On Thu, 27 Mar 2003, Bill McCoy wrote: > > Normally, MUA edits of a message do not change the Message-ID. > I don't know how to reconcile this comment with the language of RFC2822 as > previously discussed which specifies that a Message-ID "...pertains to > exactly one instantiation of a particular message; subsequent revisions to > the message each receive new message identifiers".
RFC 2822 deals with the representation of a message as it is transported. This is an important detail. There is no requirement that the message be stored in RFC 2822 format. In the case of editing a message on a mail store (including an IMAP server), the message is not being transported. Everything is entirely on the mail store. Now, if that message is reintroduced to mail transport (SMTP), then yes it should have a different Message-ID. > In any case my > observations indicate that Outlook/Exchange 2000 does in fact change the > Message-ID whenever a message is edited If that's how Exchange works, that's how it works. This behavior is neither required nor forbidden, since it's entirely on the mail store and not introduced into the transport. Not all software does this. This does make searching for "any version" of the message by Message-ID more difficult. This would be particularly distressing if you are searching for a draft, particularly if you edit the draft between multiple clients. I wonder why Exchange does it that way. -- Mark -- http://staff.washington.edu/mrc Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate.
