From: Charles Lindsey (chl@clerew.man.ac.uk)
Date: Mon May 03 2004 - 06:48:26 CDT
In <20040502090406.GC14188@tagseth-trd.consultit.no> Eivind Tagseth <eivindt@multinet.no> writes:
> o It _is_ a hack, and if news was specified from fresh today, I don't think
> the "Re: " hack would have been reintroduced.
Agreed.
> o The "Re: " hack causes a lot of problems today, with people using
> all sorts of variants of "Re: ".
Not a "lot" of problems, but "some" problems.
> o "In re" is mostly used in english-speaking contries, other countries
> will want a localized variant. The "Re: " prefix cannot be perfectly
> translated to another language as it is impossible for the reading
> agent to know for certain that "Re: " really is a back-reference at
> all times.
But nobody is proposing to translate to or from "Re: " in a header that
has already made its way out onto the network. Whatever came out of the
followup or posting agent is what will arrive at the reading agent, and is
what the reading agent should display. If the Subject started with "Re: ",
then a good reading agent will ignore that "Re: " if/when it needs to
compare Subjects, whereas it is unlikely to ignore "Sv: ", "RE: ", etc.
> o As you say yourself above, you prefer to see the "Re: " prefix on followups
> because it makes things easier for you to see. To me, this is yet another
> indication that the "Re: " prefix does not belong in USEFOR, it is not
> part of the protocol, it's a mechanism more intended for humans than
> for usenet operations, and thus something that should be dealt with in
> USEAGE.
The only reason to mention it in USEFOR is to make it clear that followup
agents MAY prepend it, but SHOULD NOT prepend anything else. That way,
reading agents know that they do not have to concern themselves with
anything other than "Re: ".
> o As for the structured vs. unstructured discussion, I really don't care that
> much about how other RFCs have defined the Subject header. If imposing
> structure on an unstructured header could fix this problem in a clean
> manner, then that could be a good solution. But the "Re: " hack doesn't
> come close to a clean solution at all! It's just a prefix prepended to an
> unknown text, which may already start with such a prefix and which cannot
> with 100% certainty be recognized as a prefix be the reading agent. It's
> just plain ugly. If it's really needed, I'd say we put it in a different
> header.
Yes, it is in the nature of "hacks" that they do not always achieve
perfect results.
-- 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