Subject: Pine Assuming Mailed Replies are News Articles - a solution

From: [email-masked] (Matt Messina)
Date: 5 Mar 1995 23:54:57 GMT

The authors of Pine thought it would be a good thing for Mail and News to
be treated the same way.  One result of this is that uninitiated users can
very easily post a followup article to a mail reply to a news article. 

This is because Pine assumes that everything that has a Newsgroups header
is a news article.  Anyone who has spent any time studying various news
user agents knows that this is not a valid assumption. 

The Pine authors can take one of two approaches to this problem.  (1) Say,
"If the lusers are too stupid to tell the difference between news and
mail, that's not our problem."  Or (2) come up with different criteria
with which to judge whether something is from news or mail.  I think one 
of these approaches is clearly better than the other.

I suggest that when Pine writes a mail message to an folder, it make a
note that it is mail and not news, and when it writes a news article to an
folder, it make a note that it is news and not mail.  One place to put
this note is in the X-Status line that Pine uses to tell if a
message/article is new, replied-to, etc.  Possible X-Status lines could
look like: 

  []              New mail or news -- fall back on the "Newsgroups" method
  [X-Status: ]    Read mail or news -- fall back on the "Newsgroups" method
  [X-Status: A]   Answered mail or news -- fall back on "Newsgroups" method
  [X-Status: M]   New mail
  [X-Status: N]   New news
  [X-Status: MR]  Read mail
  [X-Status: NR]  Read news
  [X-Status: MA]  Answered mail
  [X-Status: NA]  Answered news

I'm sure I've overlooked something (such as backwards compatibility--but
X-Status isn't a real header anyway), but I think this is a step in the
right direction.  If backwards compatibility is important, then
introducing an entirely new header (X-Is-This-Mail-Or-News) is a solution. 

(Of course if the authors of RFC 850 had choosen Article-ID rather than
Message-ID, it would have been very easy to tell the difference between 
mail and news.  Too late for that, I suppose.)
-- 
Matt Messina
[email-masked]

---

From: Terry Gray <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 5 Mar 1995 23:08:07 -0800 (PST)

Matt,
I hesitate to perpetuate this thread, since the subject was exhausted 
previously, but nevertheless:

 o It's not the unification of mail and news handling that causes the 
   problem you describe; it has to do with lack of consensus on how the 
   newsgroups header should be used.  (Ex: when you FORWARD a News msg to 
   someone via mail, should the Newsgroups hdr be included in the 822 header
   of the mail message?  I certainly don't think so, but some folks 
   disagree, and many newsreaders do this, perhaps making the debate moot.)

 o Your proposed solution is unworkable because the primary problem has
   to do with message stores (e.g. Inbox) created by other programs, not by 
   Pine.

 o Pine 3.92 will have improvements in this area.

-teg

---

From: [email-masked] (Jeffrey Hurwit)
Date: Mon, 6 Mar 1995 07:44:37 GMT

In article <[email-masked]>,
Matt Messina ([email-masked]) wrote:

>The authors of Pine thought it would be a good thing for Mail and News
>to be treated the same way.  One result of this is that uninitiated
>users can very easily post a followup article to a mail reply to a news
>article.

    A temporary (and very workable) solution was posted to
    news.software.readers not long ago.  If you use procmail to sort
    and process your mail, place the following in your .procmailrc as
    the first recipe:

:fhw
^Newsgroups:
| formail -R Newsgroups: X-Newsgroups:

    This will change the Newsgroups: header in any e-mail message that
    has one to X-Newsgroups:, which will prevent Pine from posting the
    reply to the group.  The more knowledgeable can turn on full
    headers with 'h' if they want to see this newsgroups line.

    (BTW, if you're thinking that Pine users couldn't possibly fathom
    procmail, let me assure you that I can't possibly be the only
    counter-example. :)

                                        Jeff

---

From: Nancy McGough <[email-masked]>
Date: 6 Mar 1995 19:10:50 GMT

>    headers with 'h' if they want to see this newsgroups line.

Another possiblility is this procmail recipe:

:0 fhw
* !^Message-Id:.*Pine
* ^Newsgroups:

which only changes the Newsgroups header in non-Pine messages.  Since
a Newsgroups header in a Pine message means that the message was
indeed posted, it's ok for Pine to ask about posting responses to
these messages.
 
  -Nancy
--
 /\_/\  Nancy McGough              /\_/\  Vote for the humanities.misc  @..@
( o.o ) Infinite Ink              ( o.o ) newsgroup! See my Web pages  (----)
 > ~ <  http://www.jazzie.com/ii/  > ^ <  for details.                ( >__< )

---

From: John Gardiner Myers <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 6 Mar 1995 16:24:02 -0500

> user agents knows that this is not a valid assumption. 

What Pine is assuming is that the Newsgroups: header has the meaning
defined in RFC 1036--that it lists the newsgroup or newsgroups in
which the message belongs.  The problem is that various news user
agents sometimes use that header for a completely different purpose.

The primary difference between news and mail, their transport systems,
is but an implementation detail.  The two are fundamentally the same
thing and manipulate the same objects, modulo differing requirements
placed on the set of headers by the transport systems.

Pine is hardly the first user agent to combine news and mail, it is
certainly going to be the last.  In such agents, it is normal to have
a folder containing some messages received through the mail transport
system and others received through the news transport system.  It is
unreasonable to expect such systems to detect which messages are
"news" and which are "mail" in order to figure out how to interpret
any given header field.

The correct solution is to not make field-names context sensitive.
User agents should not create Newsgroups: headers that do not have a
meaning other than that defined by RFC 1036 or its successors.

-- 
_.John G. Myers		Internet: [email-masked]
			LoseNet:  ...!seismo!ihnp4!wiscvm.wisc.edu!give!up

---

From: Rahul Dhesi <[email-masked]>
Date: 7 Mar 1995 02:20:05 GMT

In <[email-masked]> John Gardiner Myers
<[email-masked]> writes:

>which the message belongs.

>thing and manipulate the same objects...

>It is

I see four questionable assumptions here:

1. The meaning of the Newsgroups: header according to RFC 1036 applies
   to email.
2. News and email are fundamentally the same thing.
3. It is reasonable that software should discard useful
   out-of-band information.
4. Established practice means nothing.
-- 
Rahul Dhesi <[email-masked]>

---

From: [email-masked] (Mike Schenk)
Date: 7 Mar 1995 22:20:52 GMT

>meaning other than that defined by RFC 1036 or its successors.

Ignoring whether or not your solution is desirable, it certainly is not
feasible in practice and therefore cannot be a correct solution.

	Mike

---

From: [email-masked] (Tim Pierce)
Date: Wed, 8 Mar 1995 02:09:39 GMT

I never thought I'd find myself agreeing with John Stanley
about anything, let alone RFC compliance, but, well, there
you go.

In article <[email-masked]>,
John Stanley <[email-masked]> wrote:

>In article <[email-masked]>,
>John Gardiner Myers  <[email-masked]> wrote:
>
>The objects they manipulate are fundamentally different, as can be
>evidenced by the fact that people complain that their mail was posted.
>If it's the same, barring transport mechanism, why do people complain?

Precisely.  Even though news and mail are, at a technical
level, extremely similar messaging systems, those who use
them tend to treat them as oil and water.  It is imperative
that the tools used to handle mail and news be capable of
making an equally strong distinction; even though the user
may want to do many similar things to both media, it can be
catastrophic to confuse one for the other.

>>In such agents, it is normal to have
>That's silly. The agent put the messages in the folders, it can
>remember how the message arrived. ("Gee, I used NNTP to fetch this
>thing, I'll bet it's news.")

Of course.  It is not beyond imagining that perhaps the Pine
client could insert a header into each message describing
its original (and therefore default) disposition -- a
PINE-Status header, if you will, describing whether the
message originated from news or mail (or some other source).

In fact, the mail agent I currently use, MM, does rather a
similar thing in order to keep store MM-specific concepts in
a Berkeley-format mailbox.  And, oh! by some miracle of
coincidence, one of the co-authors of MM was Mark Crispin!
Fancy that.

-- 
Unsolicited commercial electronic mail sent to this address will be
proofread at a cost of $200/hour (one half-hour minimum).

---

From: [email-masked] (John Stanley)
Date: 8 Mar 1995 01:08:13 GMT

Oh, goody. Here we go, again.

>which the message belongs.  

Unfortunately, RFC 1036 defines headers for NEWS, but NOT FOR MAIL. In
a mail message, "Newsgroups" is undefined. It has NO meaning. At worst,
it has ONLY the meaning the agent who puts it in wants it to have.
Unfortunately, Pine's assumption about what other systems meant is not
correct, and it leads to problems, and the Pine people know this but
adamantly refuse to change or fix the program.

You may use them for the same thing, and that is fine. I don't care if you
drive screws with a hammer, but that doesn't make a screwdriver and a hammer
fundamentally the same thing.

>certainly going to be the last.  

I hope so. At least, any that DO follow would do well to learn from Pine's
mistakes and know which headers are defined and which aren't.

That's silly. The agent put the messages in the folders, it can
remember how the message arrived. ("Gee, I used NNTP to fetch this
thing, I'll bet it's news.") Since some news headers are undefined for
mail, it really does need to know which is which.

>meaning other than that defined by RFC 1036 or its successors.

Mail user agents are not bound by news user agent RFC. It would be nice
if "newsgroups" headers didn't show up in anything but news, but they
do and will continue to do so until someone goes to every site in the
world and replaces the software there. Are you volunteering?

What we CAN say about the correct solution is that it is NOT "screw
anyone who's mail software doesn't obey the news RFC".

---

From: [email-masked] (Matt Messina)
Date: 8 Mar 1995 06:01:59 GMT

>indeed posted, it's ok for Pine to ask about posting responses to

Unless RFC 822 *prohibits* the word "Pine" from appearing in a Message-ID 
of a non-Pine message, this recipe makes use of an invalid assumption.
-- 
Matt Messina
[email-masked]

---

From: [email-masked] (Matt Messina)
Date: 8 Mar 1995 06:22:02 GMT

>   disagree, and many newsreaders do this, perhaps making the debate moot.)

Should it be?  Probably not.  But the relevent question is, "Is it
prohibited?"

>   to do with message stores (e.g. Inbox) created by other programs, not by 

In those cases, fall back upon the "Newsgroups method."  Or preferably, a
header that is less likely to occur in a mail message.  (How about Path?)

> o Pine 3.92 will have improvements in this area.

Good.  Now if my admins would just upgrade from 3.87...
-- 
Matt Messina
[email-masked]

---

From: [email-masked] (Tim Pierce)
Date: Wed, 8 Mar 1995 20:47:04 GMT

In article <[email-masked]>,
John Gardiner Myers  <[email-masked]> wrote:

>[email-masked] (John Stanley) writes:
>
>> Unfortunately, RFC 1036 defines headers for NEWS, but NOT FOR MAIL.
>
>Using the same field-name as a header defined in RFC 1036 for a
>completely different purpose than defined in that document is an
>extremely bad idea.  It is the root cause of this problem.

That's ridiculous, since the context in which the
"Newsgroups" header is being used is electronic mail.  The
mail standards don't define any "Newsgroups" header at all,
so any agent which ascribes meaning to that header in a mail
message is playing a dangerous game.

Furthermore, given that it has been standard practice for
years to include a "Newsgroups" header in a private response
to a Usenet post, it is downright foolish for an agent to
apply a meaning to that header that differs from the one
commonly in use.  It makes Pine the Humpty Dumpty of mail
agents.

>Just because a practice is widely deployed does not make it correct or
>desirable.  It is not going to be feasable to build/maintain a Maginot
>line between "news" objects and "mail" objects, a practice of using
>the same field-names to mean completely different things in the two
>contexts is going to cause many more problems than just the one being
>complained about in this thread.

You may be right.  But we're stuck with it anyway, and
obstinately insisting that it's a bad idea doesn't change
the fact that we have to deal with it in a practical manner.
Pine doesn't.

---

From: "Steven D. Majewski" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 8 Mar 1995 20:56:06 -0500 (EST)

> commonly in use.  It makes Pine the Humpty Dumpty of mail

Now that this is the third time around on this subject, I know it's
hopeless trying to change anyone's mind, so I'll just stick to 
correcting the factual error above: 

 Pine does not ascribe any meaning or make any assumptions about 
the meaning of a "Newsgroups:" header line. It asks the user what
he/she wants to do about it. ( And then it asks "are you sure..." )

 It is the fact that there is no standard context-free meaning for 
the "Newsgroup:" line that makes it impossible for Pine to make any
assumptions - which would be real useful, as it could then prevent
users from asking it to do the "wrong" thing ( or at least ask them
ONE MORE TIME: "are you sure..." ) 

 It is the fact that some news readers sometimes chose to use a 
non-standard usage and semantics for the "Newsgroups:" line that 
makes it impossible for ANY program to automatically ascribe a single 
meaning to the existence of that line. It's meaning is ambiguous: 
The message might be a News posting or it might be a private message
in reply to a public new posting ( or it might have been sent via 
both channels. ) So the only reasonable action for any program is to
ask the user to decide, based perhaps on other clues in the message text.
[ Which is exactly what Pine does - *it* does not ascribe meaning to that
header line - the user does. ] 

 REPEAT: Pine does NOT assume mailed replies are news articles. 

