From: Charles Lindsey (chl@clerew.man.ac.uk)
Date: Mon Aug 23 2004 - 13:28:13 CDT
In <cg5j5c$2lr$1@gatekeeper.tmr.com> Bill Davidsen <davidsen@tmr.com> writes:
>> It could be the intended begin of a new thread. Or just the
>> literal meaning of "reference" (a pointer, See-Also). Or a
>> "multi-parented" reply (2822 In-Reply-To).
>It could be intended as anything, but software can't tell, therefore I
>don't see that we can or should care. If an article with a references
>header would not be a followup then we have to name and define what it
>is and how to tell. Absent the "how to tell" I return to the conclusion
>that we have to treat every article with a References header as a
>followup, and thread it if the user desires.
>>
>How would you tell (in software again) that it was a followup? And how
>would you thread it? Since software can't do any of the usual threading
>things with the article, what how is it treated.
Why the hell is everybody so concerned with knowing whether an article is
a "followup" or not? Who cares? Why should software need to tell?
What software actually needs to know is whether or not this article is
intended to be threaded with other articles; and the presence of absence
of a References-header tells you exactly that. Under all proposals that
have been made.
-- Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------ Tel: +44 161 436 6131 Fax: +44 161 436 6133 Web: http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~chl Email: chl@clerew.man.ac.uk Snail: 5 Clerewood Ave, CHEADLE, SK8 3JU, U.K. PGP: 2C15F1A9 Fingerprint: 73 6D C2 51 93 A0 01 E7 65 E8 64 7E 14 A4 AB A5