From: Bruce Lilly (blilly@erols.com)
Date: Mon Jun 16 2003 - 07:07:44 CDT
Seth Breidbart wrote:
>>>It enables someone who has access to an article *without access to its
>>>parent article* to be able to tell if the subject line has been changed.
>>
>>Maybe it's just because it's late, but I don't follow your argument.
>>
>>Case 1:
>>parent article has
>> Subject: Re: foo
>>child article has
>> Subject: Re: foo
>>
>>Case 2
>>parent article has
>> Subject: Re: foo
>>child article has
>> Subject: Re: bar
>>
>>and (as indicated by parent/child) the child article in each case has
>>a References field pointing to the message ID of the parent.
>>
>>Now, please explain exactly how "*without access to its parent article*"
>>you are "able to tell if the subject line has been changed".
>
>
> If Re: were being used correctly, in Case 2, the child article would
> have "Subject: bar" or perhaps "Subject: bar (was: Re: foo)" or
> "Subject: bar (was: foo)".
"used correctly" doesn't apply to unstructured fields which can be edited
by the user. You're assuming that no user will ever edit the Subject, and
that's not a valid assumption. You can try to mandate that UAs prevent
users from editing the subject on follow-ups, but such a requirement would
almost certainly be ignored by software authors.