From: Tom von Alten (tom_vonalten@boi.hp.com)
Date: Tue Aug 07 2001 - 10:21:58 CDT
Peter C. McCluskey wrote:
> The replymsg_command option or the mailcommand option controls
> this link. The default is:
> "mailto:$TO?Subject=$SUBJECT%26In-Reply-To=%26lt;$ID>"
For consistency, either the '&' at the end should be '%26', or
else the previous '%26' should be '&'.
The example sent by Hsu had the first two ampersands coded as
%2526, that doesn't look right, either.
> I don't know whether the In-Reply-To is doing anything useful.
> Try removing that and see whether that makes it work the way you want.
I tried the clients I have handy - MSIE v5.5 to Outlook98,
Netscape Communicator/Messenger v4.7, and Opera/Mail v5.12 on NT4,
and Netscape v4.7 on hp-ux 10.20. None of them know what to do with
the "In-Reply-To" argument as shown above, and simply include it as
trailing garbage in the subject. (I have MSIE v5 on hp-ux, but it
doesn't know what to do with any of mailto:, and I don't have any
reason to figure out how to explain to it.)
Netscape and MSIE *did* recognize the second parameter setting when
the $SUBJECT string and the In-Reply-To variable were separated by
'&' rather than by '%26'. The subject was rendered correctly in
the forked compose window. (I didn't see a way to enquire about
the message headers while it was being composed, though, so I don't
know what it actually did with the 'In-Reply-To'.)
All three mail programs recognized the second parameter setting
enough to properly trim the subject string when it was rendered with
NO URL-encoding. That is, as
"mailto:$TO?Subject=$SUBJECT&In-Reply-To=<$ID>"
However, when I sent test messages, NONE of these 3 mail clients
included an 'In-Reply-To' header line.
It appears that this attempt to preserve the In-Reply-To header
for message threading is NOT doing anything useful, and might
as well be omitted in the defaults. We might want to leave it
described in comments, in case mainstream email clients and their
browser connections all get with the program someday...
_____________ Hewlett-Packard Personal Storage Business
Tom von Alten mailto:Tom_vonAlten@hp.com
This posting is for informational purposes only.
It is not a statement of the Hewlett-Packard Co.