At 01:50 2004/02/26 +0000, Adam M. Costello wrote:
Bill McQuillan <McQuilWP(_at_)pobox(_dot_)com> wrote:
What is the usefulness of a header field containing a URI which only
fetches another copy of the same message?
Even if that is all it did, it would be useful in this scenario: I have
a copy of a message in my personal mailbox, and I'm creating a web page
in which I want to refer to that message. Rather than copy the message
into my own web page, I can copy the URI from the Archived-At: field
of the message into a href attribute in the web page, and let readers
fetch the message from the public archive.
In this case shouldn't the referred to item be a web page rather than a
message/rfc822?
A similar argument applies
when I am sending a message to a large number of recipients, a few of
whom might be interested in following my reference to another message.
Rather than including a copy of the other message (causing it to be
pushed out to everyone), I can copy the URI and let the readers fetch it
if they care to.
This is one legitimate use I can see, but it seems to be of low utility to me.
There is also the possibility that the proposed header field will allow
more than just fetching the message; in particular, it might allow an
easy way to access other messages in the same thread.
This was actually my point! Some sort of access other than an imap: or ftp:
access to the raw message/rfc822 is what most of us would like to get.
--
Bill McQuillan <McQuilWP(_at_)pobox(_dot_)com>