Python mailing list vs. References: (was Re: My quarterly question on Design by Contract in Python...)

[Lars Wirzenius]

aahz at netcom.com (Aahz Maruch):
> Again, we're not talking about mailers here, we're talking about
> newsreaders.  A mail-to-news gateway certainly should have a certain
> amount of latitude in changing headers to fit the different
> environments.

Some latitude, yes, but as little as possible. The history of the net
knows too many situations where seemingly innocent changes have caused
trouble later. (For example, one gateway author decided that X- headers
weren't worth passing through, since they tended to be X-Face and other
bandwidth killers. Enter Dejanews and suddenlyt X-No-Archive was almost
vital.)

In my opinion, mucking with References headers is too much. Especially
since RFC822 specifies References for mail (although not as well as
RFC1036 does for news, but the definitions aren't contradictory).

IMHO, any mailer that doesn't generate References headers is broken.

(On the other hand, almost all mail software is broken, although not
necessarily because of this. It is simply amazing how creative mail
software authors are when inventing new ways of breaking their produce.
I admit to this insanity.)

> (If necessary, I'll write a longer post about the differences between
> e-mail lists and newsgroups, but I'll assume it's just a bit of
> confusion until I'm informed otherwise.)

Having been the moderator of a comp group for five years, I think I
know the difference between mail and news. :-)

(On the other hand, having been at the university for ten years, I
still haven't learned to express myself clearly in all situations.)