Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uwm.edu!srcsip!jhereg!orbit!marilyn!shawn
From: shawn@marilyn.UUCP (Shawn P. Stanley)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.elm
Subject: Re: Getting headers right on Xenix 2.3.2
Keywords: Xenix, headers, smail
Message-ID: <37@marilyn.UUCP>
Date: 26 May 90 15:30:21 GMT
References: <4179@thebes.Thalatta.COM>
Reply-To: shawn@marilyn.marilyn.mn.org (Shawn P. Stanley)
Organization: Litfal
Lines: 41

In article <4179@thebes.Thalatta.COM> campbell@Thalatta.COM (Bill Campbell) writes:
>I have a problem with elm on Xenix running smail.  Any mail going to a local
>user runs through the stock Xenix mail program after smail gets done with it.
>
>The Xenix mail adds
>[example header things]

I think I know what your problem is.  smail is handing your local mailer
headers it can't understand, which is perfectly understandable since the
Xenix 2.3 local mailer doesn't know what to do with Internet-style paths;
also, it can't handle certain types of header lines, and if it finds any
it doesn't understand, it simply gives up on deciphering what it needs to
decipher.

The Xenix 2.3 rmail used to handle some of the translation for the local
mailer, but it couldn't handle Internet-style paths either.  Which is one
of the reasons you're using smail...

One idea is to write your own lmail, which would simply translate the
header into a format Elm can handle.  (It would have to do things like
changing 'From user TIME DATE remote from system' to 'From system!user
TIME DATE', etc.)  I've done this, and messages appear wonderfully in
Elm with their author and subject fields appropriately displayed.
Since I renamed the renamed-old-mailer (which went from mail to lmail)
to OLDlmail, I can still use OLDlmail for local things, like checking
local mail to uucp, root, news, etc.

One thing I haven't done is fixed the header lines for messages from
myself, to myself, through other systems.  (Thus, this wonderful testing
method doesn't work so well.)  Elm doesn't appear to like a from-you in
combination with a to-you, which produces dumb author and subject
fields.  If the lmail-replacement can figure out that it's from you, and
if it subsequently removes the 'To: ...' header line, all will appear
well in Elm.

If you want the source to my lmail-replacement, I'll e-mail it to you.
It isn't very large, and it's probably easy to add on to.  (At the
worst, it will give you some small idea of what to do yourself!)
--
Shawn P. Stanley         shawn@marilyn.marilyn.mn.org
bungia!marilyn!shawn     {rosevax,crash}!orbit!marilyn!shawn