RE: Subject line processing in Gnats 4.0

[Dirk Bergstrom]

>     DB> *) accept FW: as well as RE: -- change the subject pattern
>     DB> thusly:
> This is insufficient, since my mail client generates something
> completely different of "FW" on forwarding and some other software
> authors think it's a good idea to replace "Re:" with its "translation"
> to the users' language.

yes yngve pointed this out as well.  I18N rears it's head.  i agree that
it's insufficient.

> - Accept "\<CATEGORY/NUMBER" where CATEGORY is a valid 
> category name and
>   PR NUMBER is present in CATEGORY.

i think this will cause problems -- as yngve pointed out, PRs often
change categories, and someone might reply to a PR that has since
changed.  i think the rule should be: 
        Accept "\<CATEGORY/NUMBER" where CATEGORY is a valid category
        name and NUMBER is a valid PR number (in any category).
let's not worry about deleted categories -- that's probably a very
infrequent occurrence, and it could get ugly to code around...

> - Accept "\<PR[ \t/]*NUMBER" where "PR" must be all capitals 
> and NUMBER
>   corresponds to an existing PR number.

this is good.

> Would it serve the purpose in an acceptable way?

hmmm, we need to make sure that the edge-cases are covered.  for
instance, what happens with this subject "re: sw-foo/1234: Compilation
fails on OS/2"?  what about some strange situation where the false hit
came *before* the category/number pair, like a mailing list post: "FW:
[OS/2 users] Re: sw-foo/1234: bar baz quux"?  yes, these are unlikely,
but it's going to be *very* confusing to the gnats-admin that has to
figure out why nobody can reply to one of their PRs...

other than that, i'm all for the change.

--
Dirk Bergstrom               address@hidden
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Juniper Networks Inc.,          Computer Geek
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