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Re: Reply to a message in the Web presentation.



On Tue 11 Feb 2020 at 07:36:49 (-0800), peter@easthope.ca wrote:
> 
> *	From: Andrei POPESCU 
> *	Date: Mon, 10 Feb 2020 21:43:11 +0200
> > Without In-Reply-To a mail reader has no way to which message the reply 
> > belongs, so it's more important than References.
> 
> Please look at the Web view of your reply.  (If your mailer linkifies 
> this URL, click on it.  Otherwise open your browser and copy-paste 
> this URL.) https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2020/02/msg00375.html
> 
> In-reply-to and References identifiers are identical. 
> Both are [🔎] E1j1Dus-00018Y-T8@dalton.invalid.  Correct?
> 
> A Web page isn't email but the Web presentation is consistent with 
> https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5322#section-3.6.4 , Identification Fields. [*]
> Here is an excerpt.
> > The "In-Reply-To:" field will contain the contents of the
> > "Message-ID:" field of the message to which this one is a reply (the
> >  parent message"). ...
> > 
> > The "References:" field will contain the contents of the parent's
> > "References:" field (if any) followed by the contents of the parent's
> > "Message-ID:" field (if any). 
> 
> The RFC also mentions the unusual case of a reply to multiple parents.
> > If there is more than one parent message, then the "In-Reply-To:" 
> > field will contain the contents of all of the parents' "Message-ID:" 
> > fields.
> But the paragraph for References neglects that case. ("parents'" vs. 
> "parent's")  >8~(  In debian lists, I've never noticed an instance of 
> multiple identifiers for the In-reply-to field.  If you find one, 
> please post a link.  (For my taste, one parent per reply is enough.  
> Multiple replies for multiple parents.) So, provided a reply is to 
> only one parent, the last identifier of References is identical to the 
> identifier of In-Reply-To.

Er, there was at least one posted here within the last week:
https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2020/02/msg00189.html
That's just one that happened to still be in my inbox.

> OK, I'll rise to the bait.  Will send a variant of this reply with the 
> In-Reply-To field omitted from the header.  If the list software 
> parses References cleverly, it will thread both cases the same.  =8~)  
> If the software requires In-Reply-To, the thread will be broken in the 
> variant.  >8~(
> 
> Regards,                             ... P.
> 
> [*] Except that the mailing list has "In-reply-to" whereas the RFC 
> sticks to "In-Reply-To".  Not too harmful.

Case-sensitivity is a harmless myth that's always being perpetuated,
it seems.

RFC 5322 §1.2.2.  Syntactic Notation

   This specification uses the Augmented Backus-Naur Form (ABNF)
   [RFC5234] notation for the formal definitions of the syntax of
   messages.  Characters will be specified either by a decimal value
   (e.g., the value %d65 for uppercase A and %d97 for lowercase A) or by
   a case-insensitive literal value enclosed in quotation marks (e.g.,
   "A" for either uppercase or lowercase A).

§ 3.6.4. Identification fields

in-reply-to     =       "In-Reply-To:" 1*msg-id CRLF

RFC 5322 § 2.3.

   NOTE:
      ABNF strings are case insensitive and the character set for these
      strings is US-ASCII.

   Hence:
         rulename = "abc"
   and:
         rulename = "aBc"

   will match "abc", "Abc", "aBc", "abC", "ABc", "aBC", "AbC", and
   "ABC".

      To specify a rule that is case sensitive, specify the characters
      individually.

   For example:
         rulename    =  %d97 %d98 %d99
   or
         rulename    =  %d97.98.99

   will match only the string that comprises only the lowercase
   characters, abc.

Cheers,
David.


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