From: Charles Lindsey (chl@clerew.man.ac.uk)
Date: Mon May 03 2004 - 06:20:05 CDT
In <409235DD.6030108@durham.ac.uk> Nick Boalch <n.g.boalch@durham.ac.uk> writes:
> The content of the Subject-header SHOULD be default be copied from that of
> the precursor's Subject-header, possibly preceded by the case-sensitive
> string "Re: " (known as a "back-reference") unless it already begins with
> that string.
> NOTE: Use of "Re: " as a back-reference is widespread, but reading agents
> SHOULD NOT rely on all followup Subject-headers using this behaviour. It
> cannot be assumed that reading agents will understand any back-reference
> other than a single "Re: ", or indeed that they will understand the
> string "Re: " as a back-reference at all.
> Back-references in the Subject-header are widely familiar to readers,
> and used by some reading agents to enable a simple form of thread
> sorting. However, they are not necessary for this (thread sorting is
> more robustly accomplished using the References-header), and the
> choice of whether or not to automatically prepend "Re: " is left to
> implementors.
>Better?
Well, in the first paragraph it shoud be "by default be taken" to match
the texts higher up in the latest version.
I have no great problem with your revised NOTE. The first NOTE parapgraph
is even better than what I have, but not so sure about the second. In
fact, the best systems are the hybrid ones such as Zawinski's algorithm,
which take account of both the References and Subject headers, but I think
USEAGE is the place to go into that level of detail.
Nice try, but clearly has not made a blind bit of difference to Bruce and
John, so for the moment I propose to leave my text as it is; then to
discuss the wordings in USEAGE, and finally to revisit that NOTE in USEFOR
(at which point your suggested text may well be helpful).
-- 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