From: John Stanley (stanley@peak.org)
Date: Thu May 01 2003 - 16:43:36 CDT
On Thu, 1 May 2003, Pete Resnick wrote:
I don't need duplicates of messages to the list.
> prepended to subjects. The other is whether we should say that it
> MUST NOT be anything other than "Re :".
If it is an unstructured header, you cannot say that it MUST NOT be
anything other than "Re: ". How do you rationalize telling people that
"this is unstructured" and "here's the structure to use..."? That's
contradictory.
> author, and you can sort by subject. Sometimes you don't all of the
> messages in a thread; you only want the ones that have identical
> "Subject:" fields.
Well, "Re: foo" and "foo" are not identical. Without References, you don't
know that the two are related in any way. How many times have you seen
someone use a Subject like "I have a question", or just "help!". Which
"Re: help!" does THIS message go with, and how do you know?
> Sometimes people run stupid clients that don't
> properly formulate the "References:",
Oh, now we're writing standards for people who write deliberately broken
clients.
> subjects. It is current common practice WHETHER OR NOT WE THINK IT IS
> STUPID.
Since you are the first one to make this statement, may we assume you
think it is stupid?
> We are not traffic cops; we're traffic engineers. We can't give out
> citations for jaywalking; we have no way to stop them from doing so.
Well, we might as well just disband then, since we cannot write citations
for any of the MUST NOTs that are violated in any standard.
The point remains, Charles was assuming that "Re: " was the correct way to
do things and thus it must be documented, and the discussion is actually
about whether "Re: " is correct to begin with. Of course, if you assume
the result, you don't need to discuss anything or support your position.
> now.) But it is also absolutely incumbent on us to say that "Re: " is
> used,
No, it isn't. Nor is it absolutely incumbent on us to say that sometimes
people use the word "frankly" in an article, nor are we required to say
anything about what words might appear in a keywords header. Once we say
"unstructured", then any discussion of structure is useless.
> "Re: ", and that there are lots of things out there that expect only
> "Re :" and no other string
Then there are a lot of really badly broken agents, since, as an
unstructured field, there are a nearly infinite number of other strings
they might find. They might even find "Sv: " or, God forbid, "ADV: ".
> and that if you're going to prepend
> something to the message, it better only ever be "Re: ".
It better be that OR WHAT? You gonna write them a citation for using
something else?
> Given that this is dicussing the contents of a clearly unstructured
> field, I think this belongs in USAGE and not in the syntax document.
If it is clearly unstructured, then trying to claim that the only thing
you better ever put at the front of a Subject is "Re: " is patently
absurd.