From: Charles Lindsey (chl@clerew.man.ac.uk)
Date: Mon Jun 14 2004 - 07:02:21 CDT
Alexey Melnikov said:
> Charles Lindsey wrote:
>
>>Time to show you the full text as it currently stands, after various
>>recent tweaks:
>>
>> 2. The Subject-header SHOULD by default be taken from that of the
>> precursor's Subject-header. The case sensitive string "Re: "
>> (known as a "back reference") MAY be prepended to its Subject-
>> Content unless it already begins with that string.
>>
>> NOTE: The practice of prepending such a "Re: " (an
>> abbreviation,
>> commonly used in English and some other languages, for the
>> Latin
>> "In re", meaning "in the matter of") is widespread, but also
>> not
>> without its difficulties (described in detail in [USEAGE]).
>> Some
>> reading agents take note of the Subject-header (as well as
>> other
>> headers) when presenting articles for display (again, see
>> [USEAGE]) and such agents find it desirable to ignore such an
>> initial "Re: " when comparing subjects. For this reason, no
>> other
>> form of back-reference (such as a translation of "Re: " into
>> another language) is permitted, although reading and followup
>> agents MAY choose to recognize case insensitive forms such as
>> "RE: ".
>>
> As per my message posted yesterday, I think most of this note should
> be
> moved to USEAGE (or dropped).
Be careful! There are a lot of carefully worded compromises built into
that NOTE. To recap:
With the exception of Bruce and and John, I think we had general
agreement that the rough consensus is:
A. Seth's 4 points.
B. Strict neutrality on whether to prepend "Re:" or not.
That is reflected in the normative text above.
As for the NOTE, there was earlier discussion that it should reflect
the motivation behind the normative text, so that if some asked:
"Why this pussyfooting with 'MAY prepend'? Why didn't the authors just
standardize the 'Re:' convention which, as we all know, is used by the
whole world?"
and if someone else asked:
"Why did the authors allow that 'MAY prepend'? Surely everyone knows
by now that the 'Re:' hack is outmoded and should have been abolished
long ago?"
then the NOTE should give enough clue as to why both were allowed (and
'Sv:' wasn't) for both those people to see that it was a complex
issue, and to see that without having to go to USEAGE. And finally,
that there should be a pointer to USEAGE for those who really wanted
to see the pros and cons in full.
So over the last couple of weeks, we have been polishing that NOTE;
various suggestions to change the text were made and incorporated. I
think it is now as neutral as it can be, and incorporates mention of
all the things different people were worked up about.
And since I posted that latest version (still quoted above), there
have been no requests for further tweaks. That seems like a rough
consensus to me, so PLEASE can we try to run with that and move on.
>
>> Observe that there is no compulsion to use back-references.
>> Implementors of followup agents are free to prepend them or
>> not as
>> they see fit.
>>
> The last sentence is just repeating the meaning conveyed by MAY in the
> first.
Yes, the last sentence was known to be redundant, but the neutrality
issue was so important (to some people) that I thought it best to
leave it in.
Therefore, I now ask the chairman to establish whether he can declare:
1. A rough consensus on that text, or
2. A rough consensus on that text, modulo some further tweaks, or
3. A continuation of this whole debate.
It is accepted that neither Bruce nor John will join that consensus,
but it is my belief that everyone else who has participated can live
with it.
And in any case, can I insert it into the next draft as the "best
working text"?
Charles.