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What or who decides if an "In-Reply-To:" header appears?

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  What or who decides if an "In-Reply-To:" header appears? Jeff Layman <jmlayman@invalid.invalid> - 2021-04-15 16:33 +0100
    Re: What or who decides if an "In-Reply-To:" header appears? WaltS48 <schw01@invalid.net> - 2021-04-15 11:38 -0400
    Re: What or who decides if an "In-Reply-To:" header appears? Dave Royal<dave@dave123royal.com> - 2021-04-15 16:43 +0000
      Re: What or who decides if an "In-Reply-To:" header appears? "Adam H. Kerman" <ahk@chinet.com> - 2021-04-15 17:35 +0000
        Re: What or who decides if an "In-Reply-To:" header appears? Nomen Nescio <nobody@dizum.com> - 2021-04-16 19:29 -0500
      Re: What or who decides if an "In-Reply-To:" header appears? Jeff Layman <jmlayman@invalid.invalid> - 2021-04-15 21:07 +0100
        Re: What or who decides if an "In-Reply-To:" header appears? Dave Royal<dave@dave123royal.com> - 2021-04-15 21:25 +0000
          Re: What or who decides if an "In-Reply-To:" header appears? Jeff Layman <jmlayman@invalid.invalid> - 2021-04-16 13:28 +0100
            Re: What or who decides if an "In-Reply-To:" header appears? Nomen Nescio <nobody@dizum.com> - 2021-04-16 13:00 +0000
              Re: What or who decides if an "In-Reply-To:" header appears? Nomen Nescio <nobody@dizum.com> - 2021-04-16 13:23 +0000
                Re: What or who decides if an "In-Reply-To:" header appears? Jeff Layman <jmlayman@invalid.invalid> - 2021-04-16 20:57 +0100
                  Re: What or who decides if an "In-Reply-To:" header appears? Nomen Nescio <nobody@dizum.com> - 2021-04-16 22:20 +0000
            Re: What or who decides if an "In-Reply-To:" header appears? Dave Royal <dave@dave123royal.com> - 2021-04-16 14:01 +0100
              Re: What or who decides if an "In-Reply-To:" header appears? Nomen Nescio <nobody@dizum.com> - 2021-04-16 22:40 +0000
              Re: What or who decides if an "In-Reply-To:" header appears? Dave Royal<dave@dave123royal.com> - 2021-04-18 06:34 +0000
                Re: What or who decides if an "In-Reply-To:" header appears? Nomen Nescio <nobody@dizum.com> - 2021-04-18 10:30 +0000
                Re: What or who decides if an "In-Reply-To:" header appears? "Adam H. Kerman" <ahk@chinet.com> - 2021-04-18 13:55 +0000
    Re: What or who decides if an "In-Reply-To:" header appears? PietB <www.godfatherof.nl/@opt-in.invalid> - 2021-04-17 10:56 +0200
      Re: What or who decides if an "In-Reply-To:" header appears? "Adam H. Kerman" <ahk@chinet.com> - 2021-04-17 15:01 +0000
        Re: What or who decides if an "In-Reply-To:" header appears? Ken Blake <ken@invalidemail.com> - 2021-04-17 08:07 -0700
          Re: What or who decides if an "In-Reply-To:" header appears? "Adam H. Kerman" <ahk@chinet.com> - 2021-04-17 15:16 +0000
      Re: What or who decides if an "In-Reply-To:" header appears? Ken Blake <ken@invalidemail.com> - 2021-04-17 08:02 -0700
        Re: What or who decides if an "In-Reply-To:" header appears? "Adam H. Kerman" <ahk@chinet.com> - 2021-04-17 15:07 +0000
          Re: What or who decides if an "In-Reply-To:" header appears? Ken Blake <ken@invalidemail.com> - 2021-04-17 08:09 -0700
        Re: What or who decides if an "In-Reply-To:" header appears? MikeS <MikeS@fred.com> - 2021-04-17 19:26 +0100
          Re: What or who decides if an "In-Reply-To:" header appears? Ken Blake <ken@invalidemail.com> - 2021-04-17 14:40 -0700
            Re: What or who decides if an "In-Reply-To:" header appears? Brian Gregory <void-invalid-dead-dontuse@email.invalid> - 2021-04-18 02:26 +0100
              Re: What or who decides if an "In-Reply-To:" header appears? Andy Burns <usenet@andyburns.uk> - 2021-04-18 07:49 +0100
                Re: What or who decides if an "In-Reply-To:" header appears? Brian Gregory <void-invalid-dead-dontuse@email.invalid> - 2021-04-20 03:14 +0100
                  Re: What or who decides if an "In-Reply-To:" header appears? Andy Burns <usenet@andyburns.uk> - 2021-04-20 07:34 +0100
                  Re: What or who decides if an "In-Reply-To:" header appears? Ken Blake <ken@invalidemail.com> - 2021-04-20 08:17 -0700
              Re: What or who decides if an "In-Reply-To:" header appears? Ken Blake <ken@invalidemail.com> - 2021-04-18 10:30 -0700
                Re: What or who decides if an "In-Reply-To:" header appears? Nomen Nescio <nobody@dizum.com> - 2021-04-19 01:24 +0000
                  Re: What or who decides if an "In-Reply-To:" header appears? WaltS48 <schw01@invalid.net> - 2021-04-19 07:30 -0400

