Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!apple!well!pokey From: pokey@well.UUCP (Jef Poskanzer) Newsgroups: news.admin Subject: Re^23: Re: re: none (was re: tried of bogus subject lines?) (long) Message-ID: <13639@well.UUCP> Date: 15 Sep 89 02:48:32 GMT Reply-To: Jef Poskanzer Organization: Paratheo-Anametamystikhood Of Eris Esoteric, Ada Lovelace Cabal Lines: 24 One thing about this Re^n stuff. It seems to me that it's no worse than any of the other stupid shit people put in the subject line. For instance, (long). Putting this in the subject line is a mistake, since the subject line gets propagated to followups which may not be long. It belongs in the summary line, I guess. For instance, people who re-type the subject line manually, with misspellings. This breaks rn's subject-following too. For instance, (was: ). This breaks rn's reverse subject-following, as in I'm reading an article with subject Re: Foo, I want to see some of the previous articles, but when I do a ^P I get an article with subject Bar (was Re: foo) and I have to use the Force. The only important difference between these other bogosities and Re^n is that Re^n is generated by a program, and therefore there's at least a chance of fixing it. So it should be fixed. It would also be nice if all the other things I mentioned were fixed too, but that will never happen. So the *REAL* problem is that rn's subject following code is Fucked Up. Brad is right. Stop complaining about people polluting the subject line, and go write (or buy from Brad!) some code to use references instead. --- Jef Jef Poskanzer pokey@well.sf.ca.us {ucbvax, apple, hplabs}!well!pokey "Ninety percent of baseball is half mental." -- Yogi Berra