Re: Subject lines with Re: and Fw:

[Sebastian Zerbe <Sebastian Zerbe rz uni-duesseldorf de>]

Hi Brian,
you may think that it is a good idea to hard code "Re:"
and "Fw:", but i can't agree with you in this point.
I would say that good software is the one which leaves
as much freedom to the user as possible. Therfore it's
enough to have a default of "Re:" and "Fw:".
Most users don't change it (I don't at least), but
there are some people here in Germany who prefer
"AW:"(Antwort, engl. answer) instead of "Re:"
and then use capitalized "FW:". Balsa has it's 
problems with this, too, but it should be left to the
user!

BTW, I would agree with you to capitalize the word
"string" in the mentioned titles.

Best Regards,
Sebastian Zerbe

On 2001.06.13 17:56:44 +0200 Brian Stafford wrote:
> A thought occurrs to me:
> 
> RFC 2822 states in section 3.6.5. :-
> 
>                               ...   The "Subject:" field
> is the most
>    common and contains a short string identifying the
> topic of the
>    message.  When used in a reply, the field body MAY
> start with the
>    string "Re: " (from the Latin "res", in the matter of)
> followed by
>    the contents of the "Subject:" field body of the
> original message.
>    If this is done, only one instance of the literal
> string "Re: " ought
>    to be used since use of other strings or more than one
> instance can
>    lead to undesirable consequences.  ...
> 
> I vaguely remember some discussion of this on the IETF
> drums mailing
> list and there was also some discussion of Fw: for
> forwarded messages.
> The general idea was that these strings should be fixed in
> form so that
> life would be made easier for automated processors and
> that they
> should not be translated into other languages.
> 
> In light of this, I'm given to wonder if the "Default
> Reply string"
> and possibly the "Default Forward string" items in the
> "Mail Options"
> preferences tab should be eliminated and the strings hard
> coded.
> 
> Regards
> Brian Stafford
> 
> P.S. the word "string" should be capitalised in both the
> aforementioned
> titles!