From: Charles Lindsey (chl@clerew.man.ac.uk)
Date: Mon Mar 22 2004 - 06:59:13 CST
In <405C5DB6.7030608@erols.com> Bruce Lilly <blilly@erols.com> writes:
>The current Usefor draft is unclear about several matters related
>to followups (independent of whether the followup is to a single
>message or multiple messages):
>Section 8.6 presents rules for initializing Newsgroups and Distribution
>fields with nebulous wording like "initialized from the precursor's
>[...] header". Newsgroups Followup-To, and Distribution, though not
>MIME header fields, are defined with optional MIME Content-Type/Content-
>Disposition parameters. It is unclear whether those optional
>parameters should be part of the initialization.
If the draft says the new header is to be "initialized from the
corresponding header in the precursor", then that would naturally include
any parameters that were present.
> If so, it is unclear
>whether that applies to all or only some parameters. It is further
>unclear whether or not all parameters (including all which might be
>defined in the future) for Followup-To are valid in Newsgroups and
>vice versa.
That is a problem for whoever writes the extension which introduces any
such parameter. The draft is clear that any parameter that turns up in a
header where it is not valid is to be ignored.
>When considering followups to multiple messages, there are additional
>complications.
Indeed, but the present draft does not recognize such followups. If we
were to change that, then this problem would have to be considered. I
would imagine that at least all those parameters which were present in
both precursors would be retained.
-- Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------ Tel: +44 161 436 6131 Fax: +44 161 436 6133 Web: http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~chl Email: chl@clerew.man.ac.uk Snail: 5 Clerewood Ave, CHEADLE, SK8 3JU, U.K. PGP: 2C15F1A9 Fingerprint: 73 6D C2 51 93 A0 01 E7 65 E8 64 7E 14 A4 AB A5