From: John Stanley (stanley@peak.org)
Date: Thu Jun 05 2003 - 15:27:53 CDT
On Thu, 5 Jun 2003, Usenet News Support wrote:
> On Wed, 4 Jun 2003 stanley@peak.org wrote:
>
> > examination, and the bits on the wire are invisible. It takes some
> > kind of program.
>
> None of which add Re: to the subject posts with references
> AFAIK. Therefore, for my human reading convenience, it should be added at
> POST time.
Yes, this is about the correct level of requirement -- should. But who
says that your reading agent must use "Re: " to mark replies? Why is this
so important to you? I've found the (t)rn means of marking things to be
quite "human readable", and I've even been able to figure out the simple
relationship "presence of References header means this is a reply" when I
choose to vi an article.
> > > and Re: is useful.
> >
> > For what? ...
> Useful to the human reader.
Sigh. For what? Not for threading. Not as useful as the References header.
What is it useful to the human reader FOR? And more important, why is
whatever that use is not better served by the existing mandatory headers?
> They add it on POST,
Well, yes, that is the correct place for it to be added to the Subject.
That doesn't prohibit the reading agent from showing you in some way that
the article you are reading is a reply.
> The issue is not adding it on POST, it's having Re: presented to the human
> reader.
No, the issue is whether the existance of reading agents that choose to
thread on Subject instead of the References header requires an otherwise
unstructured header to have requirements placed on its content. The issue
is whether the existance of someone who chooses to use USENET-ignorant
software to read news mandates a requirement on the Subject header, or on
any other part of the standard, for that matter.
The question is whether the definition of the Subject header as found in
RFC 2822 is sufficient, or if news has some reason for a stricter
requirement. I claim there is none, for the reasons I've already given. I
would repeat that this is not an argument calling for "Re: " to be
prohibited or otherwise removed from service, but since you are
participating in this discussion I'll assume you've read my statements
about this already and understand that.
The issue YOU are talking about is SOLELY a client issue. Even though you
pretend not to have a reading agent between you and the articles, I
suspect you really do, even if it is nothing more than vi or cat. If you
choose a client that does not understand USENET format and does not
display articles in the manner you desire, then that is YOUR problem, not
USEFOR's. Your reading agent is free to put "Re: " at the front of the
subject of an article it displays to you, or it can display it in blinking
red 72 point font, if it wants to (and, to be pedantic in anticipation, if
your hardware supports it). It can do what (t)rn does and show an article
tree. What it does is up to the agent. More importantly, YOUR choice of an
ignorant client does not begin to meet the RFC-specified reasons for use
of MUST or MUST NOT terminology regarding the subject header.
USEFOR's responsibility is making the information about what articles
thread to another available to the clients, and we've met that by means of
the References header, which has been MANDATORY in replies for 15 years.
It is not USEFOR's responsibility to define how a client shows an article
to the reader, or what it must show when it does (even though there are
areas where we pretend to have such ability). You have the information
available to you, the human reader. How it is displayed to you is not our
problem, and not our responsibility.
I'll point out that if you think this IS our responsibility, then there
are a LOT of other things we are responsible for. If it is OUR
responsibility to make sure the reader's client shows him that an article
is a reply, then it must also be our responsibility to show the reader the
context of that reply, and the context of the start of the thread, as
well. Since we cannot rely on the client understanding anything about
USENET, we will have to mandate that any reply contains the parent
article, in full, and the first article in the thread. Not just the
message ids of those articles, since the client doesn't know how to get
those articles, the full content of both articles MUST be included.
We must also mandate that the Date header be presented in a format the
reader understands -- no matter what timezone he lives in. We cannot allow
any lines longer than the width of the narrowest display, since we cannot
assume the client knows how to wrap text at the right edge -- some of them
just truncate! And all this just so you don't have to use a USENET-aware
client to read your news.
If you want to argue that all of this is required, please do so. If not,
then explain why your choice of a dumb client puts any requirements upon
USEFOR at all.