---|  Steven D. Majewski   (804-982-0831)  <[email-masked]>  |---
---|  Computer Systems Engineer          University of Virginia  |---
---|  Department of Molecular Physiology and Biological Physics  |---
---|  Box 449 Health Science Center    Charlottesville,VA 22908  |---

---

From: John Gardiner Myers <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 8 Mar 1995 14:44:44 -0500

> If it's the same, barring transport mechanism, why do people complain?

People complain because their messages were sent to places that they
did not intend (even though they responded "yes" to two prompts that
warned them this would happen).

> mail, it really does need to know which is which.

The message did not necessarily arrive via NNTP, it could have been
fetched through, say, IMAP.  The user could have copied the message
from a "news" folder to one of their personal folders in a previous
session.  The user could have saved the message to a file and loaded
it back in somehow.

> world and replaces the software there. Are you volunteering?

Is anyone volunteering to replace all the B News sites still out
there?  Anyone volunteering to replace all the software that still
generates 2-digit years in Date headers?

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 8 Mar 1995 12:03:49 -0500

Excerpts from netnews.comp.mail.headers: 8-Mar-95 Re: Pine Assuming
Mailed Re.. John [email-masked] (2788)

> adamantly refuse to change or fix the program.

Bzzt.  By ``not correct,'' I have to assume that you mean ``not
something that I agree with.''

> mail, it really does need to know which is which.

Eh?  I have a big system and messages arrive from all over the place,
more than just ``mail'' and ``news''.  They use a common representation
(the basic RFC 822 header/body separation, the basic RFC 822 mechanism
to separate the individual headers).  Differences are encapsulated by
those headers as they need to be.  Convince me that the difference is
truly important.

> anyone who's mail software doesn't obey the news RFC".

Another oversight.  By ``correct'' I have to read ``pragmatic.'' 
``Correct'' is a powerful word and it doesn't help to over-use it; it's
just inflammatory.

Excerpts from netnews.comp.mail.headers: 8-Mar-95 Re: Pine Assuming
Mailed Re.. Tim [email-masked] (2381)

> catastrophic to confuse one for the other.

Who uses them as ``oil and water''?  Maybe some folks, sure.  But it's
not fair to go from a wishy-washy statement about ``those who use them
tend to treat'' to ``it is imperative.''

Let's cut the high-handed rhetoric.  This topic has had more than its
share of heat for its amount of light.  If there are technical points to
make, let's make them but leave the flame-talk at home.

		Craig

---

From: Rahul Dhesi <[email-masked]>
Date: 9 Mar 1995 02:34:11 GMT

>session.  The user could have saved the message to a file and loaded

Tangential issue here.  How it arrived is irrelevant;  what it *is* is
relevant.  News is News so long as it is in the News spool area.  As
soon as a user moves it into his private collection, it has been
converted into email.  Replies to this email should be private.  A user
who wishes to participate in News follows up (not 'replies') to what is
News, not what has been converted into email.  A user who wishes to
reply (not 'follow up') to email may reply to email, but may also reply
to News.

It doesn't matter if it arrived via IMAP.  If it's in the News spool
area, it's News, and if it's in the users' private area, it's email
(possibly converted from email).

Let me say this again:

     Once a News posting is moved into a user's private files, it is
     no longer News.  It has been converted into email.  It should be
     treated accordingly.  Do not post any followups to it.

Oh, by the way, there are established terms 'reply' and 'follow-up'
that clearly distinguish between the two actions.  Let's not cause
confusion by calling everything a reply.
-- 
Rahul Dhesi <[email-masked]>

---

From: Rahul Dhesi <[email-masked]>
Date: 9 Mar 1995 02:23:05 GMT

In <[email-masked]> Chris Newman <[email-masked]> writes:

>The recent discussion have demonstrated that there are two religions:

>1) News and email are fundamentally different.
>  and
>2) News and email are essentially the same.

Not so.  There is nothing religious about this.  These things ought to
be decided on merit.

The people who claim that News and email are fundamentally the same
thing are looking at only part of the picture.  The people who claim
that News and email are different are looking at the whole picture.

The truth is that News and email have some commonalities and some
differences.  

The differences are rather critical.  If they were not, we would not
see so many complaints about email being accidentally converted into
News.  QED.

>How can we
>make these two models co-exist with the least pain?

Coexistence is not the problem.  The real problem is that pine is
discarding out-of-band information, and thus losing track of whether
a file contains News or email.  New and email can coexist quite
nicely -- if you keep track of what is what.

>1) Add a header which is a modal switch to the rfc822 format
>indicating a "type" (news or mail), which changes the meanings of
>other headers.

This is technically the correct solution.  However, the 'type' header
should be added not by the sending software (which already knows the
'type', as does the transport protocol), but by 

   the receiving software
   
   at the point where it is about to discard the out-of-band
   information that distinguishes between News and email.
   
This out-of-band information can be converted to in-band information in
the form of a 'type' header.

Transferring out-of-band information into in-band information at the
destination is not a new idea.  Most email delivery agents already do
this for the envelope sender, by saving it as a Return-Path header, and
many email delivery agents do it for the envelope recipient, by saving
it in a Received: header, when doing so is known not to violate Bcc:
privacy.

Surely those who insist that News and email are the same thing would be
willing to use some of the mechanisms used by email (but not currently
by News...wonder why...) to achieve similar goals?

>2) Define a new header to mean "newsgroups from which this discussion
>originated".

Already have it:  It's 'Newsgroups:'.

>3) Define a new header to mean "although this was sent by email, it
>was also posted to the following newsgroups".

Already have this information:  Combination of out-of-band information
(type = News) and Newsgroups: header.

>4) both 2 & 3, and deprecate use of "newsgroups" in mail.

Requires change in established practice, and will take too long
to happen.  Not a good idea.

>Personally, I find (1) overly complex for implementors.  I believe (2)
>is a reasonable solution.

Disagree -- see response to (2).
-- 
Rahul Dhesi <[email-masked]>

---

From: Mark Crispin <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 8 Mar 1995 20:01:23 -0800

This discussion accomplishes nothing positive.  I suggest that it be 
dropped.

The gist of the technical issue is this: there is no reliable way to
determine what is "news" and what is "mail" to establish modal behavior.
If there is anyone who in sincerely interested in the technical details, I
will be happy to explain. 

There have been a great number of suggestions on how to deal with the
problem, for which we are grateful; unfortunately some of these are
infeasible due to technical considerations.  We have already deployed
several of the feasible suggestions.  These will be in Pine 3.92.

We are also actively investigating certain others, including a clever
means (if it works -- not yet verified) of distinguishing between
non-posted email from tin (et al) and postings.  It isn't yet certain 
whether this will be in 3.92; the jury is still out on whether or not 
the particular trick in question will work.

Two very vocal individuals, at ORST.EDU and RAHUL.NET, seem to feel that
by filibustering newsgroups and mailing lists, they can eventually beat
those who disagree into submission.  They also seem to feel that sending
abusive email will give them their way.  I no longer read, much less
answer, mail from these individuals. 

-- Mark --

DoD #0105, R90/6 pilot
FAX: (206) 685-4045  ICBM: N 47 39'35" W 122 18'39" (est.)

---

From: Chris Newman <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 8 Mar 1995 14:33:21 -0500

It is clear that both models exist and likely that both will continue to
exist for some time.  Given that religious issues can't be resolved by
discussion, we should move on to solve the technical problem: How can we
make these two models co-exist with the least pain?

Solutions I've heard suggested are as follows:

		- Chris

---

From: Rahul Dhesi <[email-masked]>
Date: 9 Mar 1995 07:26:28 GMT

In <[email-masked]> [email-masked] writes:

>They use a common representation

If you consider these messages (which presumably include Usenet postings)
as just files with no semantics, then of course they are all the same
thing.  Likewise, /vmunix and /usr/man/man1/csh.1 are the same
thing --- just files.

Once you begin to consider the semantics of the data in these files,
and what people will *do* with them, and what they will *think*
while they do it, you begin to realize the differences.

Why is it considered a breach of netiquette to post private email
to Usenet? 

>Who uses them as ``oil and water''?  Maybe some folks, sure.  

How about:  Everybody who is complaining about private email being
posted to Usenet?  

If these complainers are such an insignificant minority of such little
importance that we can dismiss them with a comment like 'Maybe some
folks, sure', then why are we even arguing?  Ignore the problem and
that's the end of it!
-- 
Rahul Dhesi <[email-masked]>

---

From: Rahul Dhesi <[email-masked]>
Date: 9 Mar 1995 09:42:59 GMT

In
<[email-masked]>
Mark Crispin <[email-masked]> writes:

>abusive email will give them their way.

The last time Mark Crispin made such accusations, I asked for examples
and none came.  My guess is that if you disagree with Mark by posting
to comp.mail.pine, you are branded as sending abusive email.  (News vs
email confusion here.)  I would like to see either an example of
allegedly abusive email, or a retraction.

If Mark and others would stop attacking the established base of news
readers as being broken, and stop referring to UNIX users as 'weenies',
and making other equally incorrect or rude assertions, they would
cease to have any problem with abusive email (really Usenet postings
disagreeing with them).
-- 
Rahul Dhesi <[email-masked]>

---

From: Rahul Dhesi <[email-masked]>
Date: 9 Mar 1995 07:32:42 GMT

>he/she wants to do about it. ( And then it asks "are you sure..." )

Hmm...Sounds like Pine *is* assuming that the presence of a 
Newsgroups header in incoming email means that the user should be
asked if he wishes to post his email reply to Usenet.  Definitely
some assumption here.

>assumptions ...

True; 'context-free' is the key issue here.  Pine is not *required*
to lose the context, but does so because of some design decisions.

>non-standard usage and semantics for the "Newsgroups:" line...

I suspect we will forever go in circles about this.  In fact there are
very clear established meanings for the Newsgroups:  header.  In News,
it means something is being posted to the newsgroups mentioned in the
header.  In email it means this email is in response to such a
posting.  Until pine came into the picture nobody was confused about
these meanings.

>...makes it impossible for ANY program to automatically ascribe a single 

Disagree;  the only reasonable action for any program is to
interpret the Newsgroups: header in the proper context.
-- 
Rahul Dhesi <[email-masked]>

---

From: [email-masked] (Michael Shields)
Date: 9 Mar 1995 16:27:30 -0500

> Who uses them as ``oil and water''?  Maybe some folks, sure.

Oil and water is actually an excellent analogy.  They're both liquids;
they can be measured and poured with the same tools.  But they are used
for different purposes, and if you mix them, if you lose track of which
is which, people will complain.
-- 
Shields.

---

From: Nancy McGough <[email-masked]>
Date: 9 Mar 1995 22:08:05 GMT

Rahul Dhesi <[email-masked]> writes:
>My guess is that if you disagree with Mark by posting
>email confusion here.)  

This is certainly not the case since I've publicly disagreed with
Mark and the Pine Team on a number of different occasions and I've
always received intelligent, well thought out responses.  On the
other hand I've received plenty of flame responses from people not on
the Pine Team.

Nancy
--
 /\_/\ Nancy McGough             /\_/\  Vote for the humanities.misc    @..@
( o.o )Infinite Ink             ( o.o ) newsgroup! The Call For Votes  (----)
 > ~ < http://www.jazzie.com/ii/ > ^ <  is in news.announce.newgroups.( >__< )

---

From: [email-masked] (Robert A. Rosenberg)
Date: Fri, 10 Mar 95 06:20:08 GMT

>Already have it:  It's 'Newsgroups:'.

Not Necessarily. It can/will mean this if the Emailed message is ONLY being
sent via Email (ie: It is a Reply-Via-Email). 

OTOH, if I am reading a News Article and create a Reply to be Posted and I
also [with the same upload] send this reply via Email (Cc is one way to do
this via a Header) then the Newsgroups header in the Emailed copy mean NOT
those that the message I am replying to was [cross-]posted but where the
Posted copy of this Email'ed Cc is being [cross-]posted. I am not even going
to get into the issue of Followup-To headers which also cause problems for
users who reply to Email'ed (or ML/NG Gatewayed) Messages/Articles <g>.

The real problem is that Pine who KNOWS how is is routing a message/article
when it creates it but REFUSES to correctly Document this information so
that when it sees an Incoming Message/Article it knows how set the default
reply method. 

How hard it is to add the Following types of documentation Headers

 "X-Also-Emailed to:" to the Posted Copy of an Emailed&Posted Article
 
 "X-Email-Replied-From:" (listing the Newsgroups that the Article being
Email Replyied to Appeared in) to the Email'ed Copy

 "X-Also-Posted-to:" (listing the Newsgroups that the Posted Version is
going to) to the Email'ed Copy of an Emailed&Posted Article

while leaving the Newsgroups for Backward Compatibility? Then when the user
is Viewing an Email'ed message copy with these headers, PINE can know if
this is an Email Reply or a Cc of a Posted Article and offer the Correct
Default Reply Addresses.

---

From: [email-masked] (John Stanley)
Date: 10 Mar 1995 06:34:11 GMT

In article <[email-masked]>,
>make these two models co-exist with the least pain?

The answer to that depends on which "religion" you belong to. If you
think that things are the same, then there cannot be any pain in
treating them the same, and your question is ridiculous. 

If you think there is a difference, then any move to force them to be
the same will be painful, and you will not see how there could possibly
be any pain in treating them differently. 

