ietf-822
[Top] [All Lists]

Re: "Importance" and "Priority"

2000-06-13 07:06:08
At 04.24 -0700 0-06-12, ned(_dot_)freed(_at_)innosoft(_dot_)com wrote:
The history of the precedence field is a pretty strong argument for
standardization, actually.

When there is such a field already used, but in different ways
by different mailers, it is often best to define a new field.
Since both "Priority" and "Importance" already are standardized,
but only for limited domains, it seems natural to extend what
already exists.

Jacob, what I was saying is that the experience with the Precedence field,
which is now largely useless because of differing interpretations by
different implementations, shows why it standardization of such things is
a good idea. I was not advocating standardization of Precedence; that would
be a very bad idea.

And since much of what Precedence does is covered by other mechanisms now
I don't see a reason to move any of its functions to a new field either.

I am not sure one should really distinguish between "Priority"
and "Importance" in the way X.400 does. This distinction is not
very clear. If my mailer sorts by incoming messages, one could
argue that this should be based on "Priority" since this means
that the messages will reach me faster, or based on "Importance"
becuase sorting is a UA operation, not an MTA operation.

On the contrary, the difference is quite clear -- one is an envelope field that
acts on message routing and transport and has no effect on user agents, and the
other is a sorting indicator for user agents that has no effect on routing
and transport.

As I said before, opinions vary as to whether or not the user agent function is
worth having. But contrary to your previous assertions, there is considerable
customer demand for the sort of control over transport priority provides.

                                Ned


<Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread>