From: Clive D.W. Feather (clive@demon.net)
Date: Thu Jan 04 2001 - 05:03:02 CST
Charles Lindsey said:
> >> It is a common practice for followup agents to enable the
> >> incorporation of the followed-up article (the "precursor") as a
> >> quotation. This SHOULD be done by prefacing each line of the quoted
> >> text (even if it is empty) with the character ">" (or perhaps with
> >> "> " in the case of a previously unquoted line).
>> The first SHOULD is an obvious case of Ought. At least I fail to see
>> that we can convice IETF that an interoperability case at stake.
>
> I don't think I agree there. There is a lot of software around that does
> useful things when it finds lines starting with 1 or more '>'s.
I agree with Charles - this is a SHOULD.
> >> Followup agents, when incorporating quoted text from a precursor,
> >> SHOULD NOT include the signature in the quotation.
> >> [X13. SHOULD NOT -> Ought Not???
>> X13 is no interoperability, so it must be Ought Not.
>
> Hmmm! More opinions? I left it as a SHOULD NOT because, although it is an
> act of the user's agent, and an overridable one at that, it does produce
> effects which are externally visible, and therefore of concern to people
> other than that user.
I do feel that a signature is a separate part of the message, so this
should be a SHOULD NOT. However, I wouldn't die in the ditch for it.
-- Clive D.W. Feather | Work: <clive@demon.net> | Tel: +44 20 8371 1138 Internet Expert | Home: <clive@davros.org> | Fax: +44 20 8371 1037 Demon Internet | WWW: http://www.davros.org | DFax: +44 20 8371 4037 Thus plc | | Mobile: +44 7973 377646