From: Bruce Lilly (blilly@erols.com)
Date: Fri Feb 06 2004 - 22:54:04 CST
Charles Lindsey wrote:
> 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.
I'll explain again.
Any requirement that any agent SHOULD NOT ... MUST do X, for any value of X
based on specific content of an unstructured field amounts to imposing
structure on that field.
That means that the syntax (if it claims the field is unstructured) contradicts
the normative text which requires treating the field as structured. I.e. the
specification is broken. Fixing the broken specification involves one of two
procedures: either explicitly indicate the structure in the syntax, making the
field structured, or remove the requirement, leaving the field unstructured.
We have already agreed that "Re: " is not a protocol issue, and therefore
is not part of the syntax. The requirement you propose is simply a back-door
method of reintroducing structure which conflicts with the syntax, and I (and
others) will continue to oppose it for that reason.