The first four drop boxes in this dialog enable you to rearrange how KRN sorts the messages on display. In each box you can choose from Subject, Score, Date, Sender, Number of Lines, or None. KRN will sort all messages by the criteria in the first drop box, and then if there are more than one post fitting that criteria, it will sort those messages by the second drop box's criteria (and so on.)
The default order is:
Subject
Score
Date
Sender
With this order, the following happens:
First all the messages are sorted in ascending order by subject.
For each subject, they are then sorted in ascending order by score.
For each group of messages within a subject that have the same score, these are now sorted by date, again in ascending order.
For all the messages with the same subject, score, and date, they are now sorted in ascending order by their sender
The checkbox "Use Threading" complicates things greatly with regard to sorting. Threading means that instead of just listing all the messages in order, as sorted (or unsorted if you selected "none" for all the boxes above!), KRN will first sort things into threads of related messages.
A thread begins with a new post to the newsgroup (easily spotted, a post without a "Re:" at the beginning.) As people reply to this post, KRN will place them in a hierarchal tree under this post. You can expand the tree by clicking on the + symbols beside a post. As people reply to the replies, the tree becomes more complex, and branches out. Under one post, may be many many subtrees or "sub threads".
KRN uses threading by default, as do most newsreaders. The sorting can be very complicated, but in the broadest terms, it means only your first selection, and possibly your second, in the sort criteria will have much effect. To be precise, using the default sort criteria as above, before any of sorting takes place, the articles in question would have to be replies to the same message - and most posts just don't get enough replies for this to have much effect. So in the above examples, first KRN will sort the messages into threads, and then it will sort the threads into Subject order. Only then will it start to sort the subthreads. So the first criteria has the largest effect, as the entire thread will be sorted by it.
![]() | In sorting, the "Re:" at the beginning of subjects has no effect, as it only indicates a reply and is not part of the actual subject. For example, "Re: ABC" will be sorted before "DEF", because the actual subject of the first post begins with A. |