Errors-to: owner-drums@CS.UTK.EDU
Date: Tue, 15 Aug 1995 18:18:05 +0200 (MET DST)
From: Jacob Palme <jpalme@dsv.su.se>
To: ietf-drums <drums@CS.UTK.EDU>
Subject: Re: Does "References:" form threads?
In-Reply-To: <199508141406.KAA26829@info.cren.net>
Message-Id: <Pine.SUN.3.91.950815181306.7288F-100000@ester>
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On Mon, 14 Aug 1995, Jim Conklin wrote:

> Jacob,
>   I'm not clear about the relevance of e-mail's
> use for scientific paper dissemination, and I believe that, in some
> disciplines it's actually significantly used.   I'd therefore appreciate
> your expanding on this a bit if you would, please.

I was only discussing a technical issue: Should a future revised
version of RFC822 recommend that client software for e-mail should
regard two messages, which are related to each other with
a "references" link, belong to the same thread.

With current practice as e-mail is used today, this is probably
the right way to do it.

A problem would occur in case we got a high proportion of e-mail
messages containing scientific papers and using the "References"
construct in e-mail headers for the kind of references you normally
have in scientific papers.

This is certainly not practice in e-mail today, and I do not think
it will happen in the future either. More probable is that
scientific papers in the future will be sent in HTML format and contain 
references in the form of hyperlinks in the text of the e-mail message.

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