From: Usenet News Support (support@deathstar.prodigy.com)
Date: Tue Apr 06 2004 - 10:41:56 CDT
On Fri, 19 Mar 2004, Nick Boalch wrote:
> Okay, reworded suggestion:
>
> The Subject-header SHOULD be initialized from the precursor's
> Subject-header, with the addition of an initial back-reference
> if no such string is already present. The back-reference "Re: "
> (case sensitive) is in most common use; other localised forms of
> back-reference are not explicitly forbidden but are best avoided
> to prevent interoperability problems. Posting agents MAY strip
> other forms of back-reference and replace them with "Re: ".
I think you want SHOULD on the precursor and MAY on any diddling with
precursors. That makes it a "specified optional behaviour," if you like
that term.
>
> A considerable disadvantage of this wording is that, in not making other forms
> of back-reference illegal it lays the onus on working out what is and what is
> not a back-reference firmly on the UA; this is probably something we want to
> avoid.
Nah, that's what they will do anyway. We won't agree on what to strip or
what to leave, people will ignore it in some cases and do more in
others. I think the wording is fine WRT that topic, it doesn't forbid
things in existing code.
>
> I personally would like to avoid prescribing the use of one particular form of
> back-reference, as I dislike the idea of imposing linguistic fascism on the
> specification, at least as far as avoiding it is possible: I /would/ like to
> allow local variants of Re: if at all possible. However, this is obviously
> something that has been discussed before and the consensus has been to adopt
> Re: as the One True Back-reference, so I'll shut up now. :-)
Bear in mind that the root is Latin, not English. Unless someone suggests
using another dead language it actually avoids "my language is as good as
yours" thinking, and describes the most common current practice.
-- bill davidsen SBC/Prodigy Yorktown Heights NY data center Project Leader, USENET news http://newsgroups.news.prodigy.com Please send usenet-related mail to news-support@prodigy.net