From: Alexey Melnikov (alexey.melnikov-usefor@isode.com)
Date: Wed Jun 02 2004 - 17:09:45 CDT
Eivind Tagseth wrote:
>* Charles Lindsey <chl@clerew.man.ac.uk> [2004-05-24 12:13:24 +0000]:
>
>
>>>Indication of what? That the subject starts with "Re: "? It indicates
>>>nothing else; there is no defined meaning for this string. We went through
>>>this "indication" at length already; it is ridiculous for it to pop up
>>>again now.
>>>
>>>
>>It is well known (and is repeated here in USEAGE for the removal of all
>>doubt) that it means "in the matter of". Everybody on this WG understands
>>that, and some of them even find it useful and helpful to see it there
>>with that meaning.
>>
>>
>
>Please stop claiming this! "Re: " does _not_ mean "in the matter of" in
>norwegian, it doesn't mean anything at all. "In re" doesn't mean anything
>in norwegian either. And neither of them have any meaning in german.
>"In re" may have a meaning in english (where it's adopted from latin), but
>trying to enforce any meaning to "Re: " for other languages _just_won't_work_,
>and IMO it will make people translate it into the local variants.
>
>
IMHO, it is fine if a properly localized client replaces "Re: " with a
local equivalent when displaying a received message (although any such
client should have a mode to display the subject header as received).
However, this can be done without leaking the translated version to the
Internet. The hypothetical client would replace the translated version
of "Re: " with "Re: " before sending a reply.
Unfortunately, I have yet to see any client that handles this properly.
Alexey