Newsgroups: news.software.b
Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!ists!newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!nexus.yorku.ca!davecb
From: davecb@nexus.yorku.ca (David Collier-Brown)
Subject: Re: Cnews "dropped article" quasi-problem
Message-ID: <1991Jun7.125001.7519@newshub.ccs.yorku.ca>
Sender: news@newshub.ccs.yorku.ca (USENET News System)
Organization: York University
References: <1991Jun4.161440.4161@wynnds.xenitec.on.ca> <11663@mirsa.inria.fr>
Date: Fri, 7 Jun 1991 12:50:01 GMT

  I hate to say ``I told you so'' (:-)), but this can be reduced to a solved
problem in mail transport...

  Consider the recent discussion of the Zmailer behavior on encountering an
unparsable/illegal header line:  after extensive error analysis, the author
chose to replace the header with a legal header which merely reported the
problem.
  Another mailer (on VM?) does substantially the same thing:
	X-Delivery-Notice:  SMTP MAIL FROM does not correspond to sender.

  Therefor, a concrete proposal:  on encountering a formally uncorrectable 
error, 
	1) do not notify
	2) do not correct the header in place
	3) do insert an X-Erroneous- before the header in question.
	4) iff the header is required, insert a syntactically correct
		but possibly semantically incorrect replacement.

--dave
[ps: Zmailer's author is just down the block from Cnews' author: the same
     analysis may already have been done.]
-- 
David Collier-Brown,  | davecb@Nexus.YorkU.CA | lethe!dave
72 Abitibi Ave.,      | 
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