From: Bill Davidsen (davidsen@tmr.com)
Date: Tue Aug 03 2004 - 09:55:18 CDT
Bruce Lilly wrote:
> Seth Breidbart wrote:
>
>
>>In the typical example we're looking at (multi-part FAQs),
>>we seem to agree that they should, the issue is how to handle the
>>wording.
>
>
> Let's go back to the original definitions of the use of the In-Reply-To
> and References header fields (RFC 724):
>
> b. In-Reply-To:
>
> The contents of this field identify previous correspondence
> which this message answers. If message identifiers are used
> in this field, they should be enclosed in angle brackets (<>).
>
> c. References:
>
> The contents of this field identify other correspondence which
> this message references. If message identifiers are used,
> they should be enclosed in angle brackets (<>).
>
> "other correspondence" is sufficiently broad to cover multi-part FAQs,
> etc. Successors to RFC 724 haven't appreciably changed those
> definitions; RFC 2822 is a bit more explicit than its predecessors.
> In addition, RFC 2046 suggests use for massage/partial. The combination
> of "[RFC2822]" and "[RFC2046]" should suffice for wording.
>
I think this describes exactly the manner in which these field can and
should be used. The question is what would happen if we specified this
usage. Would clients start using In-Reply-To, which would be great if
everyone did it, or would it break threading display for a majority of
clients (and is it worth doing anyway).
If changing to the most desirable wording is not feasible, would we
improve long term functionality by adding another header just for
multipart postings? Perhaps with the <MID> of the predecessor and the
<MID> of the first part?
And while I'm on related topics...
Regardless of how we define it, use of a "See-Also" header intuitively
suggests that it is useful to identify items which may not be useful for
threading, perhaps even URLs. I'm not saying that for or against such a
header, just that using it for multipart would probably be confusing.
--
-bill davidsen (davidsen@tmr.com)
"The secret to procrastination is to put things off until the
last possible moment - but no longer" -me