ietf-822
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Re: Multi-message reply and "References:"

2004-03-16 09:10:44

Sorry if this reply is somewhat dated, I am reading this mailing
list with a :-) slight (-: time delay.

At 06.11 +0000 03-06-07, D. J. Bernstein wrote:
RFC 2822 is incorrect when it suggests that References has all of the
message's ancestors. What References actually has is the start of the
thread, followed by the most recent ancestors, ending with the parent.
Ancient ancestors other than the start of the thread are often missing.

I remember that I pointed this out when RFC 2822 was
developed. Other people then said, that although they knew
this was done, they did not like it, and therefore did not
want it mentioned in the standards document.

Maybe this practice of omitting middle Message-IDs, but
always keeping the first and the last two or three, could
be mentioned in a revised RFC 2822 in chapter "4. Obsolete
Syntax", in the description of "obs-references". That
chapter is meant to describe syntax which occurs but which
is not recommended. It could also contain a description of
practice which is not recommended.

Since the people who wrote RFC 2822 did not want this to be
described, they obviously were of the opinion that if a
thread is 200 or 1000 messages long, all of them should be
included in the references field!
--
Jacob Palme <jpalme(_at_)dsv(_dot_)su(_dot_)se> (Stockholm University and KTH)
for more info see URL: http://www.dsv.su.se/jpalme/


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