From: Erland Sommarskog (sommar@algonet.se)
Date: Sat Aug 10 2002 - 16:45:04 CDT
"Bernie Cosell" <bernie@fantasyfarm.com> writes:
> On 3 Aug 2002, at 19:53, Erland Sommarskog wrote:
> > Thus, Agent must be able to tell what is what already, to avoid their
> > users making fools of themselves.
>
> Actually, Agent does this now by the presence or absence of a
> "Newsgroups" header.
I seriously doubt that.
To wit: Newsgroups can appear both in mail and news messages. But despite
the repetition about the unifiction of News and Mail today, this is a
header which has fundamentally different meaning for the too. In Mail
it just informative, probably meaning "this message was also posted to
this group", or "this message was posted in reply to your posting in
this group" or "this is probably a submission to your moderated
newsgroup". In News, Newsgroups has a very strict meaning.
A combined news/mail agent MUST keep track of whether the message
originates from mail or from news. It must to so, because else it
could lure the user to reply to a mail in a public newsgroup.
Now, Agent is a well-reputed program, and I don't think would be so
seriously broken that it would tell a news and mail message apart
judging from the precense/absences of a certain header (save ones
it may on its own).
And if there are so seriously broken programs out there, that is a real
good argument for moving away from news headers fitting into mail
headers.
-- Erland Sommarskog, Stockholm, sommar@algonet.se