Great Circle Associates List-Managers
(March 1999)
 

Indexed By Date: [Previous] [Next] Indexed By Thread: [Previous] [Next]

Subject: Re: Putting the listname on the Subject line
From: Stan Ryckman <stanr @ sunspot . tiac . net>
Date: Mon, 08 Mar 1999 00:20:42 -0500
To: list-managers @ GreatCircle . COM

At 10:42 AM 3/4/99 -0500, Bernie Cosell wrote:
[snip]
>
>[Home-Sat] Re: [[Home-Sat] Re: [[Home-Sat] DC Block Splitters]]
>
>    (which brings up a more subtle problem of this style of list setup:
>    if it is gatewayed to usenet [as it is in this case] it is actually
>    in violation of rfc850: 

First of all, RFC850 was obsoleted by RFC1036 in 1987.  However, this text:
>
>        If  the  article  is  submitted  in response  to another article
>        (e.g., is a  "followup")  the default subject should  begin 
>        with the  four  characters "Re: " and the References line is
>        required.  (The user might wish to edit the subject of the 
>        followup,  but  the default should begin with  "Re: ".) 

doesn't seem to have been changed.

Neither RFC850 nor 1036 is, or claims to be, an Internet standard; they
are informational documents (which, among other things, means they got out
without the severe scrutiny that a standard requires; I don't think the
above switch from discussing protocols to discussing news clients would
have survived in wording like that, for example).

I'm not sure what it means to be "in violation of" a non-standards RFC.

Besides, a "correct" implementation of the tag *does* end up with the
"Re: " preceding the (single) tag in followups--this is needed for mail
clients to reasonably sort by subject as well.  (Or, the gatewayed copy
of the list could be sent without the tag to avoid any USENET issues.)

Cheers,
Stan (feeling nitpicky this evening)



Follow-Ups:
Indexed By Date Previous: Re: Size of HTML vs plaintext
From: Gerald Oskoboiny <gerald@impressive.net>
Next: Re: Putting the listname on the Subject line
From: Jeremy Blackman <loki@maison-otaku.net>
Indexed By Thread Previous: Re: Putting the listname on the Subject line
From: Rich Kulawiec <rsk@gsp.org>
Next: Re: Putting the listname on the Subject line
From: Jeremy Blackman <loki@maison-otaku.net>

Google
 
Search Internet Search www.greatcircle.com