From: Charles Lindsey (chl@clerew.man.ac.uk)
Date: Sun Jun 13 2004 - 16:59:58 CDT
Bruce Lilly said:
> Charles Lindsey wrote:
>> In <20040604072338.GP7879@tagseth-trd.consultit.no> Eivind Tagseth
>> <eivindt@multinet.no> writes:
>
>>>If the result is a discussion of the harmfulness of "Re: ", and one
>>>participant thinks he's debating the harmfulness of "Re: " while the
>>>other thinks the discussion is about "Sv: " then the confusion will
>>> be
>>>seen by other readers as well. I guess this is something that could
>>>be mentioned in USEAGE?
>>
>>
>> But I don't think it could ever happen. Not unless some reading
>> agents
>> tries to translate the Subject into the local language.
>
> No, there is another issue; you have specifically proposed text which
> would
> permit followup agents to *change* Subject field content, i.e. to
> change
> "Sv: " to "Re: ". Are you now withdrawing that proposal?
I am withdrawing nothing because I have proposed nothing.
It is well known that user agents may change the language of
header-names, provided the official versions are used 'on the wire'.
Likewise, there is nothing to stop them trying to do the same with
Subject-contents, although when I discussed this with Eivind a week or
so back we agreed that this would be most unwise, because it would be
virtually impossible to prevent the change from being seen 'on the
wire'. Agents that attempt such things might indeed cause confusion as
to whether the thread was discussing the harmfulness of 'Re:' or the
harmfulness of 'Sv:', which was exactly what I pointed out. But I
nowhere suggested that such a practice should be in any way
encouraged. But neither can it be forbidden - stupid people will write
stupid implementations whatever we say about it. But with sensible
implementations, the scenario discussed could not occur.
>