RE: Message Threads

From: Martin Duerst <duerst_at_w3.org_at_hypermail-project.org>
Date: Mon, 19 Jul 2004 10:47:01 +0900
Message-Id: <4.2.0.58.J.20040719103942.05717130_at_localhost>

At 20:16 04/07/16 -0700, Mark Moore wrote:

> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Martin Duerst [mailto:duerst_at_w3.org]
> > Sent: Friday, July 16, 2004 7:19 PM

> > Implementing such changes in hypermail would probably not be too
> > difficult,
> > although scanning the body for message-ids could reduce performance.
>
>If you require the message ID to be in the subject, or at the beginning of a
>line in the body, the load on the CPU should be minimal (equivalent to
>scanning the headers for In-Reply-To:).

Well, detecting something as a message-id in an arbitrary header or in the body requires quite a bit more work than looking at a specific header. But I agree it could be done.

>For ridiculously loaded list servers, the scan could be limited to the first
>N lines, or M characters of the body.
>
>
> > The real problem with this proposal is to get users to include message-
> > ids.
> > My guess is that it just won't be possible to force users to not forget
> > to do that.
>
>The point isn't to force them to do anything. ;o) On the other hand, for
>users that care, there currently is no mechanism to reliably send a response
>to a particular message short of massaging the outgoing headers.

My guess is that:
1) Even most users that care in one way or another will usually forget,

    because it's additional work without any immediate benefit. 2) Those users who really care to the extent of actually doing something

    mostly are using mailers that allow adding additional headers.

>Worse, section 4 of RFC2368, "Unsafe headers," specifically recommends that
>mail software should not include "unsafe" headers from mailto URL's, and
>that "Only the Subject, Keywords, and Body headers are believed to be both
>safe and useful." [1]

See a separate mail for this.

>Maybe there's a synthesis to be had here. If Hypermail adds a
>"?Body=In-Reply-To:%20<message-ID>%0A" clause to response reply URI's, the
>In-Reply-To: line will be automatically inserted on the first line of the
>response.

Well, yes, that would be a possible hack.

>A similar strategy could insert the message ID into the subject line which
>may be a little better. It limits the amount of text the list server has to
>scan, and it may be more transparent to existing users.

But it would make the subject line very long, wouldn't it?

Regards, Martin. Received on Mon 19 Jul 2004 09:01:09 AM GMT