Errors-to: owner-drums@CS.UTK.EDU
Date: Thu, 27 Jul 1995 11:18:13 +0200 (MET DST)
From: Jacob Palme <jpalme@dsv.su.se>
To: ietf-drums <drums@CS.UTK.EDU>
Subject: Ambiguity of the "Newsgroups:" heading field in e-mail
Message-Id: <Pine.SUN.3.91.950727111407.10022F-100000@ester>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

When the "Newsgroups:" heading field occurs in a mail message,
there are two different common uses of this field:

(a) To indicate that this is a mail reply to a message which
    occurred in the named Newsgroup.

(b) To indicate that this message is at the same time sent to
    both one or more Usenet News newsgroups and to one or
    more e-mail addresses.

This ambiguity is difficult to resolve, since there are many
much-used implementations of each of the two alternatives.
Many newsreaders use convention (a), while many combined
e-mail and newsreaders, like PINE, uses (b).

I suggest that the drums group specify one or the other
of these alternatives. Of the two alternatives, I would
prefer (b), since it seems much more natural that the
"Newsgroups" field should give the same information when
it occurs on a message in e-mail and in Usenet News.
This will become even more important, in a future where
it will probably be more and more common to combine
newsreaders and e-mail readers in one piece of software.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jacob Palme <jpalme@dsv.su.se> (Stockholm University and KTH)
for more info see URL: http://www.dsv.su.se/~jpalme