On Tue, 10 Aug 2010 11
6
6 -0700, "Gene E. Bloch"
<not-me@other.invalid> wrote:
> As for the origin of "thread", if it's not just the obvious meaning and
> analogy, as in threading through a maze or threading a string of beads,
> then I am one who doesn't know the reason for calling them threads, and
> would like to learn it.
OK. It has to do with list processing. "List" is a technical term and
isn't just the ordinary use of the word. A list is a bunch of data
that has more than one sequence as follows:
1. The physical sequence of the records.
2. One or more logical sequences that are different from the physical
sequence.
So the messages in a newsgroup are a list. Their physical sequence is
the order in which they were posted. Their logical sequence is the way
messages in a "thread" are connected--e. g. this message follows
yours, the one I'm replying to, even though there are usually several
messages between them in the physical sequence.
So visualize each message as a shirt button, and think of these
buttons as parallel to each other in a row arranged in physical
sequence (date and time). Then think of a thread (this thread, for
example) as having all the buttons pertinent to it as connected by a
piece of thread that goes from buttonhole to buttonhole, skipping the
buttonholes in the messages that are not part of the thread.
So a "thread" *is* a thread.
Also note that (although it's not pertinent in a newsgroup) the
buttons have multiple buttonholes and can therefore participate in
multiple threads (in other words, have more than one logical
sequence).