From: Frank Ellermann (nobody@xyzzy.claranet.de)
Date: Tue Jun 22 2004 - 19:17:50 CDT
Russ Allbery wrote:
> 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.
I've already named one "real" news server (news.t-online.de),
where "Subject: cmsg cancel" works (or at least it did that
the last time I tested it, about 2002), one ersatz-newsreader,
where this is a feature and no bug (my own Netscape 3.x), and
a dubious server (groups.google), where "Subject: cmsg text"
wasn't archived.
Of course groups.google isn't a "real" server, but there are
scripts for e.g. slrn used to retrieve missing articles from
groups.google. In that sense groups.google and its parameter
output=gplain is a gateway from Usenet to some news clients.
> *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.
Yes, in fact I read this list on news.gmane.org, although I
can't post there, because the Usefor list server is broken.
I'm not exactly sure how news.gmane.org handles In-Reply-To:
without References:, but I'd _hope_ that it automatically
inserts a corresponding References: header.
In some cases like the Web interface to this list there are
either no References: and no In-Reply-To:, or the latter may
be present but wrong (that's a bug in the Web interface).
In these cases a "Subject: Re: topic" is the last hope for
any kind of threading. So why give up this last line of
defense in news ? It's bad enough in mail and mailing lists:
> There are non-standard variations of "Re: " used in e-mail
Unfortunately, and causing a lot of confusion. But as you
say "non-standard". There are many weird things in mail, e.g.
mails without Message-IDs, and I don't see any good reason to
import mail problems in Usenet where it's unnecessary.
> I've seen lots of plausible arguments that Subject is
> actually "quasi-structured" instead of unstructured.
That's like "quasi-pregnant". It worked in RfC 1036 before
MIME, because then the difference wasn't very important, and
a formal BNF definition was a waste of time. But today
structured vs. unstructured is a major difference, it's not
more possible to hide this structure in foot notes or long
verbal specifications.
> 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.
See above, some servers do something with a "Subject: cmsg",
and I have no idea what mail2news and other gateways could do.
Let's assume that some gateways refuse to inject a "cmsg".
Let's assume that somebody writes a (normal) article with a
"Subject: cmsg etc.", exported via a gateway. Now somebody
tries to send a follow-up, and because he's oh-so-modern he
_keeps_ the "Subject: cmsg etc." instead of adding "Re: ".
Oops, this follow-up bounces at the gateway. That's stupid.
And it's not the problem of the gateway, it's a problem of
the behind-the-gateway user agent, which didn't use the
proper "Subject: Re: cmsg".
Bye, Frank