From: John Stanley (stanley@peak.org)
Date: Fri Apr 23 2004 - 14:01:01 CDT
Charles Lindsey (chl@clerew.man.ac.uk):
>>>#3 *needs* to be in USEFOR, because it is saying that using anything other
>>>than "Re: " makes the followup agent non-compliant. Saying things like
>>>that is a proper thing to do in a standards document.
>>You must present a REASON for this to be a MUST NOT.
>Actually, it is proposed to be a SHOULD NOT, but yes, there needs to be a
>REASON.
No, the text you used above is clearly a MUST NOT, since you say that
anything other than "Re: " is non-conforming, and MUST NOT is the only
2119 imperative that has that meaning.
And yes, there needs to be a reason other than "because that's how we make
it non-conforming".
>It is you who is claiming that 95% of current user agents are broken,
>because they do not conform to your very narrow definition of how
>"threading" is done.
Stop putting words in my mouth, Charles. I've said no such thing, and you
know it. I've REPEATEDLY said that HOW A READING AGENT WANTS TO SORT
ARTICLES FOR DISPLAY IS OUTSIDE THE SCOPE OF THIS STANDARD. It can sort
them by day of week, astrological sign of the author, or any other damn
thing it wants to. Being outside the scope of this standard means that
an agent that sorts articles in alphabetical order of the right-most path
entry cannot be "broken" w.r.t. this standard, because we have no business
saying it is broken.
How you convert that simple statement of "none of our business" into
some crap about 95% of user agents being broken, I don't know.
Now, those agents that claim they are threading articles, and are telling
users that "this article is a sibling of that article" based on Subject
headers IS BROKEN, because our standard DOES specifiy how sibling
relationships are reported, and it DOES NOT involve the Subject header in
any way, shape, or form.
I'm sorry if you cannot grasp the difference between those two situations,
but until you do, your safest course of action is to STOP PUTTING WORDS IN
MY MOUTH. Here's a hint: every time your sentence contains the words "John
said" or "You said" (when replying to me), and you are NOT quoting what I
have said verbatim, then you are probably putting words in my mouth and
you should stop.
>The majority on this list have recognized that many (even most) user
>agents currently take some note of the presnce of "Re: "
So what? They can take "some note" of whatever they want to.
>Yes, it might be far better if followup agents did not insert any
>back-reference at all,
More straw men.
>so we have to write a standard that recognizes that it is still going to
>happen.
Of course we do. "Recognize it is still going to happen" does not mean we
have any requirement for RFC2119 language regarding it, all it requires is
a simple statement that some agents do this.
>Yes, you have repeated this many times. It has been answered many times.
No, it has not. Not substantively. The header is unstructured. Any answer
to that that does not take that fact into account is hand-waving.
>Exactly. Current practice is that "Re: " IS generally prepended, and user
>agents DO take note of it.
If that were ALL that was being said in this standard, we could have
gotten on to other matters a long time ago. YOU keep putting in mandates.
It is dishonest of you to imply that all the proposals you've made have
done is express that one sentence.
>Now, when are you going to tell us whether or not you can live with the
>compromise that has been proposed (with of without the exact wording that
>has been put forward)?
Pay attention, Charles. I've told you the explicit problems with the
proposed text, why it is wrong, and I've provided alternative wording that
does not have that problem. I've told you explicitely the problem with
your four point compromise, and why it is wrong. Furthermore, I CANNOT
tell you if I can live with the proposed text given that you want me to
answer "with or without the exact wording". I think I've been extremely
clear, to anyone who has been paying attention, that none of the proposals
you have made has been acceptable. I've used the wods "is not acceptable"
more than once, so the fact that you've missed them means you aren't
actually participating in this discussion, you just keep asking the same
answered question over and over.
Do not ask me again to approve of wording that YOU refuse to provide
in full form, or ask me to approve of wording "with or without the exact
wording".
>Actually, when looking through the WG archives yesterday, I came across a
>message from Seth that indicates that even good ol' trn takes note of the
>presence/absence of "Re: " in certain circumstances in order to fine tune
>the way that it presents the threads.
Goody for good old trn. It can "take note" of any damn thing it wants to.
That does not put a requirement upon us to put structure into an
unstructured header, nor any requirement for RFC2119 language regarding
it.
Eivind Tagseth (eivindt@multinet.no):
>If we standardize on attribution lines and quoting style,
Don't say this, even in jest. There are too many people who would assume
you really supported adding structure to article bodies as well as to the
unstructured Subject header.
Here, Charles, I do it once more for you. This is my proposed text for
item two of 8.6:
2. The Subject-content SHOULD be copied from the subject-content of the
precursor.
NOTE: Some reading agents expect the unencoded string "Re: " at
the beginning of the Subject-content of a followup, and consider
this when sorting articles for display. Further, most expect just
one instance of "Re: ", and do not treat any other string in this
manner. Followup agents may want to keep this in mind when
generating Subject-content for followups. Note that the SHOULD
requirement allows followup agents the freedom to prepend the
requisite string if they so desire.
That's it. It doesn't matter what "Re: " is an abbreviation for, so there
is no reason to talk about it. This documents current practice and gives
followup agent authors the freedom to continue the practice if they wish
to.
I'll also point out that the last sentence of the note is redundant, since
the definition of SHOULD in RFC2119 already tells readers that the
followup agent can do something besides simply copying the content if it
has a reason to.
And I'll point out that the only part of that that NEEDS to be in USEFOR
is the actual sentence for point 2. The NOTE can certainly be in USAGE,
since it is NOT a protocol issue, it is a usage issue.
And I'll point out that this text actually is neutral towards the use of
"Re: ", does not contradict RFC2822 or the ABNF in this draft, and
actually conveys the idea that Charles presents:
>Current practice is that "Re: " IS generally prepended, and user
>agents DO take note of it.