From: Seth Breidbart (sethb@panix.com)
Date: Wed Feb 04 2004 - 15:35:59 CST
> What is interfering with the "proper operation" of the header? It's
> unstructured; the only thing that could interfere with that is if
> some broken software tries to enforce structure on it. And what is
> the "proper operation" of the header? It has no function in the news
> system other than to report to the reader what the subject of the
> article is. "Re: " has nothing to do with that.
In _my_ newsreader, proper operation of the Subject: header allows for
almost-correct threading when the References: header is missing, as
sometimes happens (especially in robomoderated groups).
I consider that to be part of the "news system".
> And, just to be pedantic, your new definition of the subject header is
> functionally identical to the current one.
So what? It's useful for clarifying the _meaning_.
> A news reader has no way of knowing whether the "Re: " is
> "back-reference" or just part of the following unstructured
> "pure-subject".
That's right, it doesn't. So the ones I'm familiar with assume that
it's back-reference, that being by far the more common case, leading
to the better (in my viewpoint, as the user) pseudo-threading.
Seth