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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxr!ihnp4!plus5!hokey
From: hokey@plus5.UUCP (Hokey)
Newsgroups: net.mail
Subject: Re: Uucp mail headers
Message-ID: <698@plus5.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 22-Apr-85 15:19:26 EST
Article-I.D.: plus5.698
Posted: Mon Apr 22 15:19:26 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 23-Apr-85 06:35:13 EST
References: <688@plus5.UUCP> <1201@houxm.UUCP>
Reply-To: hokey@plus5.UUCP (Hokey)
Organization: Plus Five Computer Services, St. Louis MO
Lines: 50

Nobody is assuming that sites will upgrade to sendmail (perhaps "convert"
would be a better word).  I am aware of no changes which need to be made
to rmail.  Routes or addresses sent by uucp will be understandable by
neighbors.  I have recently received a copy of the "UUCP Mail Transmission
Format Standard" from Mark Horton.  If people are interested, it will be
posted.

The "condensing" of multiple "remote from" lines down to a single line will
result in the loss of timestamp information.  If this information is retained
in a Received: line, care must be taken to avoid introducing duplicate
Received: lines for the same site.  Mark Horton suggested calling these
"derived" lines "Sent-By:" lines instead of "Received:" lines.  He also
pointed out that by doing so, the date would not have to be converted to
Arpa format.

The issue of site-stripping during condensation is a different matter.  The
single >From line could contain all the sites through which the mail passed.
This will cause long paths for replies to messages with multiple recipients.
If the condensing rmail is intelligent about site-stripping, we can both
reduce the size of the route, and potentially optimize the followup mail's
routing.

This is one place that knowing the "class" of the mailer used by news sites
is really useful.  A lot of really extraneous sites crop up in the return
path when people reply to news articles.  If class 3 mail sites used their
domain name in the Path: line when transmitting news, the reply function
(on sites not doing INTERNET style replies) could strip out the entire
path between the first and last domain sites in the Path.

For example, if I was at a site with a "dumb" mailer, and I wanted to
reply to the author of an article which had the following Path:

	Path: a!b!c.uucp!d!e!f.uucp!g!...!z.uucp!site!user
	(imagine your favorite 15 sites at the ... )

it would be safe for the "reply" program on *my* machine to use:

	To: a!b!c.uucp!z.uucp!site!user

as the route to the author of the article.  If my site *is* class 3, then:

	To: z.uucp!site!user

would be all that I need to get the mail back to the author.

This same site-strip could be safely done by rmail when condensing multiple
>From lines.  (Now where's that infinitive?)
-- 
Hokey           ..ihnp4!plus5!hokey
		  314-725-9492