From: Henry Spencer (henry@spsystems.net)
Date: Wed Jan 02 2002 - 12:12:57 CST
On Wed, 2 Jan 2002, Clive D.W. Feather wrote:
> > What I want outlawed is exactly what I specified: the user of X- headers
> > *AS COMMENTS*. That is, as material deliberately intended to be read only
> > by humans.
>
> Humans often want to attach some metadata to an article, visible to people
> who really care but not to those who just want to look at the main text.
> X- headers is the only approach we have at present.
Nonsense. Metadata is far more useful when it is labeled in a standard
way as to what it is, and we have a way of doing that: standard headers!
There are already several headers just for this purpose, e.g. Keywords,
Comments, Summary. The *right* approach to such metadata is standard
headers, not X-headers.
> Do we really want to
> try to outlaw this ? How successful are we likely to be ?
Nothing we can do is likely to effect rapid changes in header usage
net-wide. But I think we have a good chance of long-term success --
albeit at a glacial pace -- if we propose a better way of doing things.
Henry Spencer
henry@spsystems.net