From: Charles Lindsey (chl@clerew.man.ac.uk)
Date: Fri Jun 13 2003 - 04:29:59 CDT
In <20030612171426.O18769@dora.tertius.net.au> Thorfinn <thorfinn@tertius.net.au> writes:
>No, it doesn't constitute a terrible interoperability problem, or even
>"harm", to not do it. That's why my position is that we should talk
>about it in USEAGE, not USEFOR, and that we don't really need to put
>conditions on any Agents except for Followup Agents.
Almost, but not quite. It does no "harm" not to use the "Re: " convention.
But it DOES do "harm" to use the convention incorrectly. So there is a
case for some minimal wording in USEFOR to stop the incorrect usage. I
agree that much stronger things can and should be said in USEAGE.
>Okay. I've poked RFC2822, just to refresh my memory... Yeps. It says
>"MAY" and "ought"... And doesn't say anything about the brokenness of
>"Sv: ", and its ilk.
No, but it does mention that "re" come from the Latin, and the reason that
was put there (I think I had some part in it at the time, since our own
original wording on the matter dates from then) was to indicate why
translation into other languages was silly.
Anyway, the only real difference between RFC 2822 and the text I posted
here a few days ago is that the "ought" in RFC 2822 becomes "MUST" in my
text (I could easily be persuaded to downgrade it to SHOULD).
>I don't think that language is strong enough, given that there *is* a
>functional difference between having a well-adhered to "Subject: Re: "
>method, and not. I think we should use RFC2119 language, and we should
>do so in USEAGE.
It is not entirely clear what RFC 2119 wording means in an Informational
document. In a Standards-track document, MUST/SHOULD NOT means that
something technically nasty may happen if you break it. I _think_ its
meaning in an Informational document is "a lot of people will be pissed
of if your break it". I tried to express that in the preamble to USEAGE
(but more politely). See
http://www.landfield.com/usefor/drafts/useage_1-4.-1.00
but nobody has commented on that.
-- 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