From: Charles Lindsey (chl@clerew.man.ac.uk)
Date: Thu Jan 22 2004 - 06:14:18 CST
In <Pine.LNX.4.53.0401201845540.5984@a.shell.peak.org> John Stanley <stanley@peak.org> writes:
>Either the header is unstructured or it is not. If it is unstructured,
>then it is exactly correct to say that no assumption should be made about
>its content.
>>Others were adamant that some mention
>>should be made, at least to the extent that "if you do this, then you
>>SHOULD do it properly so that is can be recognized reliably".
>There is no means to recognize structure in an unstructured header --
>that's what "unstructured" means. There is also no need to create
>structure where none exists: there is already a MANDATORY header provided
>which not only tells you, by its very presence, that this article is a
>reply, but points back specifically to what article it is a reply to. This
>header is MANDATORY and has been for ten years.
Yes, it might well be better to use the References header, but current,
and very widely accepted, practice is to make use of the "Re: "
convention, and much software out there tries to make use of it for one
thing or another. You cannot ignore such widespread usage, both in news and
email.
>I don't think Bruce is alone in this, and if you remember the previous
>discussions, you'd not think it, either.
I don't know how many people are on either side of this argument, since I
was forbidden to count. Our Chairs have vanished, and this problem cannot
be resolved until either they return, or another Chair is appointed in
their place.
In the meantime let me reiterate that I chose the current wording to try
and sit in the middle of the options that were being proposed. Also, it is
the position closest to what RFC 2822 says.
Moreover, all it says if that you MAY use the "Re: " convention, but that
IF you do, then please do it properly so that existing software which
tries to recognize it will not break unnecessarily.
It is realized that malicious/stupid/trollish users will still
deliberately break it and we cannot prevent that. But that does not seem
to be a serious problem on the present Usenet.
-- 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