From: Boris 'pi' Piwinger (3.14@logic.univie.ac.at)
Date: Tue Apr 15 2003 - 01:48:02 CDT
Charles Lindsey <chl@cs.man.ac.uk> wrote:
>Subject: Re: draft-ietf-usefor-article-10.txt
This is an interesting example of my point below;-)
>> >4.2.3. White Space and Continuations
>>
>> > Approved: modname@modsite.example
>> > (Moderator of example.foo.bar)
>>
>> This seems to be a bad example. As explained CRLF is
>>
>> inserted, but actually also two additional spaces are added
>> in the example. Clearly, it does not hurt here, just for the
>> sake of correctness.
>>
>> Since there has been confusion how to unfold correctly, this
>> could be made even more explicit here.
>
>OK, I have changed the indent to just a single SP.
Good. Do you think there should be some very clear remark
how to unfold? Something along that line: (how to recognize
folding) In this case the CRLF and only the CRLF is to be
removed.
>> >5.4. Subject
>>
>> > Followup agents MAY remove strings that are known to be used
>> > erroneously as back-reference (such as "Re(2): ", "Re:", "RE: ", or
>> > "Sv: ") from the Subject-content when composing the subject of a
>> > followup, and add a correct back-reference in front of the result.
>>
>> Actually some program (Outlook Express) removes anything up ...
>
>Yes, it was a long time ago we wrote that. We knew that there were all
>sorts of broken implementations around - too many to list. So we just
>set out the *Proper* way to do it.
So maybe also the *know* should be made stronger.
>> > In the following examples, please note that only "Re: " is mandated
>> > by this standard. "was: " is a convention used by many English-
>> > speaking posters to signal a change in subject matter. Software can
>> > always recognize such changes from the References-header.
>
>And we discussed that one too, and decided it was best left as a
>convention (note that some software does try to parse the "Re: ", which
>is why it is useful to try and do it right.
OK, could we at least suggest to use " (was: " and nothing
else as well as removing it?
>However, our future plans include splitting off all the "convention"
>stuff into a separate "Good Netkeeping" informational RFC, so that would
>be a good time to revisit this issue if people want to take it further.
I think, if we mention it -- what I appreciate -- we should
do it right in the first place.
>> I don't understand the sentence " Software can always
>> recognize such changes from the References-header." Does
>> that mean that the software can determine that it is a
>> followup?
>
>You can always recognize a followup from the presence of a References
>header. So even if a followup changes the Subject, and removes any
>"Re: ", you can still detect that it was a folluwup by looking at the
>References header (and you can even locate the precursor that way).
OK, so I got it right. Maybe the above sentence can be
improved.
pi