Re: Message Attributes (considered harmful)

[Laird Breyer <laird@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Dec 17 2004, Keith Moore wrote:
> 
> however message headers were originally intended for use by the author 
> or his user agent.  a couple of exceptions were made for MTAs 
> (Received) and delivery agents (Return-Path).  now things have gotten 
> out of hand, and we have everybody and his brother scribbling on the 
> message, so much that it's hard for the recipient (or his user agent) 
> to make sense of it.
> 

Very interesting. Incidentally, I had been under the impression that
the exceptions you mention were actally part of the original
intention, ie that the header area was supposed to be a catchall for
anything that isn't body content.

> what we need IMHO is something akin to an annotation facility in IMAP 
> and/or POP, that stores the annotations separately from the actual 
> message.

A few thoughts (or one single thought anyway) which come to mind:

Such an external facility won't make the annotations readily
transferable, or rather it leaves the door wide open for ad-hoc
transfer mechanisms. Full messages are easily transferred by
copying. 

Whether in fact annotations should be transferable in sync
with a message is a separate question perhaps worth debating?


-- 
Laird Breyer.