On Dec 8, 2005, at 8:31 AM, Peter Saint-Andre wrote:
Dave Cridland wrote:
I can only think of three levels of priority, and it's not really
priority at all.
1) I'd like to be told about this sort of message, at some point, if
you can.
2) I need to be told about this message.
3) I absolutely must be made immediately aware of this message.
Don't these levels map to "non-urgent", "normal", and "urgent" from
RFC 1327?
The RFC 1327 values relate to MTA processing priority -- how "quickly"
(relative
to other messages) an MTA is supposed to try to deliver the messages,
as in
perhaps the MTA should try to delivery all "urgent" messages before
trying to
delivery any "normal" or "nonurgent" messages (even if "normal" or
"nonurgent"
messages have already been enqueued awaiting delivery). The X.400 MTS
field
that RFC 1327 suggests translating to and from an RFC 822 "Priority:"
header line
value is not really intended as a field of user relevance at all.
In contrast, a header line such as "Importance" relates to what _users_
think
about a message -- that some message is especially important, or that
it is
desirable to display some message with some sort of "notice me" icon.
(And
the discouraged Precedence: header line was sort of a ambiguous mess of
both
-- perhaps part of the reason its use got discouraged?)
From RFC 2076 (Internet Message Headers):
Can be "normal", "urgent" or "non- Priority: RFC 1327, not for
urgent" and can influence general usage.
transmission speed and delivery.
Sometimes used as a priority Precedence: Non-standard,
value which can influence controversial,
transmission speed and delivery. discouraged.
Common values are "bulk" and
"first-class". Other uses is to
control automatic replies and to
control return-of-content
facilities, and to stop mailing
list loops.
A hint from the originator to the Importance: RFC 1327 and
recipients about how important a RFC 1911,
message is. Values: High, normal experimental
or low. Not used to control
transmission speed.
I would like to retain the distinction between, at a minimum, priority
and
importance, priority influencing transmission speed (when practical)
while
importance is an indication to be passed along to the end user (when
practical). Because while there is often overlap (and some defaulting
may
make sense), whether a message is "time critical" really is not the same
thing as whether a message is "important".
Regards,
Kristin
Peter
--
Peter Saint-Andre
Jabber Software Foundation
http://www.jabber.org/people/stpeter.shtml