From: Charles Lindsey (chl@clerew.man.ac.uk)
Date: Wed Feb 04 2004 - 08:56:00 CST
In <402061DE.6070006@erols.com> Bruce Lilly <blilly@erols.com> writes:
>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.
>> So it IS a protocol issue
>No, display issues are distinct from protocol issues. Whether or not a
>Subject field begins with "Re:" has no effect on whether an article is
>injected or relayed, which newsgroups or distributions it is associated
>with, whether or not it can be replied to or followed up on (or to which
>groups a follow-up is posted), etc.
Since the ultimate purpose of the Netnews protocols is to cause articles
written in one place to be displayed in lots of other places, it is naive
to suggest that display is not a protocol issue (granted that the standard
should leave most detailed display issues to the discretion of the
implementors).
However, there is another issue which is exceptionally important for the
proper operation of Usenet (and to a lesser extent for email also) and
that is Followups. The proper way to do a followup is most certainly a
protocol issue (because Usenet will not work as intended without those
rules), and this in spite of the fact that a user can manually override
almost everything that the rules say a followup agent is supposed to do.
And one of the requirements of a followup agent is that certain features
of the incoming article are to be inherited (in ways specified by the
protocol) by the outgoing article. Agents that read (and display) the
outgoing article are entitled to expect that the article they see was
constructed according to the protocol, and if they get screwed up because
the followup agent screwed up, then they are entitled to shout
"interoperability".
And our Chair has already ruled that it IS an issue of interoperability
(though not a gross one), and therefore we are entitled to address it in the
protocol should we so decide.
What is proposed is to say that a followup agent SHOULD NOT prepend a
"Re: " if one is already present (and neither should it prepend horrors
like "Re^2: "). It is still perfectly free to prepend nothing at all. That
is what the draft durrently says; that is pretty much what RFC 2822 says.
I cannot understand why you are so opposed to it.
>There is no such thing as "threading by Subject". One can collate by
>subject (colloquially "sorting" by subject), but that is quite different
>from threading.
You know perfectly well what I mean. Many agents provide a configurable
option to <quote> thread </quote> in the two ways, and some that thread
using References also provide for separating out sub-threads where the
Subject has changed.
>>>2. Prefacing an existing Subject field with "Re: " is NOT a simple matter
>>> of inserting the string "Re: ". It is necessary to ensure that if the
>>> modified Subject field contains any encoded-words, that those words are
>>> on lines with length no greater than 76 octets (in accordance with RFC
>>> 2047). This *is* a protocol issue. Likewise w.r.t. recommended line
>>> length and mandatory line length limits in the absence of encoded-words.
>There should be a statement to the effect that any agent that generates
>or modifies any part of an article, or allows a user to do so, is
>responsible for ensuring the the result is compliant with the relevant
>standards. Since dicking with^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hmodifying the
>Subject appears to be rather common and rather commonly done poorly, it
>probably warrants special mention.
I think the current draft probably disallows that. But more realistically
there are issues related to encoded-words and folding that could maybe do
with some specific mention alongside any rule that forbids those malformed
Re: usages.
-- 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