ietf-822
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Re: New Internet Draft: draft-duerst-archived-at-00.txt

2004-02-21 01:17:53

"Adam M. Costello" 
<ietf-822(_dot_)amc+0(_at_)nicemice(_dot_)net(_dot_)RemoveThisWord> writes:

Keith Moore <moore(_at_)cs(_dot_)utk(_dot_)edu> wrote:

I'd also recommend that the link point to an archived copy of the
message in original form, rather than, say, one that is translated
to HTML.  Translating to HTML causes a loss of information and
potentially a loss of functionality.  You should be able to reply to
an archived message, refile it into a folder, follow threads, etc.,
but those things are harder to do if the message is no longer in its
original format.

Thinking about this I realized that one reason I'd like such a field
is so that I could, given a message, more easily find other messages
in the thread.

Actually, if the link points to a message/rfc822 resource, won't it be
harder to find the other messages in the thread than if the link points
to a text/html page with hyperlinks?  On the other hand, it's easier to
reply to a message if it's given in message/rfc822 form (or at least, it
could be, with a little browser support).  Maybe it would be best for
the Archived-At: field to point to a text/html page which in turn links
to a message/rfc822 version of the same message.

Another idea is to serve both message/rfc822 and text/html at the same
URI.  Browsers generally indicate the format they want, and servers
can pick the right content accordingly.  As far as conformance is
concerned, message/rfc822 could be a MUST (to make it useful from
progrms), and text/html be a MAY (to improve rendering for humans).
On the other hand, perhaps this solution is too fragile.