Subject: Re: References

From: John Stanley <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2005 10:42:19 -0700 (PDT)

"Forrest J. Cavalier III" <mibsoft@xxxxxxxx>:

>Did anyone ever advocate that 2822-reply => followup?

Yes. It is pretty clear that all replies are followups. Look at the 
definitions we have come up with for "followup", and each one has included 
the set of articles that are "a response to another". Sometimes the 
definition also includes other relationships, but "response to another" 
has always been included. And that is a "reply".

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From: Russ Allbery <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2005 11:04:34 -0700

> Yes. It is pretty clear that all replies are followups.

What about, er, replies?  In the trn sense.  An e-mail reply to a Usenet
message.  Those are what RFC 2822 more obviously applies to; followups in
the Usenet sense have additional restrictions that RFC 2822 has no comment
on and aren't really something RFC 2822 was trying to deal with.

This thread is convincing me that it's a bit confusing to defer to RFC
2822 entirely for References when RFC 2822 only talks about replies and
clearly is intended to focus on mail messages.  Usenet followups are a bit
of a different beast with historically stronger restrictions on the
presence of the References header that e-mail is only now starting to
adopt.  I still feel like this could be dealt with definitionally, but
followups in the Usenet sense have References headers, period.  It's not
just a SHOULD.  And I don't feel like that's a divergence from RFC 2822,
since RFC 2822 doesn't deal with Usenet followups and the semantics of the
References header haven't changed.

-- 
Russ Allbery ([email-masked])             <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>

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From: Ken Murchison <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2005 14:42:17 -0400

> References header haven't changed.

I'm leaning towards the same conclusion.  Deferring to RFC 2822 in 
draft-03 is looking like bad idea.  As Charles stated, USEFOR discusses 
semantics elsewhere so we can and probably should discuss the use of the 
References header in a more Usenet-centric way.

Does our Chair agree?

-- 
Kenneth Murchison     Oceana Matrix Ltd.
Software Engineer     21 Princeton Place
716-662-8973 x26      Orchard Park, NY 14127
--PGP Public Key--    http://www.oceana.com/~ken/ksm.pgp

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From: Alexey Melnikov <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2005 20:20:11 +0100

Ken Murchison wrote:

> draft-03 is looking like bad idea.  As Charles stated, USEFOR 
> discusses semantics elsewhere so we can and probably should discuss 
> the use of the References header in a more Usenet-centric way.
>
> Does our Chair agree?

I do, but the devil is in details: what exactly should be said and where.

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From: Alexey Melnikov <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2005 20:30:06 +0100

> I do, but the devil is in details: what exactly should be said and where.

The USEFOR document can say that certain types of messages MAY require 
the References header. But I just think this should be obvious.

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From: Frank Ellermann <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 28 Apr 2005 13:12:15 +0200

Alexey Melnikov wrote:

> I just think this should be obvious.

Sure.  It was discussed here for the major part of 2004.

News is not the same as mail and 2822.  There's a note
in s-o-1036 explaining why some References should be a
See-Also, but we know that See-Also didn't fly.

So we have References used for followups as defined in
Usepro, and we have References as defined in STD 11 4.6,
and unfortunately that's not always identical.

What else is new ?  Is Usefor supposed to document common
practice or wishful thinking based on 2822 ?  Bye, Frank

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From: "Charles Lindsey" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 28 Apr 2005 11:40:18 GMT

>the References header. But I just think this should be obvious.

I think we say the minimum necessary to prevent other readers from
misinterpreting what the document says in the way that John has been
misinterpreting it.

A definition of "followup" that clearly distinguishes them from RFC 2822
"replies" is a good start (and I think we already agreed to that). Also,
if we intend that References may sometimes be used with non-followups, it
would be useful to say so.

-- 
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: [email-masked]      Snail: 5 Clerewood Ave, CHEADLE, SK8 3JU, U.K.
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