Subject lines with Re: and Fw:

[Brian Stafford <brian stafford uklinux net>]

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!