Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uwm.edu!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!apple!bionet!lear From: lear@NET.BIO.NET (Eliot Lear) Newsgroups: comp.mail.misc Subject: Re: use of % (was: Making smail2.5 understand %@) Message-ID: Date: 17 Oct 89 23:13:16 GMT References: <126303@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> <1960002@hp-ptp.HP.COM> Organization: Natl Computer Resource for Mol. Biology Lines: 26 In article <1960002@hp-ptp.HP.COM> toddp@hp-ptp.HP.COM (Todd_Poynor) writes: > However, it's a fairly safe bet that this convention will become rather > widespread, now that it's recommended by such an influential source. By no means was did we intend to recommend use of the % hack. It is merely mentioned in discussion as a method that has been used in the past. However, what you do to your local-part is your business. To quote the RFC (Section 5.2.6): DISCUSSION: The intent is to discourage all source routing and to abolish explicit source routing for mail delivery within the Internet environment. Source-routing is unnecessary; the simple target address "user@domain" should always suffice. This is the result of an explicit architectural decision to use universal naming rather than source routing for mail. Thus, SMTP provides end-to-end connectivity, and the DNS provides globally-unique, location-independent names. MX records handle the major case where source routing might otherwise be needed. -- Eliot Lear [lear@net.bio.net]