Errors-to: owner-drums@CS.UTK.EDU
Message-Id: <199509182309.TAA24869@CS.UTK.EDU>
To: drums@CS.UTK.EDU
From: "Roger Fajman" <RAF@CU.NIH.GOV>
Date:     Mon, 18 Sep 1995  19:09:01 EDT
Subject:  Re:  Resent- facility

> I'm not sure about that.   I am coming to the opinion that Resent
> headers should be treated in much the same way as Received,
> that is, they provide a log of message relaying, that can be
> examined, but apart from that, should basically be ignored.

That would be a significant chnage to RFC 822.  It explicitly
says that multiple resent headers of the same type are undefined.
This tends to suggest that one ought to remove any Resent headers
in a message when more are to be added.  That's not a log, at
least not in the way that Received headers are a log.

> That would imply that UA's should generally take no specific
> notice of Resent headers when displaying, replying, etc, to
> a message that contains them, instead using purely the original
> headers.

I disagree.  If someone resends a message to me, I want to know
who did it.  I may want to include that person in a reply.

> What we do need to do is more clearly document them, and in
> particular list which headers it makes sense to have a Resent
> version of.   I doubt that a Resent-Content-Id: makes any
> sense, and even if using Resent-Received might be technically
> better than Received once a message has been Resent, I don't
> think we're about to make that happen now.

The RFC 822 grammar defines only certain ones:  Resent-to, Resent-cc,
Resent-bcc, Resent-from, Resent-sender, Resent-reply-to,
Resent-message-id, and Resent-date.

> I once (re-)sent a message with a Resent-Subject in it - as a
> way to pass comments of mine to the (many) recipients (it was
> to a list) which I thought at the time as being rather convenient,
> until it was pointed out to me that most UA's probably never made
> it easy, if indeed possible, for the recipients to even see the
> thing.   I don't think I'd do that again.

Resent-subject isn't defined in the RFC 822 grammar.