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List:       kde-devel
Subject:    Re: Mail headers: advice needed.
From:       Roberto Alsina <ralsina () unl ! edu ! ar>
Date:       1999-06-18 10:44:43
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On Fri, 18 Jun 1999, Sven Radej wrote:

> On Fri, 18 Jun 1999, Waldo Bastian wrote:
> (...)
> >So In-Reply-To / References may either contain a 'phrase' like Gnus uses
> >or a msg-id (like Pine does). A msg-id looks much more usefull to me,
> >since this can be used to automatically retrieve the original message.
> 
> I agree. Now kmail sets msg-id in In-Reply-To.
> 
> >RFC822 also says
> (...)
> >My interpretation would be that you put a single msg-id of the message you
> >respond to in the IN-REPLY-TO header and that you add the IN-REPLY-TO 
> >header of the msg you reply to to the REFERENCES header of the msg you
> >reply to and put these in the REFERENCES header.

Yes, please, support REFERENCES. It is not mandatory for email, it seems,
but it is soooo handy.

> >
> >Example:
> >
> >Msg 1
> >-----
> >Message-ID: Msg1
> >
> >Msg 2
> >-----
> >Message-ID: Msg2
> >In-Reply-To: Msg1

I'd also put a 

References: Msg1

This lets you do threding easily.

> >
> >Msg 3
> >-----
> >Message-ID: Msg3
> >In-Reply-To: Msg2
> >References: Msg1
> >
> >Msg 4
> >-----
> >Message-ID: Msg4
> >In-Reply-To: Msg3
> >References: Msg1, Msg2
> >
> >This makes it easy to keep related messages together. (E.g. build a thread).
> But this could also make mails huge. Imagine big threads on kde-devel each mail
> would contain tons of References headers. Do we want this?

References can be trimmed. Limit yourself to the ten most recent ones, and
you still can do threading, while not bloating the message a lot.

In fact, it is often suggested for newsreaders to do this.

> While I can add reference texts to that header I wouldn't like to add
> complicated "keep only first ten-or-so references" code there (at least not in
> 1.1 branch).

It shouldn't be too complicated, should it?
Just split the line on the spaces, put the tokens on a list and join the
first ten (or less) as the "real" line.

> >It does look though as if some mailers don't use In-Reply-To and
> >add the msg-id directly to the References header. This isn't very well defined
> >I'm afraid.
> Yes... that is the problem.

References is not really intended to be complete dating back to the
original message, so losing the older reference is not catastrophic,
really.

Anyway: I would put both in-reply-to *and* references.

> Thanks, Waldo. I'm sorry to constantly ask questions like that but I feel
> somehow that I'm walking on thin ice here.

My simpathy goes your way :-)

 ("\''/").__..-''"`-. .         Roberto Alsina
 `9_ 9  )   `-. (    ).`-._.`)  ralsina@unl.edu.ar
 (_Y_.)' ._   ) `._`.  " -.-'   Centro de Telematica
  _..`-'_..-_/ /-'_.'           Universidad Nacional del Litoral
(l)-'' ((i).' ((!.'             Santa Fe - Argentina
                                KDE Developer (MFCH)
An opinion you can't give reasons for is not an opinion worth having (I)

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