mhonarc-users

Re: Question about spam mode

2000-08-10 01:33:53
In 
<Roam(_dot_)SIMC(_dot_)2(_dot_)0(_dot_)3(_dot_)965870611(_dot_)30752(_dot_)csg(_at_)eng(_dot_)sun(_dot_)com>,
"Carl S. Gutekunst" <csg(_at_)eng(_dot_)sun(_dot_)com> wrote:
Now, I do not know if there is an RFC documenting In-Reply-To.
Pointers welcome.  I've relied on my experience with it since '88/89
when I first starting using email.

RFC822.

      "In-Reply-To"       ":"  *(phrase / msg-id)
      "References"        ":"  *(phrase / msg-id)

That is, the In-Reply-To and References field contain zero or more occurances
of a "phrase" field (plain text) or a Message ID.

    4.6.2.  IN-REPLY-TO

            The contents of this field identify  previous  correspon-
       dence  which this message answers.  Note that if message iden-
       tifiers are used in this  field,  they  must  use  the  msg-id
       specification format.

    4.6.3.  REFERENCES

            The contents of this field identify other  correspondence
       which  this message references.  Note that if message identif-
       iers are used, they must use the msg-id specification format.

Note that the RFC 1036 format for a References field is approximately:

        "References"        ":"  1*(msg-id)

which may be easier to parse for threading.  I-R-T seems to tend to not
be used, or used with a single message-ID, or used in any of many
unstructured free-text "attribution" styles:

        In-Reply-To:  Joe Blow's message <msg1234(_at_)example(_dot_)com> of 
                        Wed Aug  9 23:04:05 PDT 2000 to his uncle Bob.

which may be informative to humans, but offers more of a parsing
challenge than information to software.  More recent email and
news practices are under discussion - mailing list archives at:

http://www.imc.org/ietf-822/

http://www.landfield.com/usefor/



-- 
Denis McKeon

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