From: Bruce Lilly (blilly@erols.com)
Date: Wed Jun 18 2003 - 07:26:37 CDT
Charles Lindsey wrote:
> In <Pine.LNX.4.53.0306121726340.14784@a.shell.peak.org> John Stanley
> <stanley@peak.org> writes:
>
>
>>As late as June 13, Charles Lindsey (chl@clerew.man.ac.uk):
>>Until you can support the change to the definition, it should not be made.
>>Until you can provide some reason for the RFC2119-style language, it does
>>not belong.
>
>
> I have provided those reasons. I see no need to repeat them.
No, you stated "there is software around that will do the
wrong thing (or fail to do the right thing) if it is ignored",
which is not only hopelessly vague, it does not address the issue
of the RFC 2119 requirements for use of MUST/MUST NOT.
You appear to (continue to) be talking about UAs munging the
subject field body for the purpose of sorting for display, which
is not an interoperability issue, and does not warrant use of
MUST or MUST NOT. There simply is no issue w.r.t. "Re: " that
warrants use of such wording; if some transport software does
something based on the content of an unstructured field, it is
broken and irrelevant. What some UA software author chooses to
do with an unstructured field for purposes of display (aside from
what is required by RFC 2047) is neither an interoperability issue
nor an issue that belongs in the syntax and semantics document.
It is no more appropriate than requirements on the content of an
Organization field, a Comments field, or a Content-Description field
(all of which are unstructured).