From: Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu)
Date: Tue Jun 22 2004 - 15:43:45 CDT
Frank Ellermann <nobody@xyzzy.claranet.de> writes:
> After months of debate it should be obvious that no solution
> trying to decree a 1:1 correspondence with e-mail subjects
> works for news.
I agree with you right up until the point that you concluded that this
meant news and e-mail can't have a 1:1 correspondence. The *only*
difference between the way that subjects are used on Usenet and the way
that subjects are used in e-mail *in practice*, *on the wire*, is the
legacy "cmsg" thing that we're trying to get people to stop relying on
anyway.
*Everything* else that we've discussed here applies as much to e-mail as
to news. There are threading issues; people thread e-mail too, and
usually using exactly the same algorithms. There are non-standard
variations of "Re: " used in e-mail; there are on Usenet as well. They're
rare but occasionally present on Usenet, and they're also rare in e-mail.
They're often annoying on Usenet and provoke flames, and they're often
annoying in e-mail and provoke flames on mailing lists as well.
I've seen lots of plausible arguments that Subject is actually
"quasi-structured" instead of unstructured. I've yet to see any plausible
argument that Subject in Usenet is different from Subject in e-mail, *in
practice*, in any way that anyone would actually notice or care about,
other than adding a single note about the obsolete "cmsg" convention.
-- Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>