From: J.B.Moreno (planb@newsreaders.com)
Date: Fri Mar 12 2004 - 01:26:58 CST
On 3/4/04 1:26 PM, Russ Allbery at <rra@stanford.edu> wrote:
> You don't need to pull out the "compliant" stick to deal with this
> problem. Software that creates articles with different semantics than the
> user intended is clearly misfunctioning. Compliance is not the be-all and
> end-all of whether software is correct.
>
> The above is the root point of disagreement between people on this list
> right now, I think. This is the same thing that Bruce has been trying to
> explain in a different way for some time now. It's possible to clearly
> explain what client authors should do and what well-behaved software does
> without trying to declare all broken software to be non-compliant.
That's not my point of disagreement -- I really do think that the "Re: " is
part of the syntax...
It's something that the user can override, but I don't think that is of any
significance -- the user ultimately has control over everything that the
server doesn't reject, or more precisely, everything servers won't accept
from another server (as the user may be an admin that can override it
locally).
Saying that the Subject is only for display, isn't true, and even if it
was...the whole point of news is to display the articles, if that doesn't
happen it's a failure.
The sigdash is BCP, "Re: " isn't.
The "Re: " contains information -- it says that the Subject was inherited
(give or take some minor changes), and this information is used. Yes,
software can and does screw this up, yes the user can and does screw it up,
so what -- when that happens, the article wasn't composed correctly. That's
no reason to say that there isn't a correct way of doing it -- and I don't
mean "correct" in a "it's a good thing" way, I mean it in the "doesn't
reuses the same message-id's every six-to-nine months" way; your articles
will propogate, but just because it's too difficult to detect your mistake,
doesn't mean it's not a mistake.
-- J.B. Moreno