Hello Keith,
At 18:21 04/02/20 -0500, Keith Moore wrote:
I like the idea.
Thanks. Not exactly mine, but I'm glad to spread the word.
It might be appropriate for the field name to start with List-*, at
least for those cases where the archive is associated with a list. That
way, it's easier to separate fields added by a list from fields supplied
by the sender.
Good point. But it is not really restricted to lists. There are
other potential applications, which are not related to mailing lists.
So starting with List-* would be confusing. I added a sentence
to that effect.
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.
I have added some text about different formats, along the lines
suggested by Graham. I think functions such as being able to reply,...
would be great. Actually, our archives have such a function;
look for "Mail actions: [ respond to this message ]". The functionality
is limited to what can be done with the 'mailto' URI, and only
preserves some headers, and not the body. If you have ideas on
how to implement improvements, that would be great.
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. After all, if I already have a copy of the message with the
archived-at field, why would I want to download it? I'm much more likely
to want to look at either the messages that preceeded or followed that
message.
Yes. The other way we use it at W3C is to point others to emails
without having to look them up in the archive. The typical example
goes as follows: As a chair of a WG, I have to prepare an agenda for
a teleconference. I go through the mails (in my email archive) that
I think are relevant. With the system we have, I just copy/paste
the URI to the agenda. Without that system, I'd either have to
go to the archives and search for the message, or try to describe
the message in terms of sender, date/time, subject,...
As long as the field remains completely unstructured, I see no need to
support comments. I'd probably change my mind if the field were changed
to be, say, a list of URIs.
I have added a sentence saying that multiple headers should be
used for multiple URIs. I also mentionned that for HTTP URIs,
there may be a "300 Multiple Choices" response. We actually
produce such a response if a mail goes to more than one mailing
list, and therefore appears more than once in the archive.
Regards, Martin.