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)
