From: Charles Lindsey (chl@clerew.man.ac.uk)
Date: Mon Mar 29 2004 - 08:09:52 CST
In <40661463.8000103@erols.com> Bruce Lilly <blilly@erols.com> writes:
>Charles Lindsey wrote:
>> I have changed "taken" to "copied", if that makes you any happier. I see
>> no need for "verbatim", since that is the normal meaning of "copied" in
>> the absence of any other qualification. No, there are no transformations.
>> Why should you suppose that there would be?
>"possibly preceded by [...] 'Re: '" certainly is a transformation.
Yes, but we were dicussing transformation in the "taking" (now "copying")
phase.
>Changes to line folding, comments (in structured fields), charsets,
>languages, encoding algorithms in encoded-words (where allowed) etc.
>either should be explicitly allowed (as transformations) or
>explicitly prohibited.
Those are all issues to be considered by the agent when it come to post
the article after the user has done any editing he fancies upon the
default headers copied from the precursor. At that point, it is just
behaving as a posting agent. But some comment on the matter might be
appropriate in USEAGE.
> When using "copied" in the context of taking
>*field body* content from one field and using it as the *field body*
>content of another field, we should be clear that that is what is meant,
>since the field name is different. Else one is likely to see
> Newsgroups: Followup-To: foo.example
>etc. from naive implementations.
You have a strange idea of "likely", especially as that header is
syntactically incorrect. You are asking for a lot of extra verbiage to
prevent what would be totally bizarre misreadings of the text.
>That doesn't address the case (which you most recently introduced) of
>a followup to multiple messages. Nor is there an explicit provision
>for rejection of a proto-article containing "poster" along with newsgroup
>names, nor is there any provision for excluding "poster" as a newsgroup
>name or newsgroup name component.
"poster" is forbidden as a newsgroup-name in 5.5.1. As a component, it
would be allowed.
>You have introduced the topic, which has been part of this WG discussion.
>Any proposed wording for the next revision of the draft should either
>address it or note clearly that it is a known technical omission.
Introducing the topic does not suddenly cause it to become a feature of
Netnews. But I note that RFC 2822 contains wording to indicate that it is
an unresolved issue. So I have written, after the first paragraph of 8.6:
NOTE: There is no provision in this standard for a followup to
have more than one precursor (though it might be permitted in
some future extension).
>>>Nor has
>>>the relationship between Followup-To and Mail-Copies-To been addressed,
>>>either for a followup to a single message, or for a followup to multiple
>>>messages.
>That still falls short of complete clarity, and is still unnecessary;
>we could easily combine email address(es) into Followup-To (eliminating
>Mail-Copies-To) since every email address contains '@', which can never
>appear in a newsgroup name and does not appear in "poster".
We are constrained by existing usage in both the Followup-To and
Mail-Copies-To headers. I hear no serious proposal to change that.
>>>> 2. The content of the Subject-header SHOULD by default be taken from
>>>> that of the precursor's Subject-header, possibly preceded by the
>>>> back-reference "Re: " (case sensitive), unless it already begins
>>>> with such a "Re: ".
>"the back-reference 'Re: '" implies that all occurrences of "Re: " are
>"back-references", and that is not true.
That is not what it says, so it cannot be what it implies. However, the
intention is that it is to be permitted to prepend the string "Re: " only
where that string was not already present.
The term "back-reference" is not in widespread use, being invented only
for the purposes of this draft, and the only place where it is used is
here in 8.6 (apart from one mention in 5.4). However, it is still handy to
have it, and it will be (is) useful in USEAGE. So here is a slightly
changed wording:
2. The content of the Subject-header SHOULD by default be copied
from that of the precursor's Subject-header, possibly preceded
by the case sensitive string "Re: " (known as a "back-
reference") unless it already begins with that string.
Clearer?
>> Can you live with that wording? Yes, or No?
>In the syntax/semantics document: No. In the network operations
>document: No. In a practices document which is not intended to be
>a Proposed Standard: perhaps with some modification.
Noted.
>>>> NOTE: The practice of prepending such a "Re: " (which is an
>>>> abbreviation for the Latin "In re", ...
>>
>> I am not aware that Russ has noted any such thing (indeed, he explicitly
>> said he had no problem with including an explanation of its Latin origin).
>Then you have apparently ignored what he said in <87y8pvgury.fsf@windlord.stanford.edu>:
>"Yes. "Re" isn't Latin. That entire line of discussion is inherently
>absurd. It's derived from a Latin term, but it's used in both Usenet and
>e-mail as an arbitrary label, not as a Latin word."
And I note that he said that in response to your ridiculous assertion that
anything not in upper case could not possibly be in Latin.
The main point of mentioning it in that NOTE is to make it clear that it
is language-neutral, at least insofar as European languages are concerned
>> But, in any case, that wording is in a NOTE and is not normative. It
>> serves to explain to the reader the origin of the usage.
>That might be useful in a non-normative practices document, but is
>out of place in a Proposed Standard, whether for syntax/semantics or
>network operations.
Then why does RFC 2822 mention it (modulo a small error in Latin
grammar)?
>> The only reason it is made case sensitive here is that much existing
>> software treats it as such. One might regret that, but it is so.
>Not all existing software treats it as such, indeed I suspect that most
>existing software treats it as case-insensitive. Moreover, one of the
>three most widely used followup agents generates "RE: " (N.B. all
>upper-case
It you want to start a separate discussion as to whether you want to allow
"Re: " to be case insensitive, then please do so, and the WG can consider
it. It is a side issue so far as the present issue is concerned. My
understanding is that many, if not most, agents treat it as case
sensitive. Since you seem primarily concerned with deprecating the
practice entirely (and even I would be happy to see it phased out), I
cannot understand why you should also want to inflict an additional burden
on existing agents to treat it case insensitively.
-- Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------ Tel: +44 161 436 6131 Fax: +44 161 436 6133 Web: http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~chl Email: chl@clerew.man.ac.uk Snail: 5 Clerewood Ave, CHEADLE, SK8 3JU, U.K. PGP: 2C15F1A9 Fingerprint: 73 6D C2 51 93 A0 01 E7 65 E8 64 7E 14 A4 AB A5