From: John Stanley (stanley@peak.org)
Date: Wed Mar 31 2004 - 13:53:08 CST
Eivind Tagseth (eivindt@multinet.no):
>There seems to be several standpoints about this:
> 1. Create the specification as it should ideally be (i.e. no back
> reference in the subject), and hope that most people will
> upgrade to a conforming newsreader as soon as possible.
I don't think anyone is making this argument. I don't recall anyone
saying "prohibit it".
> Old newsreaders may behave strange when meeting news articles
> made by new newsreaders (they may believe that the subject changes
> even if it doesn't).
We cannot hold ourselves responsible for all the myriad ways that software
can be broken. If broken software makes assumptions about things it
doesn't have any way of knowing, when it could keep track of it on its
own, then that's the user's problem, not ours.
> Broken newsreaders will behave brokenly no matter what.
Yep. Time to stop worrying about them and get on with documenting
non-broken behaviour.
>I've probably left out something.
You've left out the simplest option: don't specify any structure in an
unstructured header. "Prohibit it" or "require it" are not the entire
spectrum.