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From: lauren@vortex.UUCP (Lauren Weinstein)
Newsgroups: net.mail
Subject: Re: gateway syntax
Message-ID: <793@vortex.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 9-Sep-85 01:54:11 EDT
Article-I.D.: vortex.793
Posted: Mon Sep  9 01:54:11 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 10-Sep-85 04:15:42 EDT
References: <10308@ucbvax.ARPA>
Organization: Vortex Technology, Los Angeles
Lines: 38

Are you saying that you want to put those route addresses on the
From: lines of mail?  It may not be a good idea.  People frequently would have
to interpret and type those addresses themselves, and not only are those
addresses something of a bitch for humans to deal with, but lots of user
interface software that is in widespread use on the ARPANET (for example)
can deal with "normal" @-sign addresses in a reasonable way but
might blow up if we tried to force people to use those route addresses.
Those addresses are a cure possibly worse than the disease.

My recommendation is:

LEAVE THINGS THE WAY THEY ARE FOR OUR CURRENT UNOFFICIAL GATEWAYS
at least on the From: lines.

With full domainizing coming up, the name translation gateway
problems will go away fairly soon anyway.  At least the %
syntax and such works now for most existing code in our current
hybrid environment.  But nobody really want to deal with handling
those routing addresses (especially humans) unless they really have to.

Once we have full domains, the problems go away anyway.  In our
current hybrid environment, the use of % and @, while not
theoretically "pure," has proven quite workable and works with 
the vast majority of existing software.  They're also comparatively
simple for people to understand, since they can see what the
right-hand-side of the @-sign means.

I see nothing to be gained by starting to force those
route addresses on people at this late date when the problem
that they attempt to address will be pretty much a non-problem fairly soon.

It's hard enough for people to get mail through the unofficial
gateways now.  Forcing those routes on them might make things
more difficult for many people as they get lost in
addresses that are unfamiliar, harder to remember, and just
generally a pain for many users.

--Lauren--