On 2005-09-14 05:53, Shel Belinkoff wrote:
> I've not a clue as to what you're talking about ...
ok... Let's discuss email headers:
From: "Shel Belinkoff" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
That's you, I guess.
Subject: Re: Some Posting Suggestions
That's the thread you replied to.
Date: Tue, 13 Sep 2005 13:10:45 -0700
That's when you did it.
To: pentax-discuss@pdml.net
You answered to this list.
This was obvious? Ok, let's increase the level:
X-Mailer: EarthLink MailBox 2004.0.129.0 (Windows)
This is your software, isn't it? At least your program claims to be this.
I guess it's a web interface, email frontend?
Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Your email program created this message id. The program has to ensure that
an ID will never be used twice. Thus this id is a unique identifier of an
email.
This message-id, as well as the other headers where extracted from your
reply to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
His headers included:
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: Some Posting Suggestions
Date: Tue, 13 Sep 2005 19:55:14 +0000
To: pentax-discuss@pdml.net
Reply-To: pentax-discuss@pdml.net
Message-Id: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
You get the idea?
Now, there's a standard how email software should behave. This standard is
very useful - otherwise you would not be able to send emails between
different platforms.
Some programs do support this standard very well - and some do just the
minimum in order not to produce major problems.
This standard suggests (or requests), that a 'reply' to another message
SHOULD contain the message-id of the original message.
It should reuse this message id in a certain way, as you do for
From/To/Date/Subject. The standard explains how this should be done. Use
'References' or 'In-Reply-To'.
('SHOULD' in an RFC means: you should have very good reasons and should
carefully think about your reasons if you won't do so.)
Maybe you've never seen your message-id before. No problem. Maybe you've
never seen References or In-Reply-To. That's ok as well: it's your software
that has to ensure that it's done proberly.
Thus your reply should have included Paul's Message-ID. A simple method is
just to take the Message-ID of the original message and repeat it.
Your reply to the message above takes:
To <- from the 'Reply-To'
Subject <- from the Subject, typically with one prefix 'Re:'
From <- from your setup
Date <- from the current date
Message-ID <- from your program
In-Reply-To <- from the original Message-ID
You see: all those email fields are filled automatically. You should not
have to edit anything here by hand. ok?
As soon as the original Message-ID is available, a good email software can
detect that your message is an answer to the former message. It can build
the thread as a message tree, where your answer is close to the former
message. Example:
flags date time name size subject
r 09-13 21:45 Shel Belinkoff (3.1K) Some Posting Suggestions
09-13 21:55 [EMAIL PROTECTED] (1.1K) >
r 09-13 22:10 Shel Belinkoff (3.8K) >
09-13 23:41 Graywolf (4.1K) >
F 09-14 12:47 To Pentax Discu (2.6K) >
09-14 01:13 Jack Davis (3.8K) >
09-13 22:13 Godfrey DiGiorg (3.7K) >
09-13 22:24 Shel Belinkoff (3.6K) *>
09-13 22:45 Godfrey DiGiorg (1.9K) >
09-13 22:56 Christian (2.3K) >
So finally: this is the reason why you do not have to include the full
quote. The original article is referenced within your message itself!
You suggested proper handling of URLs. A Message-ID is some kind of URL: You
don't have to quote the full text, but take the URL only.
But unfortunately your email software is broken...
It violates the email standard - I gave the URL before:
http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2822.html section 3.6.4
Feel free to ask again if this reply was insufficient.
I simplified a little bit - the expert will know the difference, while I'd
welcome corrections where I might have been completely wrong.
Now you could ask earthlink whether they know about their software bug
- or use a better email software which works better.
I'm no Windows expert - but I guess Mozilla works reasonably well both
for web (less security problems than Internet Explorer) and
for email (supports threading and behaves very well).
Maybe others will recommend better solutions.
Have fun,
Martin
