Subject: In-Reply-To

From: Pete Resnick <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 4 Nov 1998 14:41:29 -0600

822 allows *(phrase/msg-id) in both In-Reply-To and References. 822bis 
allows References to have 1*msg-id (removing phrase and requiring at least 
one), but only allows a single msg-id in In-Reply-To. Any objections to my 
making In-Reply-To identical to References? I don't remember why I made 
that particular change in the first place, and someone has just described 
to me a perfectly reasonable use of multiple msg-id's in In-Reply-To.

pr
--
Pete Resnick <mailto:[email-masked]>
QUALCOMM Incorporated
Work: (217)337-6377 or (619)651-4478
Fax: (217)337-1980 or (619)651-1102

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1998 03:58:25 +0200

>to me a perfectly reasonable use of multiple msg-id's in In-Reply-To.

For some reason, all modern systems (and almost all older ones...) seem to
think that a reply cannot be sent for multiple messages.  In fact, it is
entirely reasonable for someone to send a note which responds to a
collection of other notes, so yes I believe we should permit In-reply-to to
contain a list (with commas?) of message id's.

d/

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Dave Crocker                                       Tel: +60 (19) 3299 445
<mailto:[email-masked]>             Post Office Box 296, U.P.M.
                                         Serdang, Selangor 43400 MALAYSIA
Brandenburg Consulting                                          
<http://www.brandenburg.com>                       Tel: +1 (408) 246 8253
Fax: +1(408)273 6464              675 Spruce Dr., Sunnyvale, CA 94086 USA

---

From: Jamie Zawinski <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1998 01:51:03 -0800

> contain a list (with commas?) of message id's.

What would you do with References?  It could no longer be a path 
through a simple tree.

-- 
Jamie Zawinski
[email-masked]    http://www.mozilla.org/   (work)
[email-masked]        http://www.jwz.org/       (play)

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1998 23:36:14 +0800

>What would you do with References?  It could no longer be a path 

It's true that human communication can be complicated, sometimes.  We have
a choice between pretending that they are always simple, and then using
Procrustean standards to force them to be, or we can make the standards
reflect existing and real human behavior.

d/

---

From: Jamie Zawinski <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1998 12:54:17 -0800

Dave Crocker wrote:
> It's true that human communication can be complicated, sometimes. 
> We have a choice between pretending that they are always simple, and
> then using Procrustean standards to force them to be, or we can make
> the standards reflect existing and real human behavior.

That's all well and good, but I don't think it's an answer to my
question.  What would be your new specification of the References
header?

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 1998 10:16:17 +0800

>question.  What would be your new specification of the References

I don't recall suggesting any changes to the references specification, so
it would stay the same as Pete cited "822bis allows References to have
1*msg-id".

d/

---

From: Robert Elz <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 1998 23:30:38 +1100

Date:        Wed, 11 Nov 1998 12:54:17 -0800
    From:        Jamie Zawinski <[email-masked]>
    Message-ID:  <[email-masked]>

  | That's all well and good, but I don't think it's an answer to my
  | question.  What would be your new specification of the References
  | header?

The message-ids in the message header ought simply be any messages
that are referenced (explicitly or implicitly) by this message.
No other constraints at all (well maybe one, I will come to later).

UA's have to deal with two aspects of this - generating it (since we
certainly don't expect users to go typing in message-ids), and using it
when displaying a message.

Generation ought to be simple - You start with the references headers of
any messages which are being replied to, take the union of those as sets,
append the message-ids of those messages themselves, and then if quotes or
extracts are taken from any other identifiable messages, also append those.

For display there are many options, one is simply to provide a list of
referenced messages (as a menu or whatever) and allow the user to display
any of them explicitly.  Or messages can be grouped and displayed using the
references list, usually in conjunction with the Subject, as a DAG.   That's
where we want the one restriction on the message-ids in the references list,
to keep the thing a DAG, the references should only be to messages that have
previously been sent (by someone) - that is, no sticking in a reference to a
message that you (or someone else) plans on sending sometime in the future.

kre

---

From: [email-masked] (Claus André Färber)
Date: 14 Nov 1998 20:44:00 +0100

> question.  What would be your new specification of the References

In any case it would be too complicated and incompatible.
I'd instead propose to force the references structure to be a tree and  
introduce a new header for crosslinks, such as "Also-References" or,  
maybe, what about "Link" (referencing to _any_ UR*)?

--
Claus Andre Faerber <http://www.faerber.muc.de>
PGP: ID=1024/527CADCD FP=12 20 49 F3 E1 04 9E 9E  25 56 69 A5 C6 A0 C9 DC