From: J.B. Moreno (planb@newsreaders.com)
Date: Wed Jun 11 2003 - 01:36:38 CDT
On 6/10/03 3:32 PM, John Stanley at <stanley@peak.org> wrote:
> I'll start with a challenge to everyone who thinks this Re: hack needs RFC
> 2119 language: if it needs RFC2119 language to make it useful, then how
> has it achieved such widespread use without such language? And
> furthermore: given the existing lack of RFC2119 language concerning the
> "Re: " hack, what makes you imagine for a second that continuing with the
> same language will cause the "Re: " hack to go away?
son-of-1036 while never "officially" adopted, is considered by most/many to
be the defacto standard...
5.4. Subject
The Subject header's content (the "subject" of the article)
is a short phrase describing the topic of the article:
Subject-content = [ "Re: " ] nonblank-text
Encoded words MAY appear in this header.
If the article is a followup, the subject SHOULD begin with
"Re: " (a "back reference"). If the article is not a fol-
lowup, the subject MUST not begin with a back reference.
That looks like RFC2119 language to me.
As for it going away -- I'm not afraid of that, I'm afraid that people will
read what we end up with and then toss it in the garbage as being irrelevant
to the real world.
Leaving the issue of the back-reference aside for the moment, there's been
arguments over whether a header-name requires a space after the colon; we
can do one of three things, require it, forbid it, make it optional. If we
require it, no harm done, if we make it optional little harm is done as most
go ahead and do it anyway and those that don't soon learn better, but if we
forbid it, then great harm is done -- the people using the standard to write
software in the real world obey us, find out that it doesn't work, and then
stop using us as a reliable reference.
-- J.B. Moreno