Excerpts from internet.ietf-822: 20-Oct-91 Re: Non-ASCII hdrs: Encoded..
Erik M. van der Poel(_at_)sra (2092)
John Klensin writes:
Most unextended viewers display everything they get, trace fields and
X-blather and all. Let's not debate whether it should be that way, it
really is.
I'm willing to believe you, but can't... Do the other people on this
mailing list agree with John on this specific point? Do *many* people
see *every* Received line?
My experience -- as one who has been proseletyzing for advanced mail
systems for years -- is that a large number of people still do see every
received line.
Of related interest, however, is the fact that a very large number of
people have the ability to selectively filter out headers by name, e.g.
to say "never show me the x-foobar" headers. For such people, the use
of something like encoded-variable, with moderately readable variable
names, is quite appealing, because they can filter out the
encoded-variable header itself and only see the variable name in its
"readable" form on the Subject, To, and similar headers.