selecting
a thread letter, one got the new messages in the "old" topic as well.

With the patch, trn 2.2 now gives the "new topic" a separate letter of its
own.

As to the above nomenclature, as far as a user is concerned, it's
this display that identifies "threads" and "topics" and with which
he works, regardless of what is going on inside trn, and regardless
of what a more skilled manipulator of the software can do with the
other codes or the setup file of trn.