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#132 — What or who decides if an "In-Reply-To:" header appears?

Looking through the headers of various posts here and other NGs, I 
noticed that some of them have an "In-Reply-To:" header, while others 
don't. It doesn't appear to be user-agent related, so what decides if it 
appears or not?

-- 

Jeff

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#133

On 4/15/21 11:33 AM, Jeff Layman wrote:
> Looking through the headers of various posts here and other NGs, I 
> noticed that some of them have an "In-Reply-To:" header, while others 
> don't. It doesn't appear to be user-agent related, so what decides if it 
> appears or not?
> 

The Reply-to Address in your account settings if you have entered one.

-- 
OS: Fedora 33 Workstation - Gnome Desktop
https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/get-involved/

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#134

Jeff Layman <jmlayman@invalid.invalid> wrote:
> Looking through the headers of various posts here and other NGs, I 
> noticed that some of them have an "In-Reply-To:" header, while others 
> don't. It doesn't appear to be user-agent related, so what decides if it 
> appears or not?
> 
In-Reply-To is defined in RFC2076  
<https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2076>

It's not necessary in usenet, the headers of which are in RFC1036 
<https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1036>

(Those RFCs may be superseded, but I doubt if those headers have
changed.)

That defines the References header which should be used to thread
messages - though some may use In-Reply-To if they don't have the
message referred to in References. (Or they may use the subject.)

I would have thought that whether there was an In-Reply_to  or not
(apart from an OP) /would/ depend on the user-agent. Maybe it's an
option in some UAs.

ISTR that *theoretically* a message can be in-reply-to more than one
messsage, but I've never seen that. 

Have you seen an In-Reply-To which is different from the last 
message-ID in References?
-- 
(Remove numerics from email address)

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#135

Dave Royal <dave@dave123royal.com> wrote:
>Jeff Layman <jmlayman@invalid.invalid> wrote:

>>Looking through the headers of various posts here and other NGs, I 
>>noticed that some of them have an "In-Reply-To:" header, while others 
>>don't. It doesn't appear to be user-agent related, so what decides if it 
>>appears or not?

>In-Reply-To is defined in RFC2076  
><https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2076>

>It's not necessary in usenet, the headers of which are in RFC1036 
><https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1036>

>(Those RFCs may be superseded, but I doubt if those headers have
>changed.)

It was probably a misunderstanding of the use of In-Reply-To in Mail
message format by the author of RFC 850, obsoleted by 1036. Also, Mail
clients don't typically create a string of Message-IDs (which is how the
thread tree is created) from any inherited In-Reply-To header, but
nothing in the Mail message format RFCs would have prevented that.

>That defines the References header which should be used to thread
>messages - though some may use In-Reply-To if they don't have the
>message referred to in References. (Or they may use the subject.)

>I would have thought that whether there was an In-Reply_to  or not
>(apart from an OP) /would/ depend on the user-agent. Maybe it's an
>option in some UAs.

I've seen clients form the expected References header with the string of
Message-IDs. Some just copy the immediate precursor Message-ID into
In-Reply-To while others copy the entire string. It's useful for a
News2Mail gateway and it's useful so that the user who has archived the
thread can form a thread tree if his Mail client has such a feature.

