Yes. That is the ideal, I believe, if the line is long enough to absorb all the energy from the back wave, but anybody correct me if that is wrong.
We're experiencing some confusion here. The nautilus has a long line to almost completely absorb the rear radiation of the drivers. This is a good thing, and it is an unusual design. Linkwitz's PLUTO or whatever he called the last iteration of the sewer pipe speakers work in a similar way. The principle is simple - if the rear radiation has to go through 3 feet of polyfill, it will eliminate that energy from bouncing back through the cone. Of course if you want to absorb bass, you need a long line.
The term 'transmission line' also refers to a certain class of woofer loading where the bass output of the speaker is augmented by using the back-wave of the speaker. The idea is very simple - you create a labyrinthine path which delays the rear wave of the speaker, and when it comes out the box, it reinforces the front radiation at a certain frequency set by the length of the path. This is called 'quarter wave' loading sometimes, because the rear radiation is delayed by 1/4 wavelength compared to the direct radiation. As I'm sure most know, if you delay something by 1/2 the wavelength, it will be out out phase; 1/4 wavelength and you get a bit of a boost.
There are other ways of using the rear radiation of a speaker to boost bass. The most common is a bass reflex, where you have a resonating mass of air which really likes vibrating at a certain frequency. A passive radiator does the same thing. This principle can also be combined with a transmission line, where you have a short transmission line which 'loads' a port. This is called a mass loaded transmission line, also called an MLTL. It allows you to get more bass in a smaller box than a transmission line. You will also notice that sometimes the line starts big and gets narrow, or starts narrow and gets big. The former is called a tapered quarter wave tube (TQWT). The latter is sometimes called a back loaded horn.
Quarter wavelength augmentation is not without problems. First of all, the claims that it has less group delay are somewhat misleading. Group delay is a function of the roll-off of the bass; it doesn't really matter what means you use to achieve it. A QL speaker will have a roll-off somewhere between a sealed and ported enclosure, and group delay will be somewhere in between. The idea that group delay is signficiant in bass indoors is sort of ridiculous anyway, we're talking about frequencies which bounce around the room a dozen times before they even reach one period.
The biggest problem with QL augmentation is that the line needs to be big, but for DIYers and expensive speakers this can be overcome.
There are some issues with resonances in the line; these manifest as a series of sharp peaks in the response in the midbass. This is where stuffing comes in. By adding acoustic absorption to the line, you can let the bass pass but kill all the other stuff. This is necessary for good performance.
In my opinion, the best thing about QL augmentation is not the bass but the handling of the back wave of the speaker.
PMC speakers aspire to use quarter wavelength augmentation. I have no idea what they think they are doing, but with their smaller speakers, the lines aren't long enough, and to make them as long as they are, the sectional area of the line is quite small. Both of these factors compromise the performance of the line.
Most DIY designers trying to make reasonably sized transmission lines will use the MLTL topology, which offers reasonable size, good back wave absorption, and good bass efficiency. See
this link for an audioxpress article about a DIY speaker by Paul Kittinger which uses MLTL loading.