From: Bruce Lilly (blilly@erols.com)
Date: Fri May 02 2003 - 12:17:00 CDT
Charles Lindsey wrote:
> In <3EAEE0EC.3070307@Sonietta.blilly.com> Bruce Lilly <blilly@erols.com> writes:
>
>
>>If the "Re: " hack is removed, i.e. Subject is truly unstructured
>>and software authors are discouraged from prepending "Re: " while
>>being required to use References, how exactly is interoperability
>>affected?
>
>
> Yes, but why do you want to remove a feature,
It's not a feature, it's a disgusting hack. And you haven't answered
the question; if you cannot document an interoperability issue, please
retract your claim.
> And you want to replace it by a feature (the References header)
News flash: References already exists.
> which is
> not usually displayed by reading agents, and which is inconvenient for
> users to use and understand (though it is fine for automatic processing,
> which it was intended for).
It *may* be _indicated_ (e.g. by some icon or by *displaying* some
possibly localized indication with the subject). May UAs do use references
and do provide such an indication.
>>1. Removing "Re: " does NOT necessarily give a "base subject":
>> Subject: Re: is an anachronism
>> is not a follow-up.
>
>
> So?
You claimed -- incorrectly -- that it did.
>>>IOW,
>>>we do not want to impose a mess such as is proposed in
>>>draft-ietf-imapext-sort-11.txt, which endeavours to cope with every
>>>variant of "Re" that has ever appeared anywhere.
No, that's what happens when hacks like "Re: ", "FW: ", etc. take hold.
The "mess" is a direct result of the hacks.