Re: daily response Wednesday 17 mar

Just a few specific points about your post.

On Mar 17 2004, David Nicol wrote:
>
> Which brings another requirement.  We must decide what MUA we want to
> support.  Reccomending munging the Subject line seems to be a good practice
> for things like list servers.

Surely, standards are goals for all agents. We can't treat this like
a product support problem. There have to be good reasons for
proposals, hopefully independent of whether the most popular systems do things
a certain way. The most popular systems will be gone in 5 to 10 years,
but the standards won't (assuming they are taken up ;-)

>
> >... the filter hacks the MUA, ...
>
> I do not understand this point.  There appears to be confusion
> between MTA filtering and MUA filtering.
>

Maybe I am confused, but of course I wouldn't know, I'll have to take
your word for it ;-)

It's true that I don't really make a distinction between MTA filtering
and MUA filtering. Perhaps I should, but my current thinking is that
the MUA is only a step along the lifetime of a message, not a final
destination (from the pov of filtering).

Messages can be forwarded, replied to, used for learning material,
moved around folders, kept in archives and reimported into another
MUA, retagged.

Unlike transport information, filtering information impacts these
actions. That's because filtering doesn't stop after transport.
Filtering could go on for years after the message is received, and
every piece of information a filter adds could be used by the next filter.

By contrast with transport information, the MUA is officially the final
destination, ie there is no official use for the transport info after
it's in the MUA. If the message is moved or forwarded, the original
transport information is discarded, not used by the next MTA.

Here's the simplest comparative example I can think of, which repeats
what I just said:

A message is sent from A to B, who forwards it to C. There are two
transport actions, and two filtering actions.

From A to B, MTA1 adds transport information. From A to B, filter1 adds
filtering information.

From B to C, MTA2 adds transport info, ignoring old transport info
(it's really a completely new message from transport pov).
From B to C, filter2 adds filtering info, taking into account contents
of message and therefore previous filter1 info. (it's basically the
same message from filtering pov)

So after this long explanation, I don't see a distinction between MTA
filtering and MUA filtering.

> We desparately need named scenarios.

I agree. But they must be simple, so everyone can understand them.

--
Laird Breyer.