Now, there really is an answer to your question. It's not that
difficult. Here it is:

	They two models can coexist without pain IF those on
	both sides DO NOT ASSUME that their model is the only one.

That means that those who write the tools must accept that there are
those who think they differ, and they must write the tools to allow that
difference to be maintained.

The problem right now is that those writing the tools (Pine, e.g.) are
steadfast in their position that there is no difference. They have
written the tool to ignore any difference. This forces those who use the
tools into either accepting the "no difference" paradigm, or not using
the tool.

There is nothing stopping those who want to treat their mail and news as
the same thing even if the tools are able to, but when the tools cannot
differentiate those who want to treat them differently cannot.

>indicating a "type" (news or mail), which changes the meanings of

There is only one header whose meaning would change. If the flag says
"mail", then "newsgroups" is undefined. It's that simple.

>Personally, I find (1) overly complex for implementors. 

If adding a header was overly complex, there wouldn't be the plethora of
X- and otherwise undefined headers there is today.

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 9 Mar 1995 11:50:11 -0500

Excerpts from netnews.comp.mail.headers: 9-Mar-95 Re: Pine Assuming
Mailed Re.. Rahul [email-masked] (1256)

> while they do it, you begin to realize the differences.

Semantics derive not only from the transport mechanics but also for the
organization/presentation of the material for the user.  There are
systems (databases of messages) that integrate lots of information from
all kinds of sources.  The designers of those databases and their
navigation tools aim to provide the best access possible for the users
of the messages.  That doesn't necessarily mean that netnews has to wear
a big ``netnews'' badge in those navigation tools, and that the
one-true-way to present it is to run an approved newsreader that
mediates all, and only, the news accesses.  Open your mind just a little
to allow for the possibility that the world is bigger than a few
programs that specialize in netnews, and that more ambitious tools still
do their darndest to play by the rules when it comes to the transport
issues.

There's no inherent reason to reflect the transport details to the user,
as long as the concepts that ARE reflected to the user can subsume the
transport details.

> folks, sure', then why are we even arguing?  Ignore the problem and

That wasn't my point, and you know it.  Or if you missed it; go back and
check.  Decrement your score by three.

		Craig

---

From: Alan Ward <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 10 Mar 1995 14:12:33 +0000 (GMT)

Any chance of cutting this bi-directional way gateway between pine-info 
and comp.mail.pine and going back the way we were - sigh?
-- 
Email: [email-masked]		Alan Ward
FAX: +44 (0) 91 222 7736		Department of Microbiology
Tel: +44 (0) 91 222 7709		University of Newcastle upon Tyne

---

From: [email-masked] (John Stanley)
Date: 10 Mar 1995 07:25:28 GMT

In

>abusive email will give them their way.

This nonsense merits correction. 

I sent Mr. Crispin one piece of email, which was a response to mail he
sent to me. 

What Mr. Crispin is really complaining about, and complained to my admin
about, was the comp.mail.headers gateway to the headers-people mailing
list.  While Mr. Crispin chose to send personal copies of every article
he sent to that mailing list to me by mail directly, I did not choose
to have the gateway send him anything. (In fact, had there been a way to
tell the gateway to limit what Mr. Crispin received,I would have used
it. There was no such option. Mr. Crispin signed on to the mailing list
for a penny, he signed on for a pound. On the other side, Mr. Crispin
refused to stop choosing to send me the mail he was.)

Now, just what is the "submission" I am trying to force upon people? 

One thing. Open your world view to accept that there are people who do
not view mail and news and the same thing, and who do not use mail and
news for the same thing, and write the tools to allow the distinction to
be made. That is, simply, accept that "same thing" is not the only
viewpoint. Nobody is saying that you must accept "different" as the only
way, just accept it as A way. A tool that allows users to differentiate
can be used in non-differentiating mode, but the obverse is not true.

The argument "people don't believe news and mail are different" just
won't fly -- there are people here telling you they believe they are
different. How you want to treat them is your business. Just understand
that some people DON'T believe they are the same.

---

From: [email-masked] (Stefan Kurth)
Date: Fri, 10 Mar 1995 19:28:31 +0100

> "mail", then "newsgroups" is undefined. It's that simple.

<nitpick mode on>

The meaning of the "References" header would change too.  This isn't
likely to matter in practice though (except when the stupid software
does choose to let the user post a follow-up to an email message, in
which case it must not treat the References header of that message as
RFC 1036 References).

________________________________________________________________________
Stefan Kurth               Berlin, Germany           [email-masked]

---

From: [email-masked] (Peter da Silva)
Date: Fri, 10 Mar 1995 20:32:05 GMT

In article <[email-masked]>,
Chris Newman  <[email-masked]> wrote:
> That last paragraph sounds like religion to me.  I'd say that people
> who claim news and email are fundamentally different are locked into a
> view of the world created by having separate UIs/message-stores, and
> can't see the savings in code size, user training, software
> development and GUI design that come from unifying the technologies.

The point of news and mail is to help people communicate, not to save code
size, etcetera, etcetera. People use news and mail in completely different
ways. People say things in email they would never say in any broadcast
medium.

Mailing lists are sort of a hybrid, yes, and they mix the issues... but
mail to an individual needs to be dealt with separately from broadcast
mail, no matter whether that broadcast is via a mailing list or netnews.

User interfaces that hide where a message came from, or make assumptions
about where a message should go, are a bad idea.

> The only difference that is currently causing problems is that the
> "Newsgroups" header is ascribed different meanings in different
> objects.  I consider this a relatively trivial difference, and one
> that should be overcome.

Agreed. Since RFC822 doesn't define the meaning of "Newsgroups" any user
interface software expecting RFC822 should consider it commentary. Any
user interface importing netnews should convert it to RFC822 first.

This is technically correct, not so? You wouldn't expect to read in any
other type of non-RFC822 document without converting it.

If it does this conversion by converting "Newsgroups" to "Newsgroups" then
it needs to do something else with the non-RFC822 "Newsgroups" line it gets
in mail.

> This may be the best compromise solution between the two religions.  I
> have a feeling we will never reach concensus on the proper meaning of
> the "Newsgroups" header in email.

There is no proper meaning of the "Newsgroups" header in email. User interface
programs should neither put it in email, nor should they ascribe any meaning
to it if they receive it in email. Both Pnews and Pine are broken here. Both
should be fixed.
-- 
Peter da Silva                                            `-_-'
Network Management Technology Incorporated                 'U`
1601 Industrial Blvd.     Sugar Land, TX  77478  USA
+1 713 274 5180                       "Hast du Heute schon deinen Wolf umarmt?"

---

From: [email-masked] (Peter da Silva)
Date: Fri, 10 Mar 1995 21:03:09 GMT

It's clear to me that both Pine and Trn, and other newsreaders that do this,
are at fault here. All should be fixed.

I am in the process of modifying Trn where I have it installed to send mail
with X-Newsgroups unless the mail was Cc-ed from a followup. The fix is very
easy... just change the definitions of MAILHEADER in common.h.

Anyone else interested in protecting their customers should do the same
thing. In addition, Pine should still be modified to either ignore or in
some similar way flag Newsgroups in incoming mail as something not to be
processed.

If we can come up with some common name for this header it would help. I've
used X-Newsgroups simply because it's a minimal change. Possibly something
more descriptive would be better. I'm open to suggestions.
-- 
Peter da Silva                                            `-_-'
Network Management Technology Incorporated                 'U`
1601 Industrial Blvd.     Sugar Land, TX  77478  USA
+1 713 274 5180                       "Hast du Heute schon deinen Wolf umarmt?"

---

From: Rahul Dhesi <[email-masked]>
Date: 10 Mar 1995 22:40:34 GMT

In <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (Peter da Silva) writes:

>to it if they receive it in email. Both Pnews and Pine are broken here.

This goes just one tiny step too far.  Absence of a 'proper' meaning
has never been a good reason for omitting a header.  The best one can
say (if that) is that Pnews should have used X-Newsgroups rather than
Newsgroups -- and even that would be questionable as a rigid
assertion.

A News or email client can include any headers it wishes.  The News or
email client of the person reading the email or posting can ignore any
headers it wishes.  The problem occurs only if conflicting meanings get
established, and that is not the case here.
-- 
Rahul Dhesi <[email-masked]>

---

From: Chris Newman <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 9 Mar 1995 17:48:48 -0500

> This is technically the correct solution.

Please use technical arguments rather than simple assertions.  I
dislike this solution because it requires decoding software to parse
the headers twice -- once to find the "type" and a second time to
process the headers.  This is a lot of extra complexity just for the
sake of retaining the current-practice context sensitive nature of the
"Newsgroups" header.  In addition, there would still be a need to
define a new header meaning "in addition to being sent as email, this
message was also posted to ...".

> Already have it:  It's 'Newsgroups:'.

Please point me to an Internet document defining "Newsgroups" in that
way.

It would be fairly simple to define a new header like
"Discussion-From:" which would list newsgroups from which the
discussion originated.  Such a header would be useful in news (to
indicate migration of a conversation from other newsgroups) as well as
email.  As new newsreader software adopted this practice, users would
get more functionality and shared message-store technology would
become easier.

> (type = News) and Newsgroups: header.

Not true.  You have argued that the Newsgroups header has two
different meanings based on the transport system.  How can I get the
RFC 1036 meaning of "Newsgroups" in an email message under your model?

		- Chris

---

From: Rahul Dhesi <[email-masked]>
Date: 10 Mar 1995 22:44:35 GMT

In <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (Peter da Silva) writes:

>with X-Newsgroups unless the mail was Cc-ed from a followup....

>If we can come up with some common name for this header it would help.

In my local News software, when something gets automatically reposted
(to a local newsgroup), the original Newsgroups header is transformed
to Orig-Newsgroups.  (Likewise with some other headers.)

I like Orig-Newsgroups.  It tells the reader that something was in a
certain newsgroup before but might be elsewhere now.  It could also be
used when a follow-up is posted to a different set of newsgroups, to
let the reader know where the original posting was to which the
follow-up is being done.

>...unless the mail was Cc-ed from a followup....

Never, I hope.  Posting a follow-up and also sending an identical copy
in email confuses the recipient into believing he or she is getting a
private message.
-- 
Rahul Dhesi <[email-masked]>

---

From: Rahul Dhesi <[email-masked]>
Date: 11 Mar 1995 01:42:17 GMT

In <[email-masked]> Chris Newman
<[email-masked]> writes:

>It may be standard practice, but it violates RFC 1036:

Two simple rebuttals:

1. When standard practice conflicts with an RFC, the RFC is wrong.
  (Trust me on this one.)

2. The standard practice in question does not in fact violate RFC 1036,
   because it is outside the scope of this RFC.
-- 
Rahul Dhesi <[email-masked]>

---

From: Rahul Dhesi <[email-masked]>
Date: 10 Mar 1995 03:14:11 GMT

In <[email-masked]> [email-masked] writes:

>There are
>all kinds of sources.... [ need to deal with various types of "messages" ]
>That doesn't necessarily mean that netnews has to wear
>mediates all, and only, the news accesses.

But the existence of integrated databases and software cannot possibly
imply that I am wrong when I admonish software authors:

     Don't discard useful information.

Whether something is News or email is useful information.  This
information is definitely available until software at some point
chooses to disacard it.  No database, however, integrated it might be,
should discard this information.
-- 
Rahul Dhesi <[email-masked]>

---

From: [email-masked] (Neil Rickert)
Date: 10 Mar 1995 15:23:50 -0600

In <[email-masked]> Chris Newman <[email-masked]> writes:
> [email-masked] (Tim Pierce) writes:
>> commonly in use.

>It may be standard practice, but it violates RFC 1036:

That is absurd.  RFC1036 defines the format of usenet messages.  It
has nothing to say about email messages.

><2.  Message Format
><
><    The primary consideration in choosing a message format is that it
><    fit in with existing tools as well as possible.  Existing tools
><    include implementations of both mail and news.
><    ...
><    needs of USENET.  Since the Internet format is extensible,
><    extensions to meet the additional needs of USENET are easily made
><    within the Internet standard.  Therefore, the rule is adopted that
><    all USENET news messages must be formatted as valid Internet mail
><    messages, according to the Internet standard RFC-822.  The USENET
><    News standard is more restrictive than the Internet standard,
><    placing additional requirements on each message and forbidding use
><*   of certain Internet features.  However, it should always be possible
><*   to use a tool expecting an Internet message to process a news
><*   message.  In any situation where this standard conflicts with the
><    Internet standard, RFC-822 should be considered correct and this
><    standard in error.

>The use of the "Newsgroups" header for different purposes in mail and
>news effectively violates the sentence I've marked with "*".  In
>addition, it clearly violates the spirit of this paragraph.

Your interpretation makes no sense.  Again, keep in mind that RFC1036
is defining usenet formats.  It is not defining email formats.

The lines you marked were not intended as a specification.  They were
a statement of design philosophy.  The usenet standard was based on
the assumption that software tools designed for email could process
usenet messages.

If this was a specification, then it was specifying what is allowed
in usenet.

>I also note that this states that USENET is a set of _extensions_ to
>RFC-822.

RFC1036 indicates that it is stricter than RFC822.  How can it be
an extension if it is a restriction?

>RFC-822.  Does it make sense to have two different extensions to
>RFC-822 which use the same header for different purposes, particularly
>if one of those extensions isn't even published?

