From: J.B. Moreno (planb@newsreaders.com)
Date: Mon Jul 16 2001 - 17:35:36 CDT
On 7/16/01 4:56 PM, sommar@kairos.kairos.algonet.se at
<sommar@kairos.kairos.algonet.se> wrote:
> Jean-Marc Desperrier <jean-marc.desperrier@certplus.com> writes:
>> What experience do you have with followup agent modifying subject ?
>> I think most standard agent wont't change anything, and those who will are
>> beyond
>> any hope of enhancement.
>
> As John mentioned MacSOUP changes unknown 8-bit to known RFC2047 encoding,
> and MacSOUP was one of the first to receive the GKNSA seal. It is not
> the only one in town that does this, I believe.
>
> The newsreader that I use, Xnews, does the opposite. It replaces RFC2047
> encoding with posting in pure 8-bit. While it makes the subject line
> more readable, it does make life worse for agents not capable of RFC2047.
> And Xnews is not the only to do so either.
Which is why the GNKSA stays out of it -- at least for the moment. There is
no absolutely definitive answer, there is no clear best COMMON practice
(although I agree with you as to what the best practice /should/ be) which
makes saying that any of the solutions are "wrong" a bit difficult.
We (USEFOR) on the other hand have the job of saying what WILL be the
definitive answer, and it's not beyond us to suggest what should be the BCP.
-snip-
>> The programs that don't understand RFC 2047 now will not adapt to UTF-8
>> either (within any short time frame at least).
>
> Not entirely correct. It is certainly true for a popular reader like
> Free Agent. However, I expect UTF-8 support for my mail reader long
> before RFC2047 support. To wit, I use mailx in a Telnet window, and
> all I need is UTF-8 support in my Telnet client.
Right, UTF8 can and does take place at the OS level (use Be for newsreading
and all of the clients are capable of handling UTF8).
-snip note-
> If it is non-utf8, then it is not legal UTF-8.
>
> I could accept such a note, but as John pointed out, we have something
> of the kind already.
>
> And it does not really replace the NOTE I suggested for Subject. That
> note is not about display, but leaving the subject line unchanged.
I have no problem with the intent, but it seems wordy.
I'd rather have something simpler that says the Subject should be unchanged
other than the addition of "Re: " and the optional correction of "Aw: " and
other "translated" back references. If the unchanged Subject is an opaque
sequence of bytes, then everything works as well as it can. You should only
worry about encoding when posting an "original" Subject (i.e. either a
totally new article or the user has manually changed the Subject to reflect
a topic change). This even applies to folding, although to a lesser degree.
-- J.B. Moreno