Subject: Re: bug#72442: 31.0.50; Gnus or message.el doesn't handle international message reply subject prefixes and insults users

From: Eli Zaretskii <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 14 Feb 2025 14:23:37 +0200

> From: Björn Bidar <[email-masked]>
> Cc: [email-masked],  [email-masked]
> Date: Fri, 14 Feb 2025 12:22:52 +0200
> 
> Eli Zaretskii <[email-masked]> writes:
> 
> > We could choose other words, but are we not allowed in general to
> > express contempt towards silly decisions made out of ignorance?
> 
> The word standards-challanged sounds like ableism.

I don't understand why.

But I was asking a more general question, which you haven't answered.

> If I read RFC 5322 correctly it only states:
> 
> "When used in a reply, the field body MAY start with the
>  string "Re: " (an abbreviation of the Latin "in re", meaning "in the
>  matter of")"
> 
> It doesn't say MUST (See section 1.2.1).

Yes, because a reply can simply reuse the original Subject.  But I
don't see how that is relevant.

> So there isn't any ignorance but just no use of Latin for the messagge
> prefix.

The ignorance is not when Re: is not used, the ignorance is when it is
assumed to be a short for "response", and especially be software
developers who develop localized MUAs.

> In any case manuals goal should educational, not there to insert
> off-handed remarks of localization of Latin terms.

I'm asking again: aren't we allowed to express contempt towards
ignorance?  Isn't contempt towards ignorance an important educational
device?

> I think this also related to (info "(standards) GNU Manuals"):

Please report any problems you have with that document to the
appropriate forum.  Here we are discussing only the Emacs manuals, for
which we are responsible as part of the Emacs project.

>    Remember that the audience for a GNU manual (and other GNU
> documentation) is global, and that it will be used for years, maybe
> decades.  This means that the reader could have very different cultural
> reference points.  Decades from now, all but old folks will have very
> different cultural reference points; many things that "everyone knows
> about" today may be mostly forgotten.
> 
>    For this reason, try to avoid writing in a way that depends on
> cultural reference points for proper understanding, or that refers to
> them in ways that would impede reading for someone that doesn't
> recognize them.

There's no "Latin culture" nowadays, so cultural references are not
relevant here.  Latin is part of a general cross-culture educational
level, and it's IMO reasonable to expect people using email to know
where it came from, especially if they are designing and coding MUAs.
Won't you expect a person who writes scientific papers to know what
"Cf." or "QED" mean?

> >> I don't think insulting or judging user who don't use English
> >> as their native language is a good thing.
> >
> > As the text says, "res" is Latin, not English.  So this has nothing to
> > do with native English speakers.
> 
> Those who use English might want to use "Re:" based on the Latin "res"
> but that doesn't  mean everyone else uses this Latin based abbreviation.
> So just because it's custom in the English speaking world doesn't mean
> it's done everywhere else.

"Re:" is used in many non-English locales, so it is definitely NOT
English-specific.