From: Usenet News Support (support@prodigy.net)
Date: Mon Jun 16 2003 - 17:38:09 CDT
On Wed, 11 Jun 2003, Thorfinn wrote:
> On Mon 09 Jun 2003 at 01:21:35PM -0700, in <Pine.LNX.4.53.0306091226180.10379@a>,
> John Stanley <stanley@peak.org> wrote:
> > The truth is, under some fairly common conditions, the References header
> > contains ALL of the information that the "Re: " hack contains, plus more,
> > and under some fairly common conditions, relying on the "Re: " hack will
> > get things completely wrong. And, the truth is, the things that will "work
> > better" are things that are USENET-ignorant and have chosen to be that
> > way.
>
> Nope. See above.
>
> > > I fail to see what will work better in any way without it.
> > Who the fuck keeps talking about doing without it, other than you and
> > Charles?
>
> Err, *you*, apparently, at least by implication. If you say:
>
> 1. "References: " does everything that "Subject: Re: " does.
> 2. We MUST NOT say anything about the field text of "Subject: "
>
> that implies that "Subject: Re: " is not necessary (because it's
> completely redundant), and should be done away with.
>
> We *are* publishing a document called USEAGE... if we don't put "usage"
> things in there, then what on earth point is having it in the first
> place?
> However, just for the record, that position is now, especially since the
> revelation described at the top of this message, as follows:
>
> 1. I definitely want USEXXX to require, at least as a SHOULD, the way
> that "Subject: Re: " is to be handled by followup agents, and to
> require, at least as a "SHOULD NOT automatically generate", stuff like
> "Re: Re: " and "Sv: ". The wording that Charles posted a short while
> ago, I'd be entirely happy with.
>
>
> 2. I'm entirely happy for the requirement to be in USEAGE, rather than
> USEFOR, and am leaning strongly on the side of "Put it in USEAGE".
Since you have made the point about existing scoring filters, why have it
off in USAGE? It does have an effect of the behaviour of existing software
to do it as the woding suggests.
> 4. I think we should be silent on what a Reading Agent (or any other
> agent, including gatewaying ones) does with "Subject: Re: ", since it
> doesn't matter all that much, and reading agents are generally free to
> determine their own functionality. It doesn't terribly harm usenet as a
> whole if a specific reading agent is broken. There are plenty of good
> alternatives that exist out there.
Sounds reasonable, people do what they want to do, and will use the reader
they like. Which is why people persist in writing new ones.
-- bill davidsen SBC/Prodigy Yorktown Heights NY data center Project Leader, USENET news http://newsgroups.news.prodigy.com