Message-Id: <199811041908.UAA28237@gunilla.TechFak.Uni-Bielefeld.DE>
To: drums@cs.utk.edu
Subject: (bad) i18n of "Re:" usage in "Subject:"
Date: Wed, 04 Nov 1998 20:08:30 +0100
From: Peter Koch <pk@TechFak.Uni-Bielefeld.DE>


There are some MUAs which kind of localize certain message headers
when presenting them to the user, e.g. by translating "subject",
"from", "to" to the local language equivalent. This may be a good
idea and will not affect interoperability as long as the correct keywords
appear "on the wire".

The "Re:" usage, described in draft-ietf-drums-msg-fmt-05.txt, 3.6.5,
is a special case in that "Re:" is a keyword but not a field name.

Some implementations now even "translate" the "Re:" and put the result into
the reply message. In German this translation often reads "AW", a non-standard
abbreviation for "Antwort" (answer). Non-localized clients have no chance
of recognizing this token, so we end up with a chain of Re: AW: Re: AW: ...
in the "Subject:" field unless cleaned up manually.

Although it is just a convention I'd like to suggest the wording in 3.6.5
be amended by a phrase like:

  No different reply indicator SHOULD be used. In particular the use of
  any form of translation of "Re:" is deprecated.

-Peter