From: John Stanley (stanley@peak.org)
Date: Mon Apr 12 2004 - 13:39:46 CDT
Charles Lindsey (chl@clerew.man.ac.uk):
>Oh Dear! You seem to think that "no reference" means "Re: ",
How convenient that you elided the part of the text that was actually
being referred to, which was dealing with the ommission of a back
reference meaning "new thread". I have NEVER advocated that, no matter
what other text you want to twist into some pathetic attempt at proving
it.
> Of course, "no reference" means "no References header".
Which is not the same as "ommission of a back reference."
>So what you have just said here (again) is exactly what I said in the bit
>you quoted above.
No Charles, I said NOTHING about a missing "back reference". It is not
"exactly" what you said.
>Well I have published the full text,
Where? The last working draft I see on the website is dated Jan 28th for
USAGE and November 24th for USEFOR.
What you HAVE done it provided multiple different proposed paragraphs via
email, but then, there were more than one to pick from, and it was not the
complete text, it was just one or two paragraphs out of the whole.
>and its meaning has not changed
>significantly in the few tweaks I have applied since then.
According to you. What you may think is insignificant isn't binding on
anyone else, and your job as editor is not to produce a document that YOU
think does not differ significantly from what this group wants, it is to
produce a document that is EXACTLY what this group wants.
>Anyway, I am
>about to publish it again as it now stands, so you will have a full chance
>to declare your position.
Your email is dated ten days ago. Is your version of "about to" less than
or more than ten days?
>Lots of people
>participating in the thread then commented upon the various ways in which
>various agents had or had not mangled it further or split the thread or
>whatever.
A reading agent that splits a thread just because the Subject header is
truncated is broken. Let's stop pandering to broken software and let's
start expecting software to be fixed.
I asked:
>> How does a reading agent "enable" a header? Do you mean "be able to
>> display them"?
>Well that wording has been there for years, but ...
Well then, by all means, we are prevented from changing it to something
that is intelligible. Sorry to waste your time with suggested
improvements.
Now if you only were so fastidious about objecting to changes in other
text that has been around for years, and has passed last call, etc.