Subject: Re: Use of "Re: "

From: Norbert Bollow <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1999 12:53:05 +0100

Wolfgang Segmuller <[email-masked]> wrote:

> What about having another field that indicates the RE's and leaving the
> subject alone.  For example: a new field called "subject-re" which
> contains an integer that indicates the reply level.  If not present, then
> this is an original message.  Now it's up to the client software to
> display this to the user, taking into consideration the charset,
> language and preferences of the user.

Randall Gellens <[email-masked]> replied:

> At any rate, the "Re:'
> convention in the Subject is very well established, and so needs to
> continue to be supported.

Alexey Melnikov <[email-masked]> commented

> Nobody asks yet to deprecate it.
> I think that Wolfgang wants to define new [experimental] field for carrying
> that information.

I think that Wolfgang Segmuller's suggestion, as clarified by
Alexey Melnikov, is a good idea. I think it should go into a new
internet draft that would cover issues related to the i18n of
e-mail software including MUAs, MTAs and e-mail robots.

Suppose a first draft of this new document was written by the time that
rfc822bis goes into its final revision, would it then be appropriate to
include a forward reference to this "work in progress"?

Greetings,

-- 
Norbert Bollow, Zuerich, Switzerland. Backup e-mail address: [email-masked]

---

From: Chris Newman <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 07 Jan 1999 15:12:41 -0800 (PST)

> include a forward reference to this "work in progress"?

No.  The document has no references to any "work in progress" and it
should stay that way.  If we open the door on this one, we'll spend months
arguing about which works in progress should get a forward reference and
we'll delay the spec.

Let's just call this a tangent (that people can work on elsewhere if they
wish) and keep focused on getting the documents done.

		- Chris