From: John Stanley (stanley@peak.org)
Date: Mon Apr 12 2004 - 13:22:15 CDT
<usenet-format@rkive.landfield.com>
(reason: 452 Insufficient system storage)
Henry Spencer (henry@spsystems.net):
>All the RFCs -- severely obsoletely though they both are -- regarding news
>article format specifically call for this sequence to be prepended to the
>Subject contents (unless overridden by the user) when preparing a
>followup.
This is not a 'definition' of a meaning for the string. "You can put this
at the start of the subject of a followup when creating the proto-article
for the user to edit ..." doesn't define the string to be the indicator of
a followup once the article is past the user. In fact, the part that says
"unless one is already there" pretty much removes any serious meaning from
that string, since the subject "Re: and other back variants" does not
contain a back-reference.
However, "The References header is mandatory in a followup and must not
appear in a non-followup" is a definition of the header to mean exactly
that.
> (Any meaning thus
>conveyed is not *reliable*, because a human poster can override the
>sequence's presence in a followup or add it to a non-followup, but
>information does not have to be absolutely reliable to be useful.)
Any "information" that can mean both of two opposing things is neither
reliable nor information. Since "Re: " can appear on a followup or a
non-followup, it cannot mean "this is a followup".
>The RFCs whose drafts we are working on at this moment could similarly
>define it so
The RFC we are working on could define a lot of things, but its been
through last call more than once already without any desire from anyone
to do so, so I question why the sudden interest in making a new definition
for an unstructured header.
>But it is the height of obstructionism to claim that they cannot do so
>because no other RFC has done so,
It is the height of disingenuity to imply that I have said that something
CANNOT be defined a certain way when what I have said is that is it NOT
defined that way and there has been no previous desire to do so.
>> Since the Subject header is not defined to carry such information in a
>> netnews environment...
>I'm actually inclined to agree with this, but only because you phrased it
>that exact way.
I'm glad you agree with a simple fact.
>The netnews Subject header, in the past, has not been
>defined clearly enough to say whether it carries such information -
That is true as far as it goes, but implies an untruth. It has not been
defined AT ALL to carry such information, not just "not been defined
clearly enough".
>- i.e.,
>it is *not defined to* carry such information.
Yes, that part is true on its own, but it is not "i.e.". Your first
statement that it is not "not defined clearly enough" is not the same as
"not defined".
>It is our job to define it. One way or the other.
It's our job to justify REDEFINING it, which carries a burden that hasn't
been met.
--i37J5tNF088096.1081365949/b.mail.peak.org--