Alas, it won't help with Mail2News as I've never seen a Mail client
create a References header.

>ISTR that *theoretically* a message can be in-reply-to more than one
>messsage, but I've never seen that.

Actually, in the original Mail message format, that was the intended
purpose of the References header, to list any Messages-IDs of Mail
messages referred to in the body of the text that weren't immediate
precursors.

>Have you seen an In-Reply-To which is different from the last 
>message-ID in References?

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#151

"Adam H. Kerman" <ahk@chinet.com> writes:

> Alas, it won't help with Mail2News as I've never seen a Mail client
> create a References header.

There's at least one that can do it. I'm sending this message using gnus
and mail2news as documented here:

<https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/gnus/Mail_002dTo_002dNews-Gateways.html>

<https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/SendingMail>

Of course, in 2021 this is not really useful. There's many free servers
around that allow postings, and one don't really have to use read-only
server to read Usenet and reply via mail2news.

I guess something similar can be achieved with Thunderbird, but it will
require manual editing of headers:

To: mail2news@neodome.net
Newsgroups: alt.comp.software.thunderbird
References: <.......

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#138

On 15/04/2021 17:43, Dave Royal wrote:
> Jeff Layman <jmlayman@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>> Looking through the headers of various posts here and other NGs, I
>> noticed that some of them have an "In-Reply-To:" header, while others
>> don't. It doesn't appear to be user-agent related, so what decides if it
>> appears or not?
>>
> In-Reply-To is defined in RFC2076
> <https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2076>
> 
> It's not necessary in usenet, the headers of which are in RFC1036
> <https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1036>
> 
> (Those RFCs may be superseded, but I doubt if those headers have
> changed.)
> 
> That defines the References header which should be used to thread
> messages - though some may use In-Reply-To if they don't have the
> message referred to in References. (Or they may use the subject.)
> 
> I would have thought that whether there was an In-Reply_to  or not
> (apart from an OP) /would/ depend on the user-agent. Maybe it's an
> option in some UAs.

I've just looked through quite a few separate threads in different 
newsgroups. As far as I can tell it *is* user-agent related. An 
In-Reply-To header is found with Thunderbird, SeaMonkey, and Windows 
Live Mail, but not with anything else.

> ISTR that *theoretically* a message can be in-reply-to more than one
> messsage, but I've never seen that.
> 
> Have you seen an In-Reply-To which is different from the last
> message-ID in References?

No

-- 

Jeff

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#140

On 15 Apr 2021 21:07:06 +0100 Jeff Layman wrote:
>
>I've just looked through quite a few separate threads in different 
>newsgroups. As far as I can tell it *is* user-agent related. An 
>In-Reply-To header is found with Thunderbird, SeaMonkey, and Windows 
>Live Mail, but not with anything else.

Both primarily email clients, derived from Netscape Communicator 
and (I think) Outlook Express.

I just looked through a few posts in a recent thread on another NG.
Some TB posts had In-Reply-To, some didn't. Both varieties of TB78.
Curious.

-- 
(Remove numerics from email address)

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#144

On 15/04/2021 22:25, Dave Royal wrote:
> On 15 Apr 2021 21:07:06 +0100 Jeff Layman wrote:
>>
>> I've just looked through quite a few separate threads in different
>> newsgroups. As far as I can tell it *is* user-agent related. An
>> In-Reply-To header is found with Thunderbird, SeaMonkey, and Windows
>> Live Mail, but not with anything else.
> 
> Both primarily email clients, derived from Netscape Communicator
> and (I think) Outlook Express.
> 
> I just looked through a few posts in a recent thread on another NG.
> Some TB posts had In-Reply-To, some didn't. Both varieties of TB78.
> Curious.

That is odd. I did find a TB45 post which didn't have an In-Reply-To 
header, but I also found a TB2 post which did!

