[Mailman-Users] RFC for List Message Header Fields

[J C Lawrence]

On Wed, 24 Mar 1999 12:08:57 -0500 (EST) 
Darren Henderson<darren at jasper.somtel.com> wrote:

> Email is not the web the web is not email. I don't like bluring the
> distinction. 

URL != web.

> It assumes a lot about about users and the state of the world. It
> may lead people to think that embeding html in email is a good
> thing.

This seems rather a stretch.

> While a lot of people use netscape etc to do mail a lot of people
> don't.  Yes, the latest versions of pine have the capability of
> dealing with urls but the older ones don't and a lot of sites aren't
> upgrading.

> Most people see their mail with a limited number of headers, these
> won't be visible to them. Yes they can look at the other headers but
> most don't know too. Eventually mua's could be altered to display
> those paticular headers by default as it stands currently I don't
> think any of them do.

My interpretation of this:

  Users of older software won't see and therefore won't use the new
headers.  This seems no loss.

  Users of older software who do know how to see those headers won't
know what to do with them.  These are the same people who are confused
by bounces messages -- hardly a critical public.

  Users of newer software that either presents, of provides easy
access to the functionality indicated by the new headers will gain
something useful.  This seems something worthy, especially in
encouraging the development of MUA's.

> No earth shattering reasons really. Mostly personal preference I
> guess.

Me?  I mostly don't care.  However it is a checkbox item and I'm quite
certain that somebody does care, and will care that they are able to
turn that feature on or off.  That seems worth noticing.

-- 
J C Lawrence                              Internet: claw at kanga.nu
----------(*)                            Internet: coder at kanga.nu
...Honorary Member of Clan McFud -- Teamer's Avenging Monolith...