Michael Salmon wrote:
+----- On 18 Feb 1999 23:04:47 EST, Tim Showalter writes:
| > Date: 18 Feb 1999 22:12:43 -0500
| > From: Tim Showalter <tjs+(_at_)andrew(_dot_)cmu(_dot_)edu>
|
| > > > The subject is set to the specified :subject string, if
present.
| > > > Otherwise, the subject is set to the characters "Re: " followed by the
| > > > original subject with all leading occurrences of the characters "Re: "
| > > > stripped off.
|
| > I have used this exact text. It may be a little vauge, but I'm not sure
| > I can improve on it much. If that isn't okay, please let me know.
|
| actually, I didn't use that exact text, just the parts I liked. The
| text I added was
|
| Users can specify the subject of the reply with the ":subject"
| parameter. If the :subject parameter is not supplied, then the
| subject is generated as follows: The subject is set to the
| characters "Re: " followed by the original subject with all
| leading occurances of the characters "Re: " stripped off.
I have noticed that there are are number of national variants to re:
in common use, in swedish it is sv: and I think german uses av:. I think
that using re: in replies is ok although it could be a site defined
parameter but that all leading short words ending in : should be
stripped.
This has been discussed extensively on the DRUMS list. The consensus
there is that the latin abbreviation "Re: " is the string that is to be
used on-the-wire for all replies, and that mail user agents (MUA's)
should display the string in whatever manner is appropriate for the
locale in use (sv:,aw:,etc.), but never transmit those other strings. (I
think I summarized that right.)
From draft-ietf-drums-msg-fmt-07.txt, section 3.6.5:
... The "Subject:" field is the most common
and contains a short string identifying the topic of the message. When
used in a reply, the field body MAY start with the string "Re: " (from
the Latin "res", in the matter of) followed by the contents of the
"Subject:" field body of the original message. If this is done, only
one
instance of the literal string "Re: " ought to be used since use of
other strings or more than one instance can lead to undesirable
consequences.
I think it is best to stick to just stripping off the latin abbreviation
and not strip off anything else.
Tony Hansen
tony(_at_)att(_dot_)com