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Posting-Version: version B 2.10.3 4.3bsd-beta 6/6/85; site plus5.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!ihnp4!plus5!hokey
From: hokey@plus5.UUCP (Hokey)
Newsgroups: net.mail
Subject: Re: What's with the colons ... and other imponderables
Message-ID: <863@plus5.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 18-Sep-85 12:33:57 EDT
Article-I.D.: plus5.863
Posted: Wed Sep 18 12:33:57 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 19-Sep-85 05:38:16 EDT
References: <10263@ucbvax.ARPA> <263@mot.UUCP> <308@uwvax.UUCP>
Reply-To: hokey@plus5.UUCP (Hokey)
Organization: Plus Five Computer Services, St. Louis, MO
Lines: 28

In article <308@uwvax.UUCP> dave@uwvax.UUCP (Dave Cohrs) writes:
>Mailers should *not* take addresses and chop them up.  What I
>mean is, if you get mail from ...!seismo!decuac!decuac.UUCP!user you
>shouldn't change this into decuac.UUCP!user and try to optimize the
>routing.  If you do this, don't complain about the hostname.  Your
>site wasn't meant to understand it, decuac was.  If your mailer insists
>on editing routing info, then you should add the code to understand
>all possible things people can and will do to their addresses.

You changed horses.  Mailers should not chop up *addresses*.
Chopping up *routes* is a different story.  Especially when the addressee
uses a domain specification.

Routes are useful in UUCP because, amongst other things, they provide an
implicitly rooted path.  Domain addresses are explicitly rooted.

It would be prefectly reasonable for seismo to have sent the message along
with ">From seismo!decuac.UUCP!user", stripping off the extraneous *routing*
information (!decuac!).  Ideally, that routing information would be placed
in a Received: line, but that is another issue.

Note also that seismo could strip off !decuac! *even if it doesn't know how
to talk to decuac.UUCP* as long as seismo knows how to route or talk to
a .UUCP nameserver.

-- 
Hokey           ..ihnp4!plus5!hokey
		  314-725-9492


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