Claws Mail Bugzilla – Bug 240
Better SUBJECT handling
Last modified: 2003-07-22 22:14:43
You need to log in before you can comment on or make changes to this bug.
Currently SC allows for the subject to take this form: Re: FW: Re: Test Message This should not be allowed. It should be able to parse the subject header effectively and whittle down the subject literals. RFC 2822 says in Section 3.6.5 "Informational fields": 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. Since SC implements the literal string, in order to make life easier, it should limit the use of literal to one instance only. I think the above quoted sample subject line is exactly what the authors meant by "undesirable consequences". :)
Claws already stripped down those subjects if they contained variations of reply prefixes (among others "Re:", "Antw:"), so it should strip down: "Re: Re[10]: Antw: Re[1]: Re[32993003]: Aw: Re: Cool" with no problems to: "Re: Cool" It doesn't clean Fw: from the subject string because this would lead to loss of information. Take for example the most simple case: "Fw: You need this!" If you'd reply to this, in your proposal, you'd get: "Re: You need this!"
I don't see this as loss of information. Think about it. You are replying to the email and the subject qualifies the email. So when you reply, it is about the email, the subject. I see a forward as merely sending a copy to another person or sending it across to another more concerned person who will reply to the email, not to the forward. In the current implementation, the following is possible: Re: Fw: Re: Fw: Re[3]: Fw: RE: FW: Re: FW: Re: Fw: Test mail. I call that soup. The subject of discussion remains the actual mail: "Test Mail"; and all the forwarding and replying is being done for the "Test mail" contents and comments in reply to these original contents. Perhaps this is why the RFC states, "since use of other strings or more than one instance can lead to undesirable consequences." and not "since use of more than one instance of the same string or those of same meaning as the existing string in sequence can lead to undesirable consequences." The RFC specifically states "more than one instance" in exclusion of "use of other strings".
committed