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From: lauren@vortex.UUCP (Lauren Weinstein)
Newsgroups: net.mail
Subject: Re: Uucp mail headers
Message-ID: <641@vortex.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 22-Apr-85 21:06:36 EST
Article-I.D.: vortex.641
Posted: Mon Apr 22 21:06:36 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 25-Apr-85 03:26:44 EST
References: <698@plus5.UUCP>
Organization: Vortex Technology, Los Angeles
Lines: 37

While I'm not that concerned what happens with news, I don't think
calling "Received" lines "Sent-By" is a good idea at all.  First of
all, it is much less specific.  "Received" tells when the message
was received.  "Sent-By" seems much more vague.  But much more
importantly, many mail systems already have options to strip the
"Received" (and in some cases "Via") lines from mail so as to not
hassle the reader with all those lines unless they really want
to see them.  Not everyone is in the position to add another line
to that list, nor is it reasonable to introduce another line into
everyone's forced list of things to read in the header.  "Received"
is fine -- and 822 dates are trivial to produce if anyone is THAT
concerned about producing them.

I also don't think that site stripping in the From or >From lines
is a good idea at all.  For mail, those lines represent the only
reasonable way of figuring how the message arrived, and more often
than not I've found that the so-called "smart mailers" that try
to invisibly optimize paths just make things worse.  If people want
optimized paths, let them use the domain routing--where the "best"
route is what is expected or at least desired.  When explcit routes
are specified, there often is a good reason--like intermediate sites
that are mucking things up that someone is trying to route around.

My own solution (in my own class 3 implementation) is to Generate
normal From and >From lines, and include a domain type
From: line as well.  My reply proggrams give the user the option 
('a' or 'A') of replying to the reconstructed From line address or
the Interenet From: (or Reply-To:, etc.) line.  In complex environments
(particularly where gateways are involved) it rapidly becomes impractical
to simply assume which way to handle all replies on an automatic basis.

So far, the people Beta testing my code (all MSDOS users) are very
happy with the results, and they are merrily routing mail to .UUCP,
.ARPA, .BITNET, and also dealing with all sorts of ordinary uucp
addresses (some with embedded @'s) as well.

--Lauren--