Hi Steve,
At 15:36 30-11-2004, Steve Dorner wrote:
I just spoke to a fellow with a very interesting email proxy system that
unfortunately works by using such []'ed cruft in subject fields. I
suppressed my gag reflex, because I understood why he was doing it. Most
current MUA's hide all headers except a specific few, so if you want to
communicate anything to the end user, the only way you have to do it is by
scribbling on those few visible fields. Or in the body, which is even
worse. Gone are the days when you could add a header and expect anyone to
see it. So, list processors aside, I think we're going to see more of
this and not less.
Tags are usually inserted because of the limitations of a widely used
MUA. The tags can be used to convey information for filtering as the MUA
does not have the capability to set rules based upon the List-Id or X headers.
We are going to see more of this because "everyone" does it and believe
that is the norm.
Could this be generalized as a recommendation to MUA's? I dunno. It
seems like a feature that's useful a lot of the time, and harmful
occasionally (eg, when there is real information inside []'s for some reason).
The tags that are inserted in the Subject header break DomainKeys. They
can also be confusing when you have a list message forwarded to another
lists as you see multiple tags in the Subject header then.
Regards,
-sm