From: Seth Breidbart (sethb@panix.com)
Date: Tue May 04 2004 - 11:10:30 CDT
Bruce Lilly <blilly@erols.com> wrote:
> Henry Spencer wrote:
>> That is your belief, not a self-evident fact...
>
> We've been over this
Yes, we have. Given the number of smart people who disagree with you,
it is clear that your claim, whether or not it's correct, is nowhere
near "self-evident".
As it happens, it's not even correct.
> We've been over this -- the Subject field is defined in RFC 2822
> as unstructured syntax with "only human-readable content"
Nobody is proposing any content that is not human-readable.
> "identifying the topic of the message".
Nor is anybody proposing any content that disagrees with that
characterization.
> the Subject field was adopted from RFC 822 to replace "Title", in
> order "fit in with existing tools as well as possible",
So why do you continue to argue AGAINST all proposals that would help
it to fit in with existing tools as well as possible?
> 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.
I can save both news articles and web pages as files; does that
somehow necessitate common syntax for those?
> RFCs 822, 850, 1036, 2822, 3501, etc. are a matter of public record,
> not a "belief".
However, your conclusion as to what they require is only your belief.
Quite clearly, none of them prohibits or deprecates "Re: ", so arguing
from them to such a deprecation is clearly incorrect.
> 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),
What part of "fit in with existing tools as well as possible" don't
you understand?
> 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.
Repeated assertion does not constitute proof.
Seth