On 2009-11-19, Bertrand Yvain <p...@ielo.net> wrote: > On Thu, Nov 19, 2009 at 09:00:54AM -0800, Gary Johnson wrote: > > On 2009-11-19, Bertrand Yvain <p...@ielo.net> wrote: > > > please consider this patch that adds a boolean configuration option, > > > reply_prefix. When turned off, the "Re: " prefix will not be added to > > > the subject of a reply, unless the subject was empty. > > > > As someone pointed out in another thread, maybe in mutt-users, > > mutt's hard-coded "Re: " is not very international. > > "Re: " is actually international. Quoting from RFC 2822: > > 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. > > This is not very normative and the phrasing is vague. To my > understanding, if a prefix were to be added it should be "Re: " which, > being latin, is not subject to localization.
Thanks for the explanations. I had always just assumed that "Re" was from the English "regarding" or "with regard to". I didn't know that it came directly from Latin. I had also assumed that it was a matter for localization because of mutt's inclusion of "aw" in its default 'reply_regexp'. > > In what situation do you not want the subject of your reply to begin > > with "Re: " or your national language equivalent? > > The mechanism to indicate that a message is a reply is the standard > References: header. Using a prefix leads to messy results, considering > the variety of software that do subject mangling (MUA and list > managers). > > So, to answer your question: in every situation. I handle the messiness of subject lines with a fairly complex 'reply_regexp' so that my replies have only "Re: " before the _original_ subject. I would think that you'd want to include some sort of reply indicator in the subject to indicate that it is a reply, especially for the benefit of users of lesser MUAs that don't handle or aren't configured to handle References correctly. That said, I'm not suggesting that everyone must do as I do, so if you still think your patch is the right solution for your situation, I don't have any further objections. Regards, Gary