RFC822 deals mainly with syntax.  The argument of pine's use of
"Newsgroups:" is about semantics rather than about syntax.

My email agent uses the following semantics for "To:"

	If the message is being composed, it is to be sent to
	the addresses on the "To:" header.

	If the message is being read, the contents of the "To:"
	header is informational.

That is, a single mail agent can already deal with apparently
conflicting semantics for "To:".  Similarly, pine should be able to
use alternative semantics for "Newsgroups:".

The philosophy seems to be:

  It is too difficult to change pine to be consistent with all of the
  other software and all of the human users.  Therefore we should
  keep pine the way it is, and change all of the other software and
  the humans who use that other software.  The tail is trying to wag
  the dog.

---

From: "Steven D. Majewski" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 11 Mar 1995 13:48:14 -0500 (EST)

> should discard this information.

Well - at my site, it's not Pine that is discarding any information,
but trn that is responsible. It saves messages locally to what looks
like a MAIL-box. Perhaps some other gateway software is loosing other
information, but I've never seen Pine throw away or ignore any 
usefule information. And in fact, most of your complaints have been
about the fact that Pine attempts to *alert* the user about information
which *could* indicate that a message *may* have been sent both by mail
and also posted to a newsgroup. This is very useful information to 
know. ( Other people have complained that when someone CC's them a
copy of a publicly posted message as a courtesy, that they find it 
anoying to not know that information - and sometimes send a private
reply before the discover that is the fact. ) 
 The lack of any standards for indicating this, however, makes it
an uncertain determination - which is why pine asks you (twice)
for confirmation, if you decide to reply with a public posting.

---

From: John Gardiner Myers <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 10 Mar 1995 18:53:09 -0500

> ways. People say things in email they would never say in any broadcast

Giving users a unified model of news, mail, etc. and saving them the
need to train to use N different client interfaces helps them
communicate.  

I certainly don't use news and mail in completely different ways.  I
say the same sorts of things in email mailing lists and netnews
newsgroups.  

I use the same client to both read and send to personal email, mailing
lists, netnews, and local bboards.  In this system, unmoderated news
(anybody posts, nobody writes, everybody reads) and "personal" mail
(anybody posts, only I write, only I read) are but two extremes of a
wide range of possible access control restrictions that can be placed
on any given hierarchically named collection of messages.

> mail, no matter whether that broadcast is via a mailing list or netnews.

Mailing lists are a counterexample to your claim that people use news
and mail in completely different ways.  Mailing list addresses are
indistinguishable from "personal" email addresses.  How is a UA
supposed to deal with the two separately?

There are people working on extensions to NNTP to support
authentication, permitting access control on netnews newsgroups.
A netnews group access-restricted to five users is not a "broadcast
medium" in the sense you use.  Any user intending to post to such a
group and finding their message on a big-7 group is going to be just
as upset as these Pine users with misdirected replies.

> about where a message should go, are a bad idea.

By this argument, using the contents of the From, Reply-To, To, CC,
Newsgroups, or Followup-To headers when deciding where a responding
message should go is a bad idea.

> interface software expecting RFC822 should consider it commentary.

Since RFC822 doesn't define the meaning of "Content-Type", any user
interface software expecting RFC822 should consider it commentary.

> You wouldn't expect to read in any

RFC 1036 messages conform to RFC822, modulo a nit concerning
destination headers.

> are at fault here. All should be fixed.

Certainly all should be "fixed", in the name of pragmatism if nothing
else.  Neither just fixing Pine nor just fixing Trn is going to fix
the problem in both the short and long term.

> more descriptive would be better. I'm open to suggestions.

In-Reply-To is one posssibility, that header allows random junk.

---

From: [email-masked] (John Stanley)
Date: 12 Mar 1995 00:47:32 GMT

In article <[email-masked]>,
>he/she wants to do about it. ( And then it asks "are you sure..." )

If you ask the user, then you are assuming it has some meaning. Since it
has none in mail, Pine is making an incorrect assumption. Does Pine ask
the user what to do about every undefined header it finds?

>ONE MORE TIME: "are you sure..." ) 

There is no standard context-free meaning to anything. This fact does
not make it impossible for assumptions to be made. 

>both channels. ) So the only reasonable action for any program is to

No, there is another reasonable action: keep track of the source of the
message. If the message is mail, then remember that. If the message is
news, remember that. Whether that "remembering" comes in the form of a
Pine-specific X-header, or some other method, is irrelevant. Pine can
know "I got this message out of the user's inbox -- it's mail. I'll put
a tag on it so I can remember that, even if I put it in a folder
somewhere and look at it later." Or, "I had to ask NNTP for this
message, it's news."

The only thing stopping that "memory" being implemented is that the
people who write the code for Pine don't want to accept that some people
view mail and news as different tools. 

>ask the user to decide, based perhaps on other clues in the message text.

The user shouldn't be forced to guess at information that Pine had and
threw away, based on "clues" that usually aren't there. 

(Quick, just based on the body of this article, did I mail it to you or
did I post it? Mark Crispin couldn't tell the difference. How will you?)

---

From: Rahul Dhesi <[email-masked]>
Date: 12 Mar 1995 05:20:32 GMT

In <[email-masked]>
[email-masked] ("Steven D. Majewski") writes:

>like a MAIL-box.

It's actually doing the right thing:  converting the Usenet postings
into email format, so they may be later treated as email.  Once a
Usenet posting has been moved into your private collection, it should
be treated as email.  Post no follow-ups to it.  Usenet is a game
played in context.  Please see another posting from me expanding on
this idea.

>And in fact, most of your complaints have been
>and also posted to a newsgroup.

This is truly the problem:  Taking an email message and creating doubt
in the reader's mind that it might be a Usenet posting.

It absolutely does not matter if the same email message might also have
been posted to Usenet by its author.  If what one has in one's mailbox
is what arrived by email, treat it as email.  If one wishes to post a
follow-up, one posts a follow-up to the specific copy that's in the
News spool area.  Please see more about this in the aforementioned
separate posting.
-- 
Rahul Dhesi <[email-masked]>

---

From: Rahul Dhesi <[email-masked]>
Date: 12 Mar 1995 05:10:44 GMT

In <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (John
Stanley) writes:

>news, remember that.

Agreed with everything else you said, and the above too, but I will add this:

     Once a Usenet posting has been transferred to the user's private
     area, treat it as email.  Post no follow-ups to it.

And to add more context, here is a saved posting.

===== begin saved posting =====
Date:    24 Nov 94 13:34:10 GMT
From:    Rahul Dhesi <dhesi>
Newsgroups: comp.mail.pine
Subject: Re: ...defeat posting prompt...my final word.

In <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (R. Stewart Ellis) writes:

>I really believe that most people have a different cognitive map of
>mail, which comes to you, and news, which you go get.

This is a *very* elegant statement.

After some thinking, I have come to realize that

     - Newsgroups: header in email
     - Offer to post a reply to Usenet
     - News == email or News != email

are all side issues.  The real issue is this:

     Usenet followups should be sent only when reading Usenet news
     "live", i.e., when a freshly-obtained posting (which you "get")
     is being viewed.  After you have "gotten" it and saved it, it
     becomes akin to email and no more Usenet followups should
     be derived from it.

I'm reminded of a number of sports in which the ball is "alive" (in
play) from a certain moment to a certain moment, and one may score
points during that time.  After some amount of play, the ball is "dead"
and no more points may be scored until it becomes alive again.

Well, Usenet is like that.  One does not followup to a "dead" Usenet
posting, one that has been plucked from the Usenet context and put into
one's personal folder.  Usenet is a game played in context.  One
follows up only to a "live" posting, one that has not yet become
"dead".  Nothing arriving by email is a Usenet posting (though it might
be a "dead", i.e., saved, copy.)  Nothing in one's personal files is a
Usenet posting (thought it might be a "dead", i.e., saved copy).

Pine wants to score points after the ball is dead.
-- 
Rahul Dhesi <[email-masked]>
===== end saved posting =====

---

From: [email-masked] (Matt Messina)
Date: 12 Mar 1995 09:25:01 GMT

>     becomes akin to email and no more Usenet followups should

That's an unfortunate point of view that would preclude offline readers
from posting followups. 
-- 
Matt Messina
[email-masked]

---

From: Rahul Dhesi <[email-masked]>
Date: 12 Mar 1995 09:45:45 GMT

In <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (Matt
Messina) writes:

>>     After you have "gotten" it and saved it, it

>That's an unfortunate point of view that would preclude offline readers

So long as offline reading of News is equivalent to a type of caching,
it will have no adverse effect on the result.  As soon as ofline
reading of News becomes a synonym for treating everything as email,
either no followups are permitted or we have very confused users.
-- 
Rahul Dhesi <[email-masked]>

---

From: [email-masked] (Matt Messina)
Date: 11 Mar 1995 21:43:29 GMT

>and mail in completely different ways.  Mailing list addresses are

Wrong.  Mailing lists are a counterexample to the claim that "all people
use mail in completely different ways, always."  No one made that claim. 

>supposed to deal with the two separately?

There's no need to deal with the two separately.  You shouldn't post
messages you got on a mailing list either. 
-- 
Matt Messina
[email-masked]

---

From: Selcuk Ozturk <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 12 Mar 1995 09:52:13 EST

I don't want to add to this already long and boring thread. But,
after all these post about how broken Pine is, I feel the need to tell
the development team that I like what Pine does. Please, do not change
it in a restrictive direction. It is *MY* business how I will treat
news and email, or saved news messages. I hate the idea that a computer
program decides what I do. The program is only a tool. It should give
me as many options as possible and *I* will decide what I will do.
Pine just does that now, and I am happy with that.

Keep up the good work,
Selcuk

---

From: Chris Newman <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 10 Mar 1995 14:50:10 -0500

<2.  Message Format
<

		- Chris
	- Chris  "http://www.contrib.andrew.cmu.edu/usr/cn0h/"

---

From: [email-masked] (Matt Messina)
Date: 12 Mar 1995 21:58:09 GMT

>me as many options as possible and *I* will decide what I will do.

Take that to its logical conclusion:  Pine should always ask whether you
want to post a followup article whether the original discussion took place
in mail or news.

You will not get much support for that idea.
-- 
Matt Messina
[email-masked]

---

From: [email-masked] (Matt Messina)
Date: 13 Mar 1995 01:04:54 GMT

Selcuk Ozturk  <[email-masked]> wrote:
>I don't need any support. As I said before, it is MY business to decide
>what to do with email coming to me. Nor pine nor you nor anybody else can
>tell me what to do. As a corollary to this, I am solely responsible for
>the consequences of course.

Very existential.  But it is a bad idea for a user agent, especially one 
targeted at inexperienced users, to encourage bad netiquette.
-- 
Matt Messina
[email-masked]

---

From: Nancy McGough <[email-masked]>
Date: 12 Mar 1995 22:41:40 GMT

>     becomes akin to email and no more Usenet followups should

But what if you need to do some research before you respond and your
site expires articles quickly?  What I do is save the article in a
folder named ToRespond and then use ``nn +ToRespond'' to open the
folder and post my response.  I have been burned many times by
flagging an article (using nn's l command) and then going back to
post my response and discovering that the article has expired.

---

From: Selcuk Ozturk <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 12 Mar 1995 18:26:03 EST

nn/p
# Take that to its logical conclusion:  Pine should always ask whether you
# want to post a followup article whether the original discussion took place
# in mail or news.
# 
# You will not get much support for that idea.
# -- 
# Matt Messina
# [email-masked]
# 
In a sense it already does. If there is no Newsgroups header then there
is no default groups to post a followup. But, I can always press ^R and
manually enter any newsgroups name to post the reply if I choose to do
so.

Selcuk

---

From: [email-masked] (John Stanley)
Date: 12 Mar 1995 20:48:56 GMT

In article <[email-masked]>,
Stefan Kurth <[email-masked]> wrote:
>The meaning of the "References" header would change too.  

Incorrect. The syntax for the contents of the header is more strict in
news than in mail, but the meaning is the same.

>This isn't

But wait! That is an admission that mail and news are not technically
the same thing. If they were, you could use a mail references header in
news.

P.S. There is at least one other header that changes meanings between
mail and news: Path. Since it has no use in outgoing messaging, nobody
cares what it contains.

---

From: [email-masked] (John Stanley)
Date: 12 Mar 1995 20:43:51 GMT

>something that I agree with.''

Another incorrect assumption. You didn't have to assume what you
assumed. You could have assumed that I wrote what I meant. 

By "not correct", I meant that Pine's assumption is not the meaning that
the other system used.

>those headers as they need to be.  Convince me that the difference is

To you they aren't. That doesn't mean they aren't to anyone else.

>Another oversight.  By ``correct'' I have to read ``pragmatic.'' 

No, sorry. I meant "correct".  Maybe if you read what people wrote
instead of what you wanted them to write ...

>Who uses them as ``oil and water''?  Maybe some folks, sure.  

Well, an admission that news and mail can be different for some people.
Progress is being made.

---

From: [email-masked] (R. Stewart Ellis)
Date: 13 Mar 95 02:52:41 GMT

>either no followups are permitted or we have very confused users.

