ietf-822
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Re: Is Accept-language an email header field?

2004-04-06 14:54:57

> Let me start by pointing out that the accept-language is currently in fairly
> widespread use in email. A number of very popular clients generate these
> headers and a fair number of automatic response agents honor them. Strong
> customer demand led us to support them in the autoresponses our product
> generates a few years ago, which means I have a fair amount of
> experience  with
> them and the problems they do and do not have.

Notwithstanding the operational problems you mention, this suggests to me
that Accept-language should be included in the initial (permanent) registry
of email message headers, possibly carrying a warning about the operational
issues you note?

To the extent that having a single, standardized header for this would create a
trend towards using a single field name and would prevent additional field
names from being used for this purpose, I support having this in the registry.

OTOH, I have more important things to do than engage in a protracted wrangle
about how this field binds to addresses or anything similar. The market appears
to have decided on a "good enough" solution to this problem; the IETF can
either back this solution with a particular field name or not. It isn't going
to be able to effect more change than that.

                                Ned