Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!mips!daver!tscs!tct!chip From: chip@tct.uucp (Chip Salzenberg) Newsgroups: comp.mail.misc Subject: Re: Which headers may Sendmail re-write? Message-ID: <277FE143.513F@tct.uucp> Date: 1 Jan 91 01:09:23 GMT References: <1990Dec21.193938.29940@chinet.chi.il.us> <27763742.4907@tct.uucp> <1990Dec26.170227.20484@chinet.chi.il.us> Organization: Teltronics/TCT, Sarasota, FL Lines: 47 According to les@chinet.chi.il.us (Leslie Mikesell): >In article <27763742.4907@tct.uucp> chip@tct.uucp (Chip Salzenberg) writes: >>For all these reasons, I will always use Reply-To: and From: addresses >>-- or if they've been munged, signature addresses ... > >From the recipient's point of view it is impossible to tell if a header >line has been munged or not. It's just a guess based on experience. I answer the question, "Does that look right?" For "a!b@c", or "a!b!!!", etc. the answer is: "No." >>Thus, to get back to our original subject, it is Evil and Rude to mung >>an RFC822 address from user@valid.domain into valid.domain!user ... > >I disagree here, although prepending a hostname makes any futher >intelligent handling impossible. Such a rewrite cannot improve the address, yet it can easily degrade it, due to the Slings And Arrows Of Outrageous Header Munging (SAAOOHM). If that's not Evil and Rude, I don't know what is. >I said uucp addresses are relative. The distinction between @ and ! >notation is purely syntactic and a sensible MTA will be able to convert >user@domain/domain!user (or a!b!c!d to @a,@b:d@c) transparently. Well, of course translation is possible. That doesn't mean, however, that such a translation has no semantic meaning. Sites that assume that "dom.ain!user" is equivalent to "user@dom.ain" and therefore rewrite the latter into the former cause problems, because that equivalence is not universal. It is common, yes, but not universal. Granted, a site that fits all E-Mail into the Procrustean bed of RFC822 may have to assume that "dom.ain!user" means "user@dom.ain" for mail arriving via UUCP. (For example, Ohio State does so.) I have no objection; handling a UUCP->Internet gateway is an exercise in making best guesses, from all I have read. But on the way out from the Internet onto UUCP, I see no excuse for scrambling the syntax of header addresses into "dom.ain!user" on the assumption that the reworked syntax will be "treated the same." It ain't necessarily so. -- Chip Salzenberg at Teltronics/TCT , "Please don't send me any more of yer scandalous email, Mr. Salzenberg..." -- Bruce Becker