After you characterized my statement about the difference between between
mail and news as elegant, I hate to have to mildly disagree with you here.
Using nn (I refuse to read news with a mail tool), I frequently save
articles to my local saved news folders and go back to them a day or so
later and (f)ollowup to them after they have been taken out of play.
Occasionally I (r)eply to them as well.  The nice thing about nn's behavior
here is that I have to take an explicit positive action to put the ball back
in play.  The difficulty with pine's approach is that it asks me convoluted
questions that I may be confused about the correct answers to.  One slip and
the ball I was fondling on the sidelines rolls onto the court and the
referee declares a foul against my side.

-- 
  R.Stewart(Stew) Ellis, Assoc.Prof., (Off)810-762-9765   ___________________
  Humanities & Social Science,  GMI Eng.& Mgmt. Inst.    /   _____  ______ 
  Flint, MI 48504      [email-masked]               /        / /  /  / /
  Gopher,chimera,nn,tin,jove,modems, free code is best!/________/ /  /  / /

---

From: [email-masked] (John Stanley)
Date: 12 Mar 1995 21:02:50 GMT

In article <[email-masked]>,
>but trn that is responsible. It saves messages locally to what looks

No, it's not trn that's responsible for this, it's you. 

On my system, trn saves things in individual files in a directory
structure that makes it clear that the source was news. In addition,
each file contains a Path header (which mail does not), and, even if I
somehow get confused as to the source of the data in the file, even
with all the clues I already mentioned, I can look at the first line of
the file where it says "Article nnnn of news.group.name:".

I chose that method. You chose the method you use, even if it was a
choice not to read the man page to find out how you could save things.

---

From: Rahul Dhesi <[email-masked]>
Date: 13 Mar 1995 00:26:42 GMT

In <[email-masked]> Nancy McGough <[email-masked]> writes:

>folder and post my response.

This would be quite forgiveable.  But, like the man said, if you find
the article expired on every Sabbath, then it would be wise to
fill up the ditch.

(Or at least have distinct folders mail-torespond and news-torespond,
such that news-torespond is just a cache for the common News spool
and has a longer expiration time.)
-- 
Rahul Dhesi <[email-masked]>

---

From: Rahul Dhesi <[email-masked]>
Date: 13 Mar 1995 08:45:28 GMT

In <[email-masked]> Selcuk Ozturk <[email-masked]> writes:

># Would you accept Pine making a note that a message was received via mail but
># is a reply to a news posting, and asking if you would like to post a response
># to news instead of sending private email.

>I don't have any problems with what you suggest above. But, I think Pine
>already does that....
>you hit R, Pine asks you if you want post a followup to the Usenet. The
>default is NO. If you hit the return button your answer goes only via
>e-mail.

Can you imagine:

    User of integrated package types command to set alarm clock for
    11:50 am.

    Software prompts:  
    
       Would you also like to subtract $11.50 from your bank balance?

Default answer to question is of course 'no', but if asked enough
times, users will sometimes accidentally reply 'yes'.

The point being that there are some questions that are best left
unasked.  If the user wants to debit his balance, let him give the
appropriate command in a separate step.
-- 
Rahul Dhesi <[email-masked]>

---

From: [email-masked] (Stefan Kurth)
Date: Mon, 13 Mar 1995 16:44:24 +0100

> news than in mail, but the meaning is the same.

Nope, it isn't.  An 822 References line contains message-IDs of (or
plain-text pointers to) "other correspondence which this message
references."  These referenced messages need not necessarily be
precursors of the current one.  A 1036 References line however may only
contain backwards references, i.e. message-IDs of articles in the same
branch of the thread tree.  Son-of-1036 defines a new "See-Also" header
that has the same meaning as 822's References.

> the same thing.

Of course they're not, and I never claimed they are.  I'm all for
keeping them apart.  This doesn't mean the user has to learn two
different interfaces (I have written a user agent that handles both news
and mail, with essentially the same interface for both, except for the
concepts that are unique to either), but I think it's important to keep
them seperated, and to make it clear to the user which is which.

---

From: Rahul Dhesi <[email-masked]>
Date: 13 Mar 1995 05:48:21 GMT

In <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (Peter da Silva) writes:

>> has never been a good reason for omitting a header.

>Sure it is. If there's no defined meaning for a header then it's likely to
>be used in incompatible ways by different programs. As is the case here.

Note that "absence of a 'proper' meaning" is not quite the same thing
as "there's no defined meaning".  Having no defined meaning for a
header actually makes it very safe to use -- it becomes just a comment
for the human reader.  "Absence of a 'proper' meaning" allows for
the presence of a fuzzy meaning, which is a little more risky -- but
no adverse effects have been obsered (in the non-pine cases). 

>> The problem occurs only if conflicting meanings get

>That is exactly the case here.

Not so!  Please don't forget the context.

>Rnmail uses "Newsgroups" to mean "Note -- this message is a reply to a
>message posted in the following groups". Pnews uses it to mean "This
>message is posted to the following groups". Pine uses it to mean "Post
>this message to the following groups".

No conflict between Rnmail and Pnews, given that one is sending
email and the other is sending News.  The respective meanings of
the header have caused no trouble (in the non-pine cases).
-- 
Rahul Dhesi <[email-masked]>

---

From: Rahul Dhesi <[email-masked]>
Date: 13 Mar 1995 05:52:16 GMT

In <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (Peter da Silva) writes:

>I agree, it's annoying and confusing, but sometimes people ask for this:

>	"I do not read this group, so please Cc me in any responses"

When I need to do this, I always prefix the email version with a
comment like this:

     Hi, here is a copy of something I just posted to Usenet.

(And I do this only if I truly believe that the recipient will benefit
by getting the private copy.)
-- 
Rahul Dhesi <[email-masked]>

---

From: [email-masked] (Stefan Kurth)
Date: Mon, 13 Mar 1995 16:44:24 +0100

Peter da Silva <[email-masked]> wrote:

> It is extremely poor etiquette to post personal mail to the net. However,
> it is not the place for a user interface program to *enforce* this sort
> of behaviour.

Why not?  I think it is.

Nowadays there are so many newbies on the net who don't really know what
they are doing, and who don't bother to read about netiquette either.  I
think it is definitely a Good Thing for a user agent to prevent users
from doing things they are not supposed to do, like posting a public
followup to a private email message.

---

From: [email-masked] (John Stanley)
Date: 12 Mar 1995 03:35:37 GMT

In article <[email-masked]>,
>need to train to use N different client interfaces helps them

Forcing them to guess which medium the message they are reading came
from, and thus how they should respond, does not help them communicate.

>say the same sorts of things in email mailing lists and netnews

That's very nice. How you operate doesn't define how others do. 

>and mail in completely different ways.  

Can we please stop thinking in a "sometimes means always" mode?

Sometimes there is no screwdriver available. Sometimes all you have is
a phillips and you need to drive a flathead. So, sometimes, people use
mail and news in the same way. This proves NOTHING AT ALL about how
they use it "all the time"; it does not prove that I use
non-mailing-list mail the same way I use news, nor does it prove
anything about how anyone else uses news and mail.

>medium" in the sense you use.  

If you are going to use a five-user mailing list as an example of
broadcast mail, then you need to accept five-user newsgroups the same
way.

>Any user intending to post to such a

The reposting of articles from one group to another is a different
issue. There are people who are upset when their articles get stolen,
umm, "reposted" from one group to another already.

>interface software expecting RFC822 should consider it commentary.

Most of it does. On the other hand, "content-type" is, as I recall, a
defined extension to the mail standard. 

>RFC 1036 messages conform to RFC822, modulo a nit concerning

RFC 1036 messages conform to a subset of RFC 822. However, part of the
conformance comes only because RFC 822 says that undefined headers can
be ignored. "Newsgroups" and "Path" are two of those.

>the problem in both the short and long term.

The first step to the fix is to get people to stop saying "I don't treat
mail and news as different things so nobody has a problem."

---

From: [email-masked] (Michael Shields)
Date: 12 Mar 1995 02:43:47 -0500

In article <[email-masked]>,
Chris Newman  <[email-masked]> wrote:
[quoting RFC 1036]
> <*   message.  In any situation where this standard conflicts with the

This is mostly a matter of syntax.  822 and 1036 already treat headers
differently in that they use different sets of headers (notably To:,
In-Reply-To: vs. References:, and of course Newsgroups:).  You might
use an 822 parser on news headers, but not something like mailx that
interprets them.

Probably the best argument against Pine's behavior is that a large
installed base of software sends Newsgroups: headers in email.  Even if
this is against the RFCs, it's desirable for Pine to avoid making it
routine to post a reply to a message received by mail.
-- 
Shields.

---

From: [email-masked] (Peter da Silva)
Date: Tue, 14 Mar 1995 01:27:24 GMT

In article <[email-masked]>, Selcuk Ozturk  <[email-masked]> wrote:
> already does that. I wonder if you ever used Pine yourself.

For about a week, simply to see if it was any better than what I was using,
but that was quite some time ago.

> But, when
> you hit R, Pine asks you if you want post a followup to the Usenet.
[...]

This is fine except for one thing... it obviously doesn't say "you received
this message as private mail" in the same question. If it did, people would
not be so surprised to hear that the message they quoted to the net hadn't
been intended to be public.

> Now, for the etiquette: there are some very hot groups. Sometimes, somebody
> gets very angry with what you have said there and sends you an email with
> threats and/or curses. In such a case, I don't think that it is a breach
> of netiquette to reply on the Usenet. 

In such a case it is a breach of netiquette to reply at all. Or at least it's
counterproductive.
-- 
Peter da Silva                                            `-_-'
Network Management Technology Incorporated                 'U`
1601 Industrial Blvd.     Sugar Land, TX  77478  USA
+1 713 274 5180                       "Hast du Heute schon deinen Wolf umarmt?"

---

From: Rahul Dhesi <[email-masked]>
Date: 14 Mar 1995 02:17:29 GMT

>So we should just send 8-bit characters in SMTP since everybody knows
>that they're just ISO-8859-1?  Even though RFC 821 says not to?

Time will tell -- I am not sure.  I reinstalled sendmail here to be
8-bit transparent, and nobody noticed except the users who had
requested this change.

For a real-life example I refer you to the battle of Apple vs MacTCP
users.

This thread is not pine-specific, so follow-ups are set to
comp.mail.headers.
-- 
Rahul Dhesi <[email-masked]>

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 13 Mar 1995 17:31:09 -0500

Excerpts from netnews.comp.mail.headers: 11-Mar-95 Re: Pine Assuming
Mailed Re.. Rahul [email-masked] (411)

So we should just send 8-bit characters in SMTP since everybody knows
that they're just ISO-8859-1?  Even though RFC 821 says not to?  We all
know that that was just a historical mistake because old PDP-10
computers used to pack characters in 7 bits.  And lots of folks are
sending 8-bit ``RFC 821'' SMTP right now and like it that way.

		Craig

---

From: [email-masked] (Michael Shields)
Date: 13 Mar 1995 20:51:59 -0500

> 	"I do not read this group, so please Cc me in any responses"

They really should be setting Followup-To: poster and summarizing.

Personally, I wish there were a standard header that meant a message had
been both mailed and posted, because some people do this as a matter of
course, and I'd like to be able to easily tell procmail to throw such
messages away.
-- 
Shields.

---

From: [email-masked] (John Stanley)
Date: 13 Mar 1995 08:36:06 GMT

>warned them this would happen).

If they were the same, why would it matter?

>fetched through, say, IMAP.  

Oh, good golly. Someone, at some point, knew it was news. Whether it was
NNTP or IMAP or reading the news spool directly.  The point is the same.
Someone is throwing that information away, and they should not be.

>The user could have copied the message
>session.  

If it was news in a news folder, it would be news when they copied it to
a private folder. Again, someone is throwing that information away.

>generates 2-digit years in Date headers?

I guess the answer is "no". So, I guess that means that an existing
application will continue to do what it has done.

>desirable.  

It does say a lot about the concept of "interoperability", which is
supposed to be a goal of communications software.

>It is not going to be feasable to build/maintain a Maginot
>line between "news" objects and "mail" objects, 

Why not?

---

From: Selcuk Ozturk <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 13 Mar 1995 02:25:29 EST

# Would you accept Pine making a note that a message was received via mail but
# is a reply to a news posting, and asking if you would like to post a response
# to news instead of sending private email. You would be able to continue to
# use Pine in an antisocial manner, if that's what you want (it's not clear that
# this is the cause, mind you... I am not accusing you of violating acceptable
# behaviour) but people would no longer be accidentally doing so.
# -- 
# Peter da Silva                                            `-_-'

I don't have any problems with what you suggest above. But, I think Pine
already does that. I wonder if you ever used Pine yourself. But, when
you hit R, Pine asks you if you want post a followup to the Usenet. The
default is NO. If you hit the return button your answer goes only via
e-mail. Even if you press Y. After you are done and ready to send it again
says this time "this might go to thousands of people do you want to do
that?" If you find these messages cryptic and have better suggestions go
ahead it's fine with me. Also, it is not very difficult to know if a message
has arrived from news or email with Pine. I don't know all the possible
setups. But, here, my incoming folders, private folders and news folders
are clearly separated. The only time I might be confused is when I save
a news message to a private folder and forget where it came from. Ok, that
part can be enhanced and again no problem.

Selcuk

---

From: [email-masked] (Peter da Silva)
Date: Mon, 13 Mar 1995 04:34:54 GMT

> Pine just does that now, and I am happy with that.

