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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!harpo!seismo!rlgvax!guy
From: guy@rlgvax.UUCP (Guy Harris)
Newsgroups: net.mail.headers
Subject: Re: "blaming Unix SendMail"
Message-ID: <1871@rlgvax.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 18-Apr-84 00:03:37 EST
Article-I.D.: rlgvax.1871
Posted: Wed Apr 18 00:03:37 1984
Date-Received: Wed, 18-Apr-84 08:29:08 EST
References: <474@hou3c.UUCP> <140@down.UUCP>
Organization: CCI Office Systems Group, Reston, VA
Lines: 29

>why does sendmail require such complex configuration tables, you ask?
>read the documentation (sendmail/doc/op.me):

>	There is one point that should be made clear immediately:  the
>	syntax of the configuration file is designed to be reasonably
>	easy to parse, since this is done every time sendmail starts
>	up, rather than easy for a human to read or write.

>let's just ignore the fact that parsing was made trivial by geniuses of
>decades past, and go blithely along, prematurely optimizing.  progress?
>who needs it?  feh.

Not entirely fair; the comment in the documentation refers to the *syntax*
of a configuration file (which is, admittedly, baroque) but the person
who complained about "sendmail" was complaining about the baroque *semantics*
of the configuration file.  Unfortunately, if you want a program which is
all things to all people (like "sendmail" is) you aren't going to get
something which is straightforward.  Frankly, I bless "sendmail"s ability
to be made to do lots of mail handling tasks without having to dive into
the source code (which is a poor idea because 1) it's complicated and you
may break it, 2) it means you've got private versions of "sendmail" running
around all over the place - Allman's paper on "sendmail" points out that
the "sendmail" configuration file was intended to make it possible to run
the same binary everywhere, and 3) lots of people out there don't have
source anyway).  I wish it were more straightforward, but I don't know
whether that's possible.

	Guy Harris
	{seismo,ihnp4,allegra}!rlgvax!guy