Date   : Sun, 29 Oct 2006 21:16:41 +0000
From   : jgh@... (Jonathan Graham Harston)
Subject: Tags on subject lines

>Message-ID: <45416566.10700@...>
 
Jules Richardson <julesrichardsonuk@...> wrote:
> > the whole point of configuring mailing lists to insert [xxx] tags,
> > to allow the recipients to do things with them.
> 
> Eh? I'm missing something. How does performing actions based on the subject
> line differ from performing actions based upon other stuff in the header
> (including sender or reply-to)?
 
It's easier, simpler, more effective, easier to set up, easier to
explain to recipients, guarranteed to be a header line the
recipent receives...
 
The only header lines you can guarrantee the recipent will receive
are "From:", "Date:", and "Subject:". All other lines may be
arbitarility added, removed, mangled, duplicated, destroyed in
various ways.
 
Every mailing list I know of allows the administrator to configure
it to install a [something] tag on the subject line. It is the
simplest, most effective way of labelling a mailing list post.
 
> I can't think of a single mail client that lets you do something based upon
> subject line, but doesn't let you do something based on other fields (sure,
 
My MailSort mail processor.
 
It can't filter on other header lines as there is no guarantee
that those header lines are actually there, or actually contain
anything consistantly sensible that doesn't require me to rewrite
the processing software evry day.
 
> All the subject line tag achieves is to  waste subject line space without
 
No, it adds valuable functionality at very little expense.
 
-- 
J.G.Harston - jgh@...                - mdfs.net/User/JGH
BBC IDE Hard Drive Interface - http://mdfs.net/Info/Comp/BBC/IDE