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