Might I suggest that you think carefully about what you are saying here.

It is extremely poor etiquette to post personal mail to the net. However,
it is not the place for a user interface program to *enforce* this sort
of behaviour. On the other hand, it is a bad thing for a user interface
program to *encourage* dangerous behaviour.

Would you accept Pine making a note that a message was received via mail but
is a reply to a news posting, and asking if you would like to post a response
to news instead of sending private email. You would be able to continue to
use Pine in an antisocial manner, if that's what you want (it's not clear that
this is the cause, mind you... I am not accusing you of violating acceptable
behaviour) but people would no longer be accidentally doing so.
-- 
Peter da Silva                                            `-_-'
Network Management Technology Incorporated                 'U`
1601 Industrial Blvd.     Sugar Land, TX  77478  USA
+1 713 274 5180                       "Hast du Heute schon deinen Wolf umarmt?"

---

From: [email-masked] (Peter da Silva)
Date: Mon, 13 Mar 1995 04:13:37 GMT

> >to it if they receive it in email. Both Pnews and Pine are broken here.
                                           ^^^^^
					   Of course I meanr Rnmail.

If a program doesn't expect a header to be used, it should mark it somehow
as commentary lest some other program latch onto it and use it. The X-
convention is a reasonable one here (or is there software that reads and uses
X- headers? In that case perhaps something like "X-TRN-Newsgroups" should
be used).

---

From: [email-masked] (Peter da Silva)
Date: Mon, 13 Mar 1995 04:39:04 GMT

which is also in some cases annoying, but an appropriate use of Cc in a
followup.
-- 
Peter da Silva                                            `-_-'
Network Management Technology Incorporated                 'U`
1601 Industrial Blvd.     Sugar Land, TX  77478  USA
+1 713 274 5180                       "Hast du Heute schon deinen Wolf umarmt?"

---

From: [email-masked] (Peter da Silva)
Date: Mon, 13 Mar 1995 04:27:02 GMT

> need to train to use N different client interfaces helps them

Unifying the model is useful. Unifying the *messages* is not. If you want to
extend the system, or unify it, you need to make an effort to let people
know what the limitations of the distribution are. You especially need to
keep track of what the communication channel normal responses should be sent
to is.

TRN, for example, does a very good job of letting people know what the
distribution restrictions on a message are: it displays a message prior
to posting describing the expected distribution of the message in plain
english (this organization, many machines, this country, the whole world)
and gives the user a chance to back out. It could do better (This message
is cross-posted to misc.test, it is likely you will recieve dozens of
messages from automatic response programs, for example) but at least it
makes an effort.

> supposed to deal with the two separately?

It isn't. The mailing list manager has already marked the response address
correctly, so it doesn't have to.

Yes, you can argue that perhaps it would be nice if you had some flags to
indicate the message was to a mailing list (nationwide newsgroup) but that
doesn't excuse discarding that information.

> medium" in the sense you use.

A netnews group restricted to a local server is not broadcast either. And
TRN lets you know when your message is going to be distributed outside that
channel, when you post it.

> as upset as these Pine users with misdirected replies.

If they use TRN, they won't have that problem. If they have Pine, they will.

This is supposed to be an argument *for* unification?

> message should go is a bad idea.

Only if you don't tell the user where it's going in understandable terms,
and you don't add default destinations that the originator didn't intend.

> interface software expecting RFC822 should consider it commentary.

Certainly. MIME is a later standard. A program that doesn't expect MIME
should certainly make no assumptions about the meaning of MIME headers.

> the problem in both the short and long term.

That's true. That's why I'm recommending fixing both.

It's going to be difficult to get Pine fixed, though.
-- 
Peter da Silva                                            `-_-'
Network Management Technology Incorporated                 'U`
1601 Industrial Blvd.     Sugar Land, TX  77478  USA
+1 713 274 5180                       "Hast du Heute schon deinen Wolf umarmt?"

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 14 Mar 1995 12:10:30 -0500

Excerpts from netnews.comp.mail.headers: 13-Mar-95 Re: Pine Assuming
Mailed Re.. Rahul [email-masked] (1409)

> Not so!  Please don't forget the context.

That you're flaming Pine and not the other UAs?

> the header have caused no trouble (in the non-pine cases).

What other combinations work, other than the ones with Pine excluded? 
There's more than one consistent subset of the actions.

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 14 Mar 1995 12:07:28 -0500

Ah, good to have Mr. Stanley back in the discussion.

Excerpts from netnews.comp.mail.headers: 12-Mar-95 Re: Pine Assuming
Mailed Re.. John [email-masked] (1350)

> To you they aren't. That doesn't mean they aren't to anyone else.

You mean to me as an author of news/mail handling software they aren't
important?  That I can ignore the difference?  Then what's the
discussion about?

> instead of what you wanted them to write ...

``Correct'' in this context is simply inflammatory.  Just what I was
trying to avoid.  Why overstate your case?

> Well, an admission that news and mail can be different for some people.

This is diatribe, not dialogue.  My earlier post tried to persuade the
news/mail strict-dichotomists that there's another way to look at the
world, not that the other way was the ONLY way.

---

From: Adam J Weitzman <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 14 Mar 1995 16:09:10 -0500 (EST)

There is definitely a religious issue here, and frankly I'm sick of it 
eating up so much space in my mailbox. I was going to write a long 
message about how I came to this proposal, but I've decided, in the 
interest of getting people to actually read this message, to get right to 
the point. 

My proposed solution?

Make posting news a completely different keystroke (for argument's sake,
Ctrl-?). Then ask once or twice whether they are sure, and if there is an
email address in the To: line, ask if they also want to send an email to
that person. 

Scenario: I am composing an email.
  Result: No change. I type my message and hit Ctrl-X. Message gets sent.

Scenario: I am composing a news post.
  Result: Slight change. I type my message and hit Ctrl-?. Message gets 
          posted to newsgroup.  

Scenario: I am reading email and want to reply. (No Newsgroups: header)
  Result: No change. I type my reply and hit Ctrl-X. Message gets sent.

Scenario: I am reading news and want to post a followup. 
  Result: Slight change. I type my reply and hit Ctrl-?. Message gets 
          posted to newsgroup.  

Scenario: I am reading email and want to reply via email to a message which 
          was sent as a reply to a news post. (Newsgroup: header exists)
  Result: I type my reply and hit Ctrl-X. Recipient gets message. I am not
          asked if I want to post the message anywhere because I did not hit
          Ctrl-?.

Scenario: I am reading email and want to post my reply to a newsgroup.
          (Newsgroup: header may or may not exist)
  Result: I type my reply and hit Ctrl-?. Message gets posted to 
          whatever newsgroups are on the Newsgroups: line (to which
          I may add or remove newsgroups while replying). If there
          is a recipient in the To: line, I am asked if want to also
          send the message to that person via email.

This way, news never gets posted without an explicit news-posting
keystroke, and if I know nothing of news and get a message in my box,
reply and hit Ctrl-X, I won't be bothered with news issues at all. It is
just as easy to post news as it was before, just a different keystroke. 

Questions? Comments? I'm sure I forgot something, but I think this is 
workable, and it sidesteps the religious issue rather neatly, I think.

                                        - Adam J Weitzman
                                          Individual, Inc.
                                          [email-masked]
"Music, music, everywhere, but not a drop to drink." - Little Annie

---

From: [email-masked] (Matt Messina)
Date: 15 Mar 1995 03:20:40 GMT

>eating up so much space in my mailbox. I was going to write a long 

Unsubsribe from pine-info and read comp.mail.pine instead.

>Make posting news a completely different keystroke (for argument's sake,

*I* like that idea; I've always objected to calling following up
"replying" -- it's not replying, it's following up.  But the Pine authors 
want to treat news and mail as similarly as possible.

Also, the Pine authors anguished over changing the print keystroke to ^Y; 
there's no way they're going to change the send/post keystroke.

I think that Pine's antisocial behavior can be corrected without making
the users learn new keystrokes.  All that is needed is to figure out a
better way to tell whether a message/article is from mail or news than the
existence of a Newsgroups header.  Pine 3.92 is supposed to have
improvements in this area. 
-- 
Matt Messina
[email-masked]

---

From: [email-masked] (Peter Mansour)
Date: 14 Mar 1995 04:18:01 -0500

In article <[email-masked]>,
> >     becomes akin to email and no more Usenet followups should

I wonder why you would say this.  I read news offline and post follow
ups offline -- Does what you say apply to me? If it does, then I will
not be inclined to do anything different because no one has said
anything that explains what you say applying to me.

+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
                             Peter Mansour
                         Email: [email-masked]
                          Fax: (416) 536-7743
                            Toronto, Canada
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---

From: Rahul Dhesi <[email-masked]>
Date: 15 Mar 1995 09:04:58 GMT

In <[email-masked]>
[email-masked] (Adam J Weitzman) writes:

>There is definitely a religious issue here...

Hmm..

>and frankly I'm sick of it 
>eating up so much space in my mailbox.
                               ^^^^^^^
Hmmmmm.....wonder whose side he's on...

>Make posting news a completely different keystroke...

Ah!  He's on our side.

An ideal solution.

>...and it sidesteps the religious issue rather neatly, I think.

Alas, no.  The religious issue *is* that News and mail commands should
be the same.
-- 
Rahul Dhesi <[email-masked]>

---

From: Rahul Dhesi <[email-masked]>
Date: 15 Mar 1995 09:28:08 GMT

In <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (Peter Mansour) writes:

>ups offline -- Does what you say apply to me?

Suppose I have a high-powered Sun machine that gets, oh, 6 incoming
newsfeeds totalling a couple of hundred megs a day.  If I read or
post news on it, am I reading or posting offline?  (Probably not, you
might say.)

What if I cut it down to, say 2 incoming news feeds and 50 megs a day?

One incoming newsfeed and 3 megs a day?  A sporadic incoming newsfeed
that's rather selective based on my tastes, a couple of hundred
kbytes a day?

Just what is meant by offline news reading?
-- 
Rahul Dhesi <[email-masked]>

---

From: "Steven D. Majewski" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 15 Mar 1995 19:20:03 -0500 (EST)

> want to treat news and mail as similarly as possible.

However, one of Pine's targets was to be an easy to use & learn mail/news
reader for beginners. ( Since they've added aggregate commands, it's also
quite usable for non-beginners who get tons of mail. ) I have *yet* to see
a beginner who knew what "followup" is supposed to mean.  I get lot's of
questions about how to post messages in trn, as well as a few from those
who "reply" and then want to know why their message never got posted. 
They have often looked at the help screen, but since "followup" doesn't 
mean much to the non-computer literate: they skip right past that entry
until they see something that sounds suggestive (in plain English) of 
what they want: "reply". 

You're 100% correct in maintaining that distinction in Usenet-English,
but Pine's "misuse" of the language is one reason WHY I steer the confused
newbie's to it. They find it a much less frustrating tool.

---

From: "Steven D. Majewski" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 15 Mar 1995 19:57:27 -0500 (EST)

> Usenet posting (thought it might be a "dead", i.e., saved copy).

i.e. When standard practice conflicts with one of "Rahul's Rules", 
the Rahul is Right. 

Since Rahul's Rules seem to get more baroque and complicated with
each post ( I waiting for him to outlaw laptops, next! :-), I don't
think I have to argue further. He will eventually supply his own
reductio ad absurdum. 

> News spool area.  Please see more about this in the aforementioned

BTW: My machine, and a great many others, don't even have a "News spool 
area". I use NNTP ( mostly from Pine and trn )

---

From: Adam J Weitzman <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 15 Mar 1995 21:02:11 -0500 (EST)

> Alas, no.  The religious issue *is* that News and mail commands should

Just goes to show you how much I've been skimming these messages. 

I was under the impression this whole time that the problem was that Pine
treated email with a Newsgroups: header as a potential news posting, and
that the makers of Pine didn't want to change the current behavior of the
program, asking someone if they wanted to post to a newsgroup a message
that came in via email and was intended to be an email in reply. 

I had not realized when I wrote the email that the makers of Pine had 
already decided that a different news-posting keystroke was out of the 
question. It seems that they are putting the "news is the same thing as 
email" philosophy ahead of everything else, even at the expense of making 
it confusing as to whether your message will be read by one or 
potentially millions. This would appear to go against the "easy for the 
newbie" philosophy, wouldn't it?

I personally think of news and email as two almost completely separate 
entities. I realize I am in the minority on this one, but hey. I used 
Pine as a newsreader at my school account, and I found that it made 
navigating around much more confusing, and I consider myself to be a 
reasonably experienced email and news user, having been doing both for 
over five years. 

Here's another (partial) solution: 

Put the newsgroups you are posting to in the To: line in the user
interface, and then move them to the Newsgroups: line behind the scenes
after the user hits Ctrl-X. When a user replies to a message and there are
entries in the Newsgroups: line, ask the user before they start typing if
they want to post to those groups. The behavior of "F" and "R" in the
newsgroup area would be identical, except that "F" would put the
newsgroups in the To: line. 

I realize this sounds silly at first, but think about it. I won't do 
another scenario-by-scenario rundown on paper, but I think everything's 
covered here. You could even perpetuate the Newsgroups: header in email 
in this scenario, if you desired. *ducks rotten vegetables* The fact that 
the newsgroups are in the To: line make them much more visible, I think.

