From: Charles Lindsey (chl@clw.cs.man.ac.uk)
Date: Tue Mar 05 2002 - 05:22:40 CST
In <3C839B4F.5E9BA759@cisco.com> Martin Djernaes <djernaes@cisco.com> writes:
>My argument is that what you are doing, is to suggest that something which
>the user have control over, should be manipulated by the computer.
Not so. The computer creates the followup with the Subject line
Subject: Re: the original subject
The user then edits the text of his reply, during which he MAY edit the
Subject (even changing the "Re:"). For example
Subject: New subject (was original subject)
>Currently it's common, by a newreader, to insert Re: or something like that
>into the Subject line before letting the user edit the field. This behavior
>is not very friendly, since it's changing the content of the subject, but
>at least it's doing this change before letting the user do the final
>editing and send. A change should never happen after the user have approved
>the content (also not a language change, since the user expect to see the
>mail with exactly this look).
True, but our draft does not allow that behaviour.
>It's also common for some newsreaders to sort a thread based on a subject.
>Since the Subject line was made for humans to enter and edit, this can only
>be seen as an alternative functionality to the more computer friendly
>References field (or others with event more power).
And you can't do that sorting unless the Subject headers have adhered to
the "Re: " convention.
>Inserting anything else that Re: in front of a subject leave a few
>problems. The first problem is that this isn't pretty, but it's a human
>field and anyone can "edit" this to become "more pretty". Another problem
>is that this would break sorting by Subject, but since sorting by subject
>is a computer approach of understanding a field entered by humans, and this
>behavior must be seen as questionable as best. Finally, can pre pending of
>prefixes lead to "extra long lines", but since a computer is doing the
>prepend, it should never let the line exceed the maximum.
The fact is that some newsreaders sort by Subject, and some news readers
thread according to the References header, and doubtless other newsreaders
do other things as well.
It is not our job to dictate what newsreaders should do. But what is
written into our draft will provide the best chance that what they are
currently doing will continue to work correctly.
>Instead of using pseudo magic words/keys for Re: was: etc. the newsreader
>could keep an extra field in the header maintaining the original or last
>subject. If it's altering the subject with Re: it should keep the original
>subject in this alternative field. The same logic can be used for a
>previous subject (was), where the newsreader can insert the previous
>subject so others can display what the subject was.
Yes, that might be an interesting extension to deal with the "New subject
(was original subject)" situation. But not as a substitute for "Re: ".
-- Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------ Tel: +44 161 436 6131 Fax: +44 161 436 6133 Web: http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~chl Email: chl@clw.cs.man.ac.uk Snail: 5 Clerewood Ave, CHEADLE, SK8 3JU, U.K. PGP: 2C15F1A9 Fingerprint: 73 6D C2 51 93 A0 01 E7 65 E8 64 7E 14 A4 AB A5