From: Charles Lindsey (chl@clerew.man.ac.uk)
Date: Tue May 04 2004 - 08:42:40 CDT
In <20040504083050.GB20607@tagseth-trd.consultit.no> Eivind Tagseth <eivindt@multinet.no> writes:
>The semantics of the Subject-header for a followup-article are the same as for
>a normal article.
>[
> I'm worried that Charles' current wording may be misinterpreted to mean
> that copying and prepending with "Re: " is the only valid subjects, and
> thus not let the user manually change it to whatever is desired.
> I can't see how someone will actually think this, but there seems to
> be a lot of thoughtlessness in todays newsreaders. If noone agrees,
> remove it, or move it to USEAGE.
>]
No, my wording is quite clear that once the followup agent has created (or
"suggested") the default, the user can override it in any way he pleases.
> However, since the topic discussed in a followup-article
>is usually the same as in the precursor, the followup-agent SHOULD by default
>automatically suggest to the user a Subject content that is copied from
>that of the precursor's Subject, possibly preceeded by a short prefix-string,
>referred to as a "back-reference". The back-reference is used to indicate
>to the end-user that this article's topic is the same as the predecessor's.
>[ .... ]
>The back-reference MUST be the exact case-sensitive 4-character string "Re: ",
>and MUST NOT be prepended if such a string is already present. The choice
>of adding a back-reference or not is up to the implementor of the
>followup-agent.
>[
> I'd like to make it clear to the reader that adding back-references is
> _optional_. I think Charles' text is a bit vague here, using the word
> "possibly" without further explanation.
>]
I would have no problem using some "MAY" wording in place of that
"possibly".
> NOTE: The use of a back-reference is controversial, mostly because it is
> forcing structured content into a non-structured header meant for
> human interpretation only. There is no way to perfectly remove/ignore/
> localize the back-reference, since there is nothing keeping the user from
> starting the Subject with the same string as the back-reference, even if
> it is not intended to have the same meaning as a back-reference (described
> above).
> [ .... ]
> On the other hand, it is current practice to include a back-reference,
> and some reading agents and users choose to interpret the existance or
> non-existance of a back-reference as an indication of subject-change.
> Not adding a back-reference may cause problems for such, arguably broken,
> agents (broken, because in most situations the information they read
> out of the back-reference is better and more precisely read of of other
> headers, such as the References header and the Subject headers of the
> predecessors).
> [ .... ]
Technically speaking, your text defines exactly the same outcome as mine.
For which reason I doubt that it will persuade either Bruce or John to
change his position. But if they were to accept it, then we could probably
work with it.
>(obviously) a text that I could "live with".
Then I think we are agreed as to what is to be specified, if not with the
exact way of saying it.
-- 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