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From: Frank Ellermann <nobody@xyzzy.claranet.de>
Newsgroups: gmane.ietf.usenet.format
Subject: Re: References definitions and capabilities
Date: Sat, 21 Aug 2004 01:29:25 +0200
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Bill Davidsen wrote:

>>> (b) a followup which does not have a references header.

>> That could arrive at a gateway (web2news, mail2news), and it
>> should be handled if possible (2822 algorithm), otherwise it
>> would be better to call it "reply" instead of "followup".

> How would you tell (in software again) that it was a
> followup?

Has no References: and one In-Reply-To: => copy to References:
That's essentially the algorithm in RfC 2822 IIRC.  And it's
the algorithm in one of my scripts, where I try to fix missing
References: in the mbox file for a mailing list.

Has no References: and no In-Reply-To: => give up, this reply
(if it is a reply, and not one of the DoReMi messages) cannot
be patched.

> And how would you thread it?

Same subject modulo Re: => same thread.  Within a reasonable
time window.  But we've already seen that no definition of
thread pleases everybody, therefore the best strategy is to
not _define_ it at all.

> we can't define how a user agent should do anything

Yes, it's better to concentrate on the syntax, and if somebody
uses References: for "See-Also:" then he's free to do this,
and UAs shouldn't crash.  Just for fun I test it here.  <eg>

> I think it's a poor standard to have any question about what
> is and isn't a followup.

A followup is a reply with the Message-Id of its predecessor
in the last position of the References: maybe ?

                        Bye, Frank