From: J. B. Moreno (planb@newsreaders.com)
Date: Tue Feb 03 2004 - 23:48:40 CST
On 2/3/04 10:07 PM, Bruce Lilly at <blilly@erols.com> wrote:
> Charles Lindsey wrote:
>
>> 3. A broken followup agent creates a "Re: Re: " or "Re^2: " situation. In
>> this case, unpleasant things DO happen. Subsequent agents may show this
>> article separately from others in the same thread. Or they may purport to
>> detect a change of subject where none was intended.
>
> Those are display issues.
Extra stuff added to a header that isn't authorized by the user and isn't
required by the protocol -- that sounds like a protocol issue to me,
partiuclarly when the extra information interferes with the proper operation
of the header.
If you allow "Re^2: " and "SV:" and "Anwr:" where does it end and become a
protocol issue? If the client slips "Your mama wears combat boots:" in at
the start of every Subject and then hides that from it's user, is that just
a display issue? How about a QP encoded version of the Finding Nemo MPEG?
What the hell is wrong with saying that the structure of the Subject is:
subject-content = [ back-reference ] pure-subject CRLF
pure-subject = unstructured
back-reference = %x52.65.3A.20 ; which is a case-sensitive
"Re: "
It doesn't match up exactly with mail but so what? It's also entirely
optional in mail, are we planning on making it optional in news as well?
We shouldn't be adhering to the mail standard to the deteriment of news.
And article grouping/threading by the client should be considered just as
important as grouping by the server -- break it and news becomes unusable.