From: Charles Lindsey (chl@clerew.man.ac.uk)
Date: Thu Dec 04 2003 - 04:46:48 CST
In <3FCE108E.8070202@durham.ac.uk> Nick Boalch <n.g.boalch@durham.ac.uk> writes:
>Section 3.2.1.5 mandates that "Followup agents SHOULD trim message identifiers
>out of a References-header" where the number of message identifiers exceeds
>21. This seems to be an inconsistency with [USEFOR] section 8.6.4, which
>merely says that "Followup agents MAY trim References-headers which have grown
>to excessive length".
Yes, but it is normal for Usage to say SHOULD where Usefor merely says
MAY. Nothing breaks if you don't trim, but "Best Practice" is to do so
anyway.
>Also in this section, it's not clear to me whether the suggested trimming
>behaviour ("removing sufficient identifiers starting with the second so as to
>bring the total down to 21") is intended to work from the beginning or end of
>the References-header: i.e. does 'the second identifier' refer to the second
>identifier reading the References-header left-to-right (which would be the
>parent message of the immediate message being followed up) or the second
>identifier reading right-to-left (which would be the second message in the
>thread). Should this be clarified, or am I just dull?
Followup agents SHOULD trim message identifiers out of a References-
header but SHOULD NOT do so until the number of message identifiers
exceeds 21, at which time trimming SHOULD be done by removing
sufficient identifiers starting with the second from the left so as
to bring the total down to 21 (but the first message identifier MUST
NOT be trimmed). However, it would be wrong to assume that
References-headers containing more than 21 message identifiers will
not occur.
Is that better?
-- 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@clerew.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