---

Jeff

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#145

Jeff Layman <jmlayman@invalid.invalid> writes:

> On 15/04/2021 22:25, Dave Royal wrote:
>> On 15 Apr 2021 21:07:06 +0100 Jeff Layman wrote:
>>>
>>> I've just looked through quite a few separate threads in different
>>> newsgroups. As far as I can tell it *is* user-agent related. An
>>> In-Reply-To header is found with Thunderbird, SeaMonkey, and Windows
>>> Live Mail, but not with anything else.
>> Both primarily email clients, derived from Netscape Communicator
>> and (I think) Outlook Express.
>> I just looked through a few posts in a recent thread on another NG.
>> Some TB posts had In-Reply-To, some didn't. Both varieties of TB78.
>> Curious.
>
> That is odd. I did find a TB45 post which didn't have an In-Reply-To
> header, but I also found a TB2 post which did!

Don't forget that many newsreaders allow setting custom
User-Agent header. Look at my message headers for example.

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#147

Nomen Nescio <nobody@dizum.com> writes:

> Jeff Layman <jmlayman@invalid.invalid> writes:
>
>> On 15/04/2021 22:25, Dave Royal wrote:
>>> On 15 Apr 2021 21:07:06 +0100 Jeff Layman wrote:
>>>>
>>>> I've just looked through quite a few separate threads in different
>>>> newsgroups. As far as I can tell it *is* user-agent related. An
>>>> In-Reply-To header is found with Thunderbird, SeaMonkey, and Windows
>>>> Live Mail, but not with anything else.
>>> Both primarily email clients, derived from Netscape Communicator
>>> and (I think) Outlook Express.
>>> I just looked through a few posts in a recent thread on another NG.
>>> Some TB posts had In-Reply-To, some didn't. Both varieties of TB78.
>>> Curious.
>>
>> That is odd. I did find a TB45 post which didn't have an In-Reply-To
>> header, but I also found a TB2 post which did!
>
> Don't forget that many newsreaders allow setting custom
> User-Agent header. Look at my message headers for example.

Ah, forgot to save the settings. For the sake of making an argument,
I'll try again.

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#148

On 16/04/2021 14:23, Nomen Nescio wrote:
> Nomen Nescio <nobody@dizum.com> writes:
> 
>> Jeff Layman <jmlayman@invalid.invalid> writes:
>>
>>> On 15/04/2021 22:25, Dave Royal wrote:
>>>> On 15 Apr 2021 21:07:06 +0100 Jeff Layman wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> I've just looked through quite a few separate threads in different
>>>>> newsgroups. As far as I can tell it *is* user-agent related. An
>>>>> In-Reply-To header is found with Thunderbird, SeaMonkey, and Windows
>>>>> Live Mail, but not with anything else.
>>>> Both primarily email clients, derived from Netscape Communicator
>>>> and (I think) Outlook Express.
>>>> I just looked through a few posts in a recent thread on another NG.
>>>> Some TB posts had In-Reply-To, some didn't. Both varieties of TB78.
>>>> Curious.
>>>
>>> That is odd. I did find a TB45 post which didn't have an In-Reply-To
>>> header, but I also found a TB2 post which did!
>>
>> Don't forget that many newsreaders allow setting custom
>> User-Agent header. Look at my message headers for example.
> 
> Ah, forgot to save the settings. For the sake of making an argument,
> I'll try again.

So you're not actually using Thunderbird/78.7.1, even though your 
User-Agent header says that is what you are using. And there's no 
"In-Reply-To" header. What client do you use?

-- 

Jeff

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#149

Jeff Layman <jmlayman@invalid.invalid> writes:

> So you're not actually using Thunderbird/78.7.1, even though your
> User-Agent header says that is what you are using.

No. I copied User-Agent string from your headers.

> And there's no "In-Reply-To" header.

Correct. 

> What client do you use?

Gnus.

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#146

Jeff Layman <jmlayman@invalid.invalid> Wrote in message:r
>That is odd. I did find a TB45 post which didn't have an 
>In-Reply-To header, but I also found a TB2 post which did!

I was looking in uk.railway at the thread 'Mixed Trains'.
One post by 'hounslow' to aioe without. One to martin c 
with. First one mentions 'postfilter' - ?

So it may be that superfluous headers are dumped by some
servers.
-- 
Remove numerics from email address

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#150

Dave Royal <dave@dave123royal.com> writes:

> So it may be that superfluous headers are dumped by some
> servers.

I never heard of servers deleting any headers, at least not
intentionally.

