From: Charles Lindsey (chl@clerew.man.ac.uk)
Date: Sat Jun 07 2003 - 14:17:11 CDT
Although a few people wanted to remove all mention of "Re: " from
the draft, the majority who responded wanted to keep it, at least to
show how to use it properly. The point is taken that it need not be
obligatory for followup agents to include it - just that they must do it
properly if they do. The point is also taken that it is ridiculous to
forbid a double "Re: " syntactically, given that the poster can always
choose to edit it in himself (if he wants to be awkward).
So here is my currently proposed text, which is based on the previous
non-syntactic version. Note the suggestion that some of this should
really go in chapter 8, but that is for later.
The Subject-header contains a short string identifying the topic of
the message. This is an inheritable header (4.2.5.2), normally to be
copied into the Subject-header of any followup.
header =/ Subject-header
Subject-header = "Subject" ":" SP Subject-content
Subject-content = unstructured
NOTE: The syntax of unstructured differs from that prescribed in
[RFC 2822], so ensuring that the Subject-content is not
permitted to be completely empty, or to consist of WSP only (see
remarks in 4.2.6 concerning undesirable headers).
Followup agents MAY (and usually will) prepend the back-reference
"Re: " (which is case sensitive) to the Subject-content of the
precursor when preparing the followup (unless that precursor is
itself a followup with "Re: " already present in its Subject-
content).
NOTE: this is merely the initial setting of the Subject-header
of the followup; the poster is of course at liberty to edit it
further.
Followup agents MUST NOT use any other string except "Re: " as a
back-reference, and specifically NOT a translation of "Re: " into a
local language, and they MUST NOT prepend a "Re: " if one is already
present.
NOTE: "Re" is an abbreviation for the Latin "In re", meaning "in
the matter of", and not an abbreviation of "Reference" as is
sometimes erroneously supposed. Reading agents often take note
of a single "Re: " at the beginning of a Subject-content (for
example, in order to display a list of articles sorted by
Subject). These restrictions ensure that reading agents have no
need to recognize more than a single occurrence of "Re: ".
[The above texts should probably be moved to the "Duties of a Followup
Agent" in Chapter 8 in a future draft.]
In the USEAGE document, I propose to add the following:
Although the addition of the back-reference "Re: " is not required,
it is the normal practice, and followup agents SHOULD do it.
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.
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