From: Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz (Shmuel+gen@patriot.net)
Date: Tue May 04 2004 - 07:51:29 CDT
In <40975C82.3070301@durham.ac.uk>, on 05/04/2004
at 10:04 AM, Nick Boalch <n.g.boalch@durham.ac.uk> said:
>I think this text is very slanted: you devote three lines to one of
>the reasons why prepending "Re: " may be a good idea and then the
>remaining five lines to explaining that that's 'broken'.
First, that is not true; he has 4 lines explaining why adding "Re: "
may seem like a good idea, not just 3 lines. Second, your version is
slanted the other way; it obscures the fact that "Re: " is broken.
>I would rather have:
> On the other hand, it is current practice to include a
> back-reference, and the form is widely familiar to readers.
> It is also used by some reading agents to sort messages for
> display to users, whether as the only sorting system or as
> part of a 'hybrid' thread-sorting algorithm.
And I would rather have something with much stronger warnings than
Eivind's version. In fact, I would rather that it be deprecated.
Eivind's text appears to be a compromise.
>However, I don't think John and Bruce will be happy because the text
>still uses the term 'back-reference'.
If you really believe that, then propose text that doesn't use the
term. I doubt that it will have much effect on Bruce's position, since
he has objected to your semantics, not just to your nomenclature. My
difference with Bruce is that I am willing to hold my nose and
compromise on this issue, while he believes that it is important
enough to justify fighting the change.
It would help if the chairs would either bow out or show up.
--
Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz, SysProg and JOAT
Atid/2
We don't care. We don't have to care, we're Congress.
(S877: The Shut up and Eat Your spam act of 2003)