From: Bruce Lilly (blilly@erols.com)
Date: Mon May 03 2004 - 20:56:57 CDT
Henry Spencer wrote:
>>As "Re:" has nothing to do with the defined syntax or semantics of
>>the Subject field...
>
>
> That is your belief, not a self-evident fact...
We've been over this -- the Subject field is defined in RFC 2822
as unstructured syntax with "only human-readable content"
"identifying the topic of the message". That is also the syntax
and semantics in our draft, though the wording is slightly different.
It is also clearly the intent of RFCs 850 and 1036 that the syntax
and semantics be the same as RFC 822 (since updated by 2822); indeed
the Subject field was adopted from RFC 822 to replace "Title", in
order "fit in with existing tools as well as possible", said
"tools include both implementations of mail and news". Since that
time a Standards Track message access protocol (IMAP) has been
widely deployed to access mail and news, where messages transported
by both mail and news transport mechanisms (and others) are
indistinguishable, necessitating common syntax and semantics. RFCs
822, 850, 1036, 2822, 3501, etc. are a matter of public record, not
a "belief". No matter how much you or others might wish "Re:" to
be part of the defined syntax, and no matter how many times it is
claimed to be so (with no supporting documentation), the fact that
"Re:" is *not* part of the defined syntax remains a fact, one that
is indeed self-evident to anybody who cares to read the relevant
RFCs.