There is still the danger of a user ignoring the pre-reply question, not 
realizing that the newsgroup is in the To: line, and misinterpreting the 
post-reply question, but I think this might cut down on that a little 
bit, and it preserves the Ctrl-X keystroke.

                                        - Adam J Weitzman
                                          Individual, Inc.
                                          [email-masked]

---

From: Brian Tao <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 16 Mar 1995 10:16:37 +0000 ()

> Just what is meant by offline news reading?

    If your posted articles are not injected into the news stream ASAP
after posting, but are spooled to disk for later transmission (e.g.,
because you do not have a permanent TCP/IP connection), then I would
say you are reading offline.
--
Brian ("Though this be madness, yet there is method in't") Tao
[email-masked] <-- work ........ play --> [email-masked]

---

From: Brian Tao <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 16 Mar 1995 10:25:04 +0000 ()

> until they see something that sounds suggestive (in plain English) of 

    Full agreement here.  "Followup" simply isn't obvious or intuitive
to Usenet novices.  "Reply" makes far more sense.  I had written a
mail/news reader a few years ago that could distinguish between e-mail
and a Usenet posting.  I stuck with the rRfF convention introduced by
rn.  One suggestion I heard often from my users was a single command
that would intelligently redirect a response to either mail or news
depending on the original message.  Of course, being the feature-crazy
programmer that I am, there were about 5 preference settings related
to that one feature.  ;-)
--
Brian ("Though this be madness, yet there is method in't") Tao
[email-masked] <-- work ........ play --> [email-masked]

---

From: Rahul Dhesi <[email-masked]>
Date: 16 Mar 1995 04:56:09 GMT

In article <[email-masked]>
Steven D. Majewski <[email-masked]>  writes:

[ sarcasm... ]  
[ name-calling... ]

>My machine, and a great many others, don't even have a "News spool 

Accesing News files across a network is common.  I don't believe this
much affects the current debate.  (I personally happen to access files
via NFS, so my machine doesn't have any News spool area of its own
either.)
-- 
Rahul Dhesi <[email-masked]>

---

From: [email-masked] (Robert A. Rosenberg)
Date: Thu, 16 Mar 95 08:46:42 GMT

In Article <[email-masked]>, Selcuk Ozturk
>Pine just does that now, and I am happy with that.

As I've noted in the past messages in this tread, Pine is "broken" in that
it does not bother to designate on its CREATED messages how it is treating
them. There would be much less finger pointing at it if it were to mark the
messages and articles that it creates as to if they are outgoing Email
Messages or Outgoing News Posts (including if the fact that this is a dual
Email/News set and if the original copy being replied to was from Email or
News). If it did this, then when it processes Incoming Email or News (that
was created by another Pine) it would be able to TELL if the message was
Email or News. This is not it GUESSING but it seeing a Header that was put
there to DOCUMENT how the message/article was created and thus delivered.
Doing this would reduce all the screaming that is going on as well as
allowing Pine to know how to process the information in the Newsgroup Header
(or the superseding Documentation type Header).

---

From: Rahul Dhesi <[email-masked]>
Date: 16 Mar 1995 09:44:30 GMT

>say you are reading offline.

Ok, now back to the original issue:

I would say that offline reading as defined above has no effect on the
argument.  In fact in the early days of Usenet, almost every user at
every site did offline News reading and posting.  Only with the coming
of dedicated connections and nntp protocol did people even begin to
make a distinction between 'offline' and 'online' reading.

So long as you have a logical view of some place being the 'News spool'
are and some place being an 'email folder', my argument stands.  Post
News in the News context, and do not post a News followup based on
email.  A News posting saved in an email folder is now akin to
email and should be treated as such.
-- 
Rahul Dhesi <[email-masked]>

---

From: Rahul Dhesi <[email-masked]>
Date: 16 Mar 1995 02:52:30 GMT

In <[email-masked]>
[email-masked] ("Steven D. Majewski") writes:

>I have *yet* to see
>a beginner who knew what "followup" is supposed to mean....
>they skip right past that entry

This is absolutely wonderful, no sarcasm intended.  

Let them send private replies until they are no longer beginners.  Let
us not make it too easy for people to post something that will be
propagated around the world.

No person who has not yet read enough of the manuals, or read enough of
the postings in news.announce.newusers and news.answers, or otherwise
acquired a knowledge of Usenet, to understand followups, should be
posting to Usenet.
-- 
Rahul Dhesi <[email-masked]>

---

From: [email-masked] (Olly Betts)
Date: 17 Mar 1995 16:21:05 -0000

In article <[email-masked]>,
John Stanley <[email-masked]> wrote:
>In article <[email-masked]>,
>>precursors of the current one.  
>
>Considering that message-ids are generated by the system when a message
>is sent, it is impossible for a mail references header to contain the
>ids of messages that aren't older than the mail the header is in.

Not necessarily.  I generate my own message ids (this message has message id
<[email-masked]>).  I do this so I can use strn's score
files to pick out follow-ups to my posts (by looking at the References:) and
distinguish them from follow-ups to other mantis posts.

So I could easily reference future messages if I actually wanted to.  I
could send a large message in several chunks, such that each message
references all the others.

More relevantly, 1036 References are tree-like (due to the way they are
generated), whereas 822 References can cross-link or do anything else.  In
reality, all the References: lines I've seen on e-mail are valid by RFC-1036
too (I'm working on a threading mail-to-news script, so I've been looking
carefully).

Olly
-- 
Putting the "Ol" in technology.

---

From: [email-masked] (John Stanley)
Date: 17 Mar 1995 13:21:41 GMT

>A 1036 References line however may only contain backwards references, 

For the same reason mail is the same.

>Of course they're not, and I never claimed they are.  

Others have.

>This doesn't mean the user has to learn two
>different interfaces 

And I have never said they must.

---

From: [email-masked] (John Stanley)
Date: 17 Mar 1995 14:07:22 GMT

>Ah, good to have Mr. Stanley back in the discussion.

This is an example of non-inflammatory posting?

>important?  

You said they weren't important to you. You didn't say whether you were
speaking as a developer or a user. All I said was, to you, in whatever
mode you were speaking, there was no difference (that is what you
said), and that that lack of difference didn't necessarily apply to
anyone but you.

>That I can ignore the difference?  

If you are not writing software that other people are going to use, feel
free to ignore whatever the hell you want. If you are writing tools for
other people, then pay attention to what those people are telling you
about how they want the tools to work.

>This is diatribe, not dialogue.  

Your point, Mr. Welcome Back to the Conversation?

---

From: [email-masked] (Chris Jacobs)
Date: Fri, 17 Mar 95 23:47:04 MET

> ids of messages that aren't older than the mail the header is in.

Suppose I mail a text to a moderator to be posted in a newsgroup. I send 
someone a cc: The someone replies me and the reply contains a reference. 
Thereafter the moderator posts my email as news but does not generate a 
new msgid, instead he reuses the msgid of my email for the news.

I would say that then the reference refers to all copies of that text, 
the news copies as well as the email copies. Nevertheless the news was 
posted only after the reference.

--
Chris Jacobs <[email-masked]>

---

From: [email-masked] (John Stanley)
Date: 10 Mar 1995 07:25:28 GMT

In

---

From: [email-masked] (Leslie Mikesell)
Date: 18 Mar 1995 16:22:22 -0600

In article <[email-masked]>, Rahul Dhesi  <[email-masked]> wrote:

>>In addition to the possibility
>>of accidents in transmission, you are relying on the kindness of
>>strangers as far as respecting your wishes for privacy goes.
>
>I believe the situation here is a little more complicated:
>
>   A sends private email to B.  The email does not have a cc header.
>   It does have a Newsgroups header, which is a comment for the benefit
>   of the human reader.
>
>   B wishes to send a reply to A.  In the reply, B includes some of the
>   private text from A's message.
>
>   Mail program assigns semantics to the Newsgroups header, and asks if
>   B wishes to post the response to Usenet.  B abesnt-mindedly answers
>   Yes.
>
>The loss of privacy occurs because A's text was included in B's
>response.  Both people (strangers or not) *are* being kind to one
>another, so that is not the issue here.  The issue here is the
>accidental, not deliberate, loss of privacy, caused by a program asking
>a question it should never have asked.

Yes, I understand the situation that is being discussed, but I'm
trying to point out that the problem A is complaining about is
in fact caused by A saying something he shouldn't have committed
electronically in the first place and by A including the Newsgroups:
header on his transmission.  Whatever B or his mail program does is
almost irrelevant to the issue.  I suspect that there are even
situations in certain places that would cause the bounce message
to be delivered to the newsgroup in the case where B's mailbox wasn't
even available. 

However I haven't really used Pine enough to comment on it's behaviour.
My impression is that such a program should have one command that
says "reply to sender only" whether in the context of news or mail
and another command that says "reply to everyone who saw this".  If
the user is giving the "reply to sender" command (or Pine doesn't
have such a command) and Pine is offering to post anyway, then I
agree that it is broken.  If it always uses a two-step command
where the user has to indicate he wants to reply, then give
another response as to where the reply should go, I'd say it is
more confusing than necessary, but probably not broken.

Les Mikesell
  [email-masked]

---

From: [email-masked] (Dale Huckeby)
Date: 16 Mar 1995 19:23:11 -0800

>> > becomes akin to email and no more Usenet followups should

Your assumption is both odd and presumptuous.  I rarely reply to a
posting "live".  It takes me too long to sort out my thoughts and craft
a reply.  I prefer to save _any_ interesting articles to a folder, and
then go back later and decide whether or not to do a follow-up.  My
only problem is this: I save to a pine folder, because that way I can
go back later and post, but pine assumes that I want to either email
_and_ post, or just email, whereas I usually want _only_ to post.  You
apparently assume that I should be allowed _only_ to post immediately,
in the heat of the moment, without any time for reflection.  I tend
to do that only when I run across something asinine enough to trigger
an immediate response, against my better judgement...like now.

Dale Huckeby

---

From: Rahul Dhesi <[email-masked]>
Date: 18 Mar 1995 20:51:58 GMT

"please ignore Dhesi" -- Mark Crispin <[email-masked]>

---

From: Rahul Dhesi <[email-masked]>
Date: 19 Mar 1995 11:13:18 GMT

In <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (Dale Huckeby) writes:

>I rarely reply to a
>then go back later and decide whether or not to do a follow-up.

Conventional wisdom is that one becomes familiar with the discusion
thread before posting a follow-up.  Do you agree or disagree with
this?  Do think think it would be good advice to suggest to most users
that they first save selected postings, and then later follow up to
them outside the context of the discussion?
-- 
Rahul Dhesi <[email-masked]>
"please ignore Dhesi" -- Mark Crispin <[email-masked]>

---

From: [email-masked] (Leslie Mikesell)
Date: 18 Mar 1995 14:31:40 -0600

>been intended to be public.

So, this is exactly equivalent to someone sending you some private email
that accidentally includes some CC: headers, and then being surprised
when you reply to all.  If the original sender wants you to understand
that he is sending a private message he should make sure that the
headers don't contain extraneous CC:'s or Newsgroups: headers. 

>In such a case it is a breach of netiquette to reply at all. Or at least it's

Not that it's any more productive, but you also see a fair amount of the
same posted intentionally to Usenet, so you can't rely on the content to
tip you off that a message was supposed to be private.  Trn may be the
usual culprit, since it includes the Newsgroups: header in a CC:'d
mail copy of a posting as well as in private replies.

The real message here is that anything you send electronically can
appear *anywhere* and be kept for any length of time.  If that bothers
you, don't send it in the first place.  In addition to the possibility
of accidents in transmission, you are relying on the kindness of
strangers as far as respecting your wishes for privacy goes.  Not
everyone agrees on the rules of etiquette, especially if something
appears threatening or illegal.

Les Mikesell
  [email-masked]

---

From: [email-masked] (John Stanley)
Date: 20 Mar 1995 09:42:04 GMT

In article <[email-masked]>,
>someone a cc: The someone replies me and the reply contains a reference. 

To the mail you already generated. The mail you sent predated the
reply. The reply does not contain a reference to a message that didn't
exit.

>new msgid, instead he reuses the msgid of my email for the news.

This is marginally RFC-compliant. 

>posted only after the reference.

But it was created before the reference.

No, if you are going to create an example of mail which references mail
not yet in existance, then you will have to assume that someone is going
to the effort of creating their own message id's, and that they are
saying "this mail references another piece of mail I haven't written
yet, but will assign id X to when I do."

When you do that, I will tell you that news will happily accept the same
situation. In other words, if I want to create my own ID's, I can post
news that refers to an article I haven't written yet. In fact, both news
and mail will function quite well if I forget to write the message I
predicted I would. News leaves a gap in the thread, which is no
different than what happens when followups arrive after the original.

---

From: [email-masked] (Peter da Silva)
Date: Tue, 14 Mar 1995 01:27:24 GMT

[...]

---

From: Rahul Dhesi <[email-masked]>
Date: 14 Mar 1995 02:17:29 GMT

---

From: [email-masked] (Matt Messina)
Date: 21 Mar 1995 17:47:17 GMT

Peter da Silva <[email-masked]> wrote:
>In article <[email-masked]>, Leslie Mikesell <[email-masked]> wrote:
>I'm willing to be betrayed intentionally by a human. I consider it
>unreasonable to be betrayed by a user interface. Especially when there

Especially a user agent that is directed at new users.

