From: John Stanley (stanley@peak.org)
Date: Thu Jul 01 2004 - 00:13:06 CDT
Seth Breidbart (sethb@panix.com):
>> Therefore "Re: " is IMHO technically important, it's not only an
>> ugly hack or netiquette, it has a clear function, it says "this is
>> not a new thread and no special message"
>> That paragraph, of course, is incorrect.
> 1. Not in the presence of broken software.
Sigh, here we are at the "broken software must be protected and not
replaced" argument again. An you are wrong. Even with broken software,
the "Re: " hack does not contain the information alleged for it.
>2. If usage of "Re: " is universal, its absence in an article with a
> non-empty References header means "The poster of this article
> changed the Subject."
No. It means that the subject does not start with the four characters "R",
"e", ":" and " ". You don't know why it does not start with this string.