Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site hou3c.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!hou3c!MRC@SU-SCORE.ARPA
From: MRC@SU-SCORE.ARPA (Mark Crispin)
Newsgroups: net.mail.headers
Subject: Re:  user-editable mail headers
Message-ID: <802@hou3c.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 25-Aug-84 12:12:21 EDT
Article-I.D.: hou3c.802
Posted: Sat Aug 25 12:12:21 1984
Date-Received: Wed, 29-Aug-84 01:20:57 EDT
Sender: ka@hou3c.UUCP (Kenneth Almquist)
Lines: 24
To: ron@BRL-TGR.ARPA
Cc: ihnp4!hou3c!ka%MIT-EDDIE@MIT-MC.ARPA, WANCHO@SIMTEL20.ARPA, GDS@MIT-XX.ARPA, Header-People@MIT-MC.ARPA
In-Reply-To: Message from "Ron Natalie <ron@BRL-TGR.ARPA>" of Fri 24 Aug 84 17:29:28-PDT
Postal-Address: 725 Mariposa Ave. #103; Mountain View, CA 94041
Phone: (415) 497-1407 (Stanford); (415) 968-1052 (residence)


     Well, in fact, I have started the specification for a
smarter user agent than MM.  MM has reached the end of its useful
lifetime.  There are other user agents of varying strengths and
weaknesses for TOPS-20 that interact with MMailr: Babyl and
Hermes come immediately to mind.

     Many of the messages that people have complained about did
not, in fact, originate at a TOPS-20 system.  Many of them did,
in fact, originate on a Unix system!  You see, while there are
very good mailers on Unix there are very poor ones.  Some of the
latter think it is alright to send a letter out on the Internet
simply by bouncing it to a TOPS-20 system after having appended
"@host" (where host is the name of the TOPS-20 system) to the
From: line.

     I feel it violates all concepts of modularity to have the
mail delivery agent know about whatever is inside the message.
Part of the problem is that the Internet mail protocols still
insist upon having syntax-checking of this thing called a
"message header" inside the message, instead of having all that
stuff be external and/or obtained from the envelope at the
transport level where it belongs.
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