Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!xenitec!edhew
From: edhew@xenitec.uucp (Ed Hew)
Newsgroups: news.newusers.questions
Subject: Re: Signature files (LONG)
Summary: gratuitous advice  :-)  get smail and pathaliases
Keywords: smail pathalias
Message-ID: <1989Aug22.055921.23264@xenitec.uucp>
Date: 22 Aug 89 05:59:21 GMT
References: <15046@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU> <549@buster.UUCP> <2689@aplcen.apl.jhu.edu> <2182@uw-entropy.ms.washington.edu> <30744@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> <1989Aug19.063337.13750@xenitec.uucp> <30759@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Reply-To: edhew@xenitec.UUCP (Ed Hew)
Followup-To: news.newusers.questions
Distribution: na
Organization: Xenitec Consulting Services, Kitchener, ON
Lines: 29

In article <30759@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> wisner@mica.Berkeley.EDU (Bill Wisner) writes:
>to send mail to some random site in Outer Boondocks, Nebraska, because you're
>too lazy to figure out how to get the mail there yourself. Such behavior is
>frowned upon.
>
>I would rather trust mail routing to my pathalias and your map entry than to
>one arbitrary route given in your signature.

....and while we're handing out gratuitous advice...	:-)

We've found life on this site much easier when trying to contact the
"known" world since someone ported and installed a smart mailer (smail)
acting on a pathalias paths file.

Both these sources ('smail' and 'pathalias') are available from many
archives sites which are listed in several newsgroups (a list of which
can be periodically found in news.announce.newusers).

Simply explained (corrections welcome), smail reads the paths file
(kind of a flat ascii database) that pathalias produces based on the
uucp maps, and generates a bang-path to explicitly route your mail
off site.  Doing so is often preferrable to just using one's "r" key
to reply, which all too often simply reads and reverses the "From" line,
whether there are hops missing from it or not.

  Ed. A. Hew       Authorized Technical Trainer        Xeni/Con Corporation
  work:  edhew@xenicon.uucp	 -or-	 ..!{uunet!}utai!lsuc!xenicon!edhew
->home:	 edhew@egvideo.uucp	 -or-	   ..!{uunet!}watmath!egvideo!edhew
->home:	 changing to:  edhew@xenitec.uucp     [but be patient for new maps]