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#162

On 16 Apr 2021 14:01:19 +0100 (GMT+01:00) Dave Royal wrote:
>Jeff Layman <jmlayman@invalid.invalid> Wrote in message:r
>
>I was looking in uk.railway at the thread 'Mixed Trains'.
>One post by 'hounslow' to aioe without. One to martin c 
>with. First one mentions 'postfilter' - ?
>
>So it may be that superfluous headers are dumped by some
>servers.

aioe uses postfilter, which does modify headers:
<https://news.aioe.org/software/postfilter/>
though why it would remove In-Reply-To I don't know.
-- 
(Remove numerics from email address)

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#164

Dave Royal<dave@dave123royal.com> writes:

> On 16 Apr 2021 14:01:19 +0100 (GMT+01:00) Dave Royal wrote:
>>Jeff Layman <jmlayman@invalid.invalid> Wrote in message:r
>>
>>I was looking in uk.railway at the thread 'Mixed Trains'.
>>One post by 'hounslow' to aioe without. One to martin c 
>>with. First one mentions 'postfilter' - ?
>>
>>So it may be that superfluous headers are dumped by some
>>servers.
>
> aioe uses postfilter, which does modify headers:
> <https://news.aioe.org/software/postfilter/>
> though why it would remove In-Reply-To I don't know.

Look like this line in style.pm module is doing it:

&delete_headers("Received", "In-Reply-To", "Delivered-To", "BCC", "CC", "To" ) if ( $config{'delete_mail_headers'} eq "true" );

Perhaps it's for some mail2news software? I don't know if Aioe is
mirroring any mailing lists to Usenet.

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#165

Dave Royal <dave@dave123royal.com> wrote:
>On 16 Apr 2021 14:01:19 +0100 (GMT+01:00) Dave Royal wrote:

>>I was looking in uk.railway at the thread 'Mixed Trains'.
>>One post by 'hounslow' to aioe without. One to martin c 
>>with. First one mentions 'postfilter' - ?

>>So it may be that superfluous headers are dumped by some
>>servers.

>aioe uses postfilter, which does modify headers:
><https://news.aioe.org/software/postfilter/>
>though why it would remove In-Reply-To I don't know.

I see the statement "Headers can be deeply modified", but doesn't that
mean headers ADDED by postfilter can be modified by AIOE? Why would a
filter need to modify any header in the first place to perform a
filtering function?

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#152

Jeff Layman wrote:
> Looking through the headers of various posts here and other NGs, I 
> noticed that some of them have an "In-Reply-To:" header, while others 
> don't.

Depends on what you're referring to. Ever since The Old Days you
sent a reply to a mail message, a followup to a news posting.

-p

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#153

PietB <www.godfatherof.nl/@opt-in.invalid> wrote:
>Jeff Layman wrote:

>>Looking through the headers of various posts here and other NGs, I 
>>noticed that some of them have an "In-Reply-To:" header, while others 
>>don't.

>Depends on what you're referring to. Ever since The Old Days you
>sent a reply to a mail message, a followup to a news posting.

Yes, dude, Mail and News use slightly different terminology for the same
concepts. It's also a message in Mail and an article in News.

It's not really relevant to using the References header for a different
purpose in News than was intended in Mail, and not using the In-Reply-To
header when I guess there was initial thought given about allowing
newsreaders to use a thread tree.

This began way back when RFC 850 was written as I've pointed out. That
protocol probably needed additional review, but ever since, Usenet has
just been stuck with it.

The other problem is that on the Mail side, a thread tree wasn't thought
to be important which is why having a string of precursor Message-IDs on
In-Reply-To just wasn't done until somewhat recently in just a few
clients.

So no, the stumbling block isn't the use of different terminology but
using the same header for two unrelated purposes in News versus Mail and
both News and Mail not having implemented true threading concepts at the
same time.

Mind you, this is something I'm saying decades later with 20-20 hindsight
because of how convenient I find threading and wish we had it in Mail.

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#155

On 4/17/2021 8:01 AM, Adam H. Kerman wrote:

> Mind you, this is something I'm saying decades later with 20-20 hindsight
> because of how convenient I find threading and wish we had it in Mail.



That depends on what e-mail client you use. Thunderbird has it, but I 
don't like it and would like to turn it off.


-- 
Ken

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