From: Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu)
Date: Fri Sep 08 2000 - 01:34:39 CDT
Jim Brownfield <Jim_Brownfield@radical.com> writes:
> The reasons I would like to make this change is two-fold; a purist
> reason, and a practical reason.
> The purist reason is that I think the References field is being used for
> too many things and it should be split.
> The practical reason is that when postings are mixed between the "Son of
> 1036" mode and newsreaders that just truncate the references field,
> threading becomes very difficult. The References field needs to be a
> pure trace of the references to message ids.
I don't think that either purist reasons or "some newsreaders are broken"
are sufficient reason to change something that's been in existence,
basically the same, for as long as the References header and its snipping
properties. If we change the way it's handled, some newsreader will just
get that wrong. I'd much rather stick with existing practice with
clarifications.
-- Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>