P3D P3D/S3D Message formatting

[Bob Wier <wier@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

|Bob W, friendly moderator, wrote:
| 
|> The problem we are likely to see is that if everyone just hits
|> "reply" to answer a message, we will end up with something like
|> RE: P3D RE:P3D RE:P3D  etc etc on the subject line. I may write
|> another simple filter to strip out multiple REs, but in the meantime,
|> everyone should be careful to edit their subject lines
|
|But Bob, what is your recommendation on how to edit the line?  Re: is
|supposed to indicate a reply, so the first Re: ought to stay.  If
|we edit out the P3D that listserv inserted, we'll get:
|  P3D A Subject
|  P3D Re: A Subject
|
|and when sorting lists by subject in a mail reader, these won't
|appear next to each other as they should.
|

  I just did a test, and replying to a message to myself via Eudora,
it does not auto add the RE. (but see the subject above to see if
it might be doing so when it goes thru listproc). Thus to keep
messages together, you'd strip the P3D, but leave the subject
line otherwise intact. In *this* message, I just sent the subject
as "P3D/S3D Message formatting" before it went out.

Note that mail readers vary in the way they handle this - some add the
RE automatically, some do not (depending on whether it's a "reply" or not).
Also, some mail readers will thread by subject automatically disregarding
the RE at the front end (in which case the P3D on the front *would*
cause a malfunction, unless you can specify to ignore that too).


|Because subscription is not automatic, perhaps e-mail addresses with
|embedded spaces should not be allowed....at least for the time being,
|until a better solution is found.
|
|(I saw one embedded space address the other day, but it was a
|CompuServe address; On CIS aren't the proper name addresses just
|and alias, so the old-style address could still be used? Or did
|they change that?  I think AOl also allows embedded spaces.)
|

I'm not sure - I've not seen a lot of addresses with spaces yet, but
they are definitely increasing. I'm not sure what CS and AOL are allowing
at this point, but there are some LARGE nets which are allowing
the embedded spaces within quotes format. These are exceptionally
difficult to handle, since much of the parsing software uses quote
marks (and single quotes, and periods, etc) as metacharacters in the
matching expressions.

As Mark Twain (or was it Will Rogers?) said, "I never metacharacter
I didn't like"...

--BW



------------------------------