Re: sieve vacation draft, really

[Tony Hansen <[e-mail]>]

Michael Salmon wrote:
> 
> +----- On 18 Feb 1999 23:04:47 EST, Tim Showalter writes:
> | > Date: 18 Feb 1999 22:12:43 -0500
> | > From: Tim Showalter <[e-mail]>
> |
> | > > >         The subject is set to the specified :subject string, if present.
> | > > > Otherwise, the subject is set to the characters "Re: " followed by the
> | > > > original subject with all leading occurrences of the characters "Re: "
> | > > > stripped off.
> |
> | > I have used this exact text.  It may be a little vauge, but I'm not sure
> | > I can improve on it much.  If that isn't okay, please let me know.
> |
> | actually, I didn't use that exact text, just the parts I liked.  The
> | text I added was
> |
> | Users can specify the subject of the reply with the ":subject"
> | parameter.  If the :subject parameter is not supplied, then the
> | subject is generated as follows: The subject is set to the
> | characters "Re: " followed by the original subject with all
> | leading occurances of the characters "Re: " stripped off.
> 
>   I have noticed that there are are number of national variants to re:
> in common use, in swedish it is sv: and I think german uses av:. I think
> that using re: in replies is ok although it could be a site defined
> parameter but that all leading short words ending in : should be
> stripped.

This has been discussed extensively on the DRUMS list. The consensus
there is that the latin abbreviation "Re: " is the string that is to be
used on-the-wire for all replies, and that mail user agents (MUA's)
should display the string in whatever manner is appropriate for the
locale in use (sv:,aw:,etc.), but never transmit those other strings. (I
think I summarized that right.)

>From draft-ietf-drums-msg-fmt-07.txt, section 3.6.5: 
  ... The "Subject:" field is the most common
  and contains a short string identifying the topic of the message. When
  used in a reply, the field body MAY start with the string "Re: " (from
  the Latin "res", in the matter of) followed by the contents of the
  "Subject:" field body of the original message. If this is done, only
one
  instance of the literal string "Re: " ought to be used since use of
  other strings or more than one instance can lead to undesirable
  consequences.

I think it is best to stick to just stripping off the latin abbreviation
and not strip off anything else.

	Tony Hansen
	[e-mail]