>is enough information available to that user interface to do the right
>thing. Software is a lot easier to fix than people.
-- 
Matt Messina
[email-masked]

---

From: [email-masked] (Peter da Silva)
Date: Mon, 20 Mar 1995 18:21:34 GMT

In article <[email-masked]>, Leslie Mikesell <[email-masked]> wrote:
> Whatever B or his mail program does is

Since Pine is the only mail program that does this and since Pine is not
a MTA this is not possible.

> and another command that says "reply to everyone who saw this".

The "Newsgroups" header does not contain any information about "who saw
this" unless the message was received as news. Pine should discard or
transform "Newsgroups" headers when it doesn't know the message was
posted to news.
-- 
Peter da Silva                                            `-_-'
Network Management Technology Incorporated                 'U`
1601 Industrial Blvd.     Sugar Land, TX  77478  USA
+1 713 274 5180                       "Hast du Heute schon deinen Wolf umarmt?"

---

From: [email-masked] (Peter da Silva)
Date: Mon, 20 Mar 1995 18:17:43 GMT

In article <[email-masked]>, Leslie Mikesell <[email-masked]> wrote:
> when you reply to all.

If the message has those Cc: headers, that means it was sent to those
places, regardless of origin.

If the message has Newsgroups: headers that doesn't mean anything unless
the message was received as news, because Newsgroups: isn't a mail header.

---

From: Nancy McGough <[email-masked]>
Date: 21 Mar 1995 23:49:32 GMT

>thing. Software is a lot easier to fix than people.

But what you think is "the right thing" and what others think is the
right thing are different.  For example, I think the right thing is
for a mail/news reader to tell me where a message has been mailed
and/or posted and then ask me which of these places, and what new
places, my response should go.  Currently this is not possible.  I
still think we need a new header (or headers) that would contain this
information.  And then mail/news user agents should be configurable
so that a user can customize the response behaviour.  For example, if
you never want to do a newsgroup response to a news article that you
get via email then you should be able to set a variable that
disallows that.  But if I want to be able to do a newsgroup response
to a news article that I receive in mail, I should be able to set a
variable to allow that.  I think the default setting should be to
disallow posting responses to news messages received in mail because
we want to discourage new users from doing a news response when they
haven't read the entire thread.  But once a user knows how it all
works, she should be able to set a variable that allows her to easily
respond to any or all of the individuals, mailing lists, and
newsgroups that also got the message.

Does anyone else think we need a new header (or headers) to make this
possible?

--
 /\_/\                      @..@     Vote for the humanities.misc  /\_/\
( o.o )  Nancy McGough     (----)    newsgroup! The CFV is at     ( o.o )
 > ^ <   Infinite Ink     ( >__< )   http://www.jazzie.com/ii/     > ~ <

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 8 Mar 1995 12:03:49 -0500

Craig

---

From: [email-masked] (Peter da Silva)
Date: Wed, 22 Mar 1995 21:26:04 GMT

In article <[email-masked]>,

> places, my response should go.

That sounds like an absolutely smashing idea. However for messages
received via a protocol containing headers intended for another this
isn't available. In that case the right thing is to discard those
headers, or somehow mark them as "suspect". Do you disagree with that?
-- 
Peter da Silva                                            `-_-'
Network Management Technology Incorporated                 'U`
1601 Industrial Blvd.     Sugar Land, TX  77478  USA
+1 713 274 5180                       "Hast du Heute schon deinen Wolf umarmt?"

---

From: [email-masked] (Olly Betts)
Date: 23 Mar 1995 12:59:52 -0000

In article <[email-masked]>,
John Stanley <[email-masked]> wrote:
>In article <[email-masked]>,
>Olly Betts <[email-masked]> wrote:
>So could you in news. If you want to create your own, you can make them
>link however you want.

Indeed.  However, if it's mail, this is perfectly valid by RFC822.  In news,
RFC1036 describes exactly how to create the references line, and this would
be invalid.  You could do it, of course, but you shouldn't.

I was pointing out that your original assertion:

>... it is impossible for a mail references header to contain the

is incorrect.  Not only is it possible, but it's valid.  However, if the
references line in news is constructed as RFC1036 says, then the messages
referenced must be older, and further must be ancestors of the current
article.  Neither of these is true of RFC822 references in mail.

Olly
-- 
Reality is for people who can't cope with reality.

---

From: [email-masked] (Robert A. Rosenberg)
Date: Fri, 24 Mar 95 06:02:44 GMT

>more confusing than necessary, but probably not broken.

Lets take the case of a Private Email Reply being created by Pine from a
Newsgroup Article (Note: This is an Email-Only Reply not an Post w/Cc-via
Email). The Email gets sent with a Newsgroups Header. It is received by
another Pine and a reply is generated. If the user says "reply to everyone
who saw this" that SHOULD be only the original sender not the Sender and the
Newsgroup but Pine will send to the newsgroup due to the original Pine
REFUSING to tell the receiving Pine that the message was an Email-Only
Reply.

---

From: David L Miller <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 24 Mar 1995 12:56:57 -0800

I hate to perpetuate this thread, but I think some clarification is
needed... 

On Fri, 24 Mar 1995, Robert A. Rosenberg wrote:

> Email). The Email gets sent with a Newsgroups Header.

No, Pine does _NOT_ put in a Newsgroups: header unless it is posting the
message.  An Email-Only reply will not have a Newsgroups: header.  

|\ |  |\/|  David L. Miller    [email-masked]  (206) 685-6240
|/ |_ |  |  Software Engineer, Pine Development Team   (206) 685-4045 (FAX)
University of Washington, Networks & Distributed Computing, JE-20
4545 15th Ave NE, Seattle WA 98105, USA                 finger for PGP key

---

From: Dale Huckeby <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 22 Mar 1995 01:20:26 -0800

On 19 Mar 1995, Rahul Dhesi wrote:

> thread before posting a follow-up.  Do you agree or disagree with this?

I agree.  That's *why* I like to wait.  When I go through my newsgroups
and list groups the first time each evening, I'm just trying to sort
out the wheat from the chaff.  When I go back later and have only a few
posts (selected earlier) to deal with, I can read the thread, study
the post I'm responding to, and write a more thoughtful response.  And
it helps me to have that post and the ones associated with it saved
to a folder.  

> . . . Do think think it would be good advice to suggest to most users

I think it would be good advice not to set up a strawman so crudely.
Why do you insist that following up from a folder rather than from the
newsgroup somehow magically takes it out of context?  If you wait two
weeks, sure, but not if you wait a few hours or even a day or two.
Given some of the stuff I read, I'd think it would be a good idea for
most users *not* to post until they think about it some.  

Dale Huckeby

posted and mailed

---

From: Rahul Dhesi <[email-masked]>
Date: 23 Mar 1995 06:11:33 GMT

In <[email-masked]> Nancy McGough <[email-masked]> writes:

>For example, I think the right thing is
>and/or posted...
>I still think we need a new header (or headers) that would contain this
>information.

Agreed absolutely.  Headers that I have seen suggested in recent months
include:

     Also-Posted-To:
     Also-Cc-To:

>But if I want to be able to do a newsgroup response
>variable to allow that.

Agreed, sort of.  It's not of critical importance.  I have never had
any trouble posting to Usenet something I got in email, or sending by
email something I posted to or got from Usenet.  It's a simple matter
of using one's editor to include the appropriate text in the
appropriate outgoing email message or Usenet posting.  Thus, although
it would be nice to have this done automatically, it's not really an
issue in the context of "Why did my private email get posted to
Usenet?"

There are many different things people like to do.  It would be too
painful a user interface if there were an option to do each
automatically.  For example:

- sign a message with PGP, send via email to a specific recipient,
  also post to a local newsgroup with the annotation, "I'm emailing
  this last warning to XXX.  Let's give him three days, then we should
  consider suing him."
- sign a file with PGP, use shar to create a shar archive of this along with
  some other files, add a Checksum: header with brik, post the final
  shar to Usenet, and send a copy to a colleage via email with the
  annotation, "hi, here's something I just posted to Usenet that might
  be of interest to you, give me a call at xxx-xxxx if you have trouble
  extracting this".
- get 'man csh' online, cut out a few lines, include in a reply to
  somebody's email, and also include a few lines from a Usenet
  posting in the same reply

There are simply too many things one might wish to do that result in
email being sent or News being posted.  Ideally an orthogonal user
interface will let the user combine activities as needed, instead of
trying to present all the options in a menu or querying the user each
time about what he wants to do.
-- 
Rahul Dhesi <[email-masked]>
"please ignore Dhesi" -- Mark Crispin <[email-masked]>

---

From: [email-masked] (Leslie Mikesell)
Date: 25 Mar 1995 10:16:03 -0600

In article <[email-masked]>,

>REFUSING to tell the receiving Pine that the message was an Email-Only

I don't think Pine does this.  The Newgroups: headers are mostly
generated by trn (and perhaps other newsreaders) and they are
included whether the email copy is a CC: added with the post
(which I think is a nice convenience) or a private reply.  The
latter case is the problem, and to solve it we need a real standard
to distinguish the cases.

Les Mikesell
  [email-masked]

---

From: Mark Crispin <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 24 Mar 1995 22:48:41 -0800

> Email). The Email gets sent with a Newsgroups Header.

Say what?

Pine has never done this.  It's technically impossible for Pine to do so, 
since the presence of the Newsgroups data in a composed message is in 
itself a request to post to news.

---

From: Rahul Dhesi <[email-masked]>
Date: 24 Mar 1995 19:06:20 GMT

>I agree.  That's *why* I like to wait....
>When I go back later and have only a few

Ok, so where (for example) an nn user would simply highlight some
postings on his screen, you are actually making separate physical
copies of them to achieve the same goal.  if so, this is not too bad,
though it does seem like a waste of resources.

>newsgroup somehow magically takes it out of context? 

Because making a physical copy of a posting seems an odd way of
"selecting" it.  Are we considering "selecting" postings synonymous
with "saving" them?
-- 
Rahul Dhesi <[email-masked]>
"please ignore Dhesi" -- Mark Crispin <[email-masked]>

---

From: Rahul Dhesi <[email-masked]>
Date: 26 Mar 1995 02:18:31 GMT

In <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (Leslie Mikesell) writes:

>The Newgroups: headers are...
>included whether the email copy is a CC: added with the post...
>or a private reply.  The

There is no need to wait for a formal standard.  This simple rule will
suffice to avoid the problem being discussed:

   If a message has no Path: header, post no News follow-ups to it.
-- 
Rahul Dhesi <[email-masked]>
"please ignore Dhesi" -- Mark Crispin <[email-masked]>

---

From: [email-masked] (John Stanley)
Date: 22 Mar 1995 22:18:48 GMT

---

From: Selcuk Ozturk <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 24 Mar 1995 08:38:24 EST

# Lets take the case of a Private Email Reply being created by Pine from a
# Newsgroup Article (Note: This is an Email-Only Reply not an Post w/Cc-via
# Email). The Email gets sent with a Newsgroups Header. It is received by
# another Pine and a reply is generated. If the user says "reply to everyone
# who saw this" that SHOULD be only the original sender not the Sender and the
# Newsgroup but Pine will send to the newsgroup due to the original Pine
# REFUSING to tell the receiving Pine that the message was an Email-Only
# Reply.
# 
This is not true. (At least in Pine 3.91). Private (email) replies
to usenet articles from Pine do not include the "Newsgroups" header.
So, you couldn't send a reply to the usenet without manually, inserting
the Newsgroups value with pine.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Selcuk Ozturk
Economics Department               e-mail: [email-masked]
University Of Pittsburgh           http://ftp.econ.pitt.edu/~selcuk/

---

From: [email-masked] (Leslie Mikesell)
Date: 26 Mar 1995 14:11:24 -0600

In article <[email-masked]>,
Matt Messina <[email-masked]> wrote:

>Requires changing 1 user agent, Pine.

Requires it to be changed by the person who didn't know/care about
the problem.  Seems unlikely to happen whether it is the "right"
solution or not.

>>How about this variation:
>>If a message is not a news posting, be sure it doesn't have a Newsgroups:
>>header.
>
>Requires changing lots of user agents, among them trn and tin (perhaps
>you've heard of them). 

Umm, no.  It just requires that the user delete the Newsgroups: header
while he has it in his editor along with the text that he is motivated
to keep private.  But, the programs can be changed too, if someone
is motivated to do so.

Les Mikesell
  [email-masked]

---

From: [email-masked] (Leslie Mikesell)
Date: 25 Mar 1995 22:20:51 -0600

If you are sending private mail as a reply within trn and want to
make sure the recipient doesn't accidentally post it, delete the
Newsgroups: line while it is still in your editor.  Since the
problem seems to be related to someone who knows/cares about the
difference between news and mail sending to someone who doesn't,
I think there is a lot better chance of having the person who knows
and cares do the fixing, which is simple enough in the case of
newsreaders that dump the headers in your edit file. 

Les Mikesell
  [email-masked]

---

From: [email-masked] (Matt Messina)
Date: 26 Mar 1995 05:23:28 GMT

---

From: [email-masked] (John Stanley)
Date: 28 Mar 1995 20:19:50 GMT

>the problem.  Seems unlikely to happen whether it is the "right"

Yes, if the author of pine knew and cared about the problem, it would
have been fixed already.