Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.3 4.3bsd-beta 6/6/85; site well.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!bellcore!decvax!decwrl!amdcad!lll-crg!well!ulmo From: ulmo@well.UUCP (Brad Allen) Newsgroups: net.mail Subject: Re: Pathalias/uumail: some algorithms and questions Message-ID: <625@well.UUCP> Date: Sat, 8-Feb-86 17:48:22 EST Article-I.D.: well.625 Posted: Sat Feb 8 17:48:22 1986 Date-Received: Tue, 11-Feb-86 05:42:46 EST References: <122@delftcc.UUCP> <1954@peora.UUCP> <309@gould9.UUCP> Organization: Whole Earth Lectronic Link, Sausalito, CA Lines: 38 Summary: Smart mailers should know how each site prioritizes @ and ! ... In article <309@gould9.UUCP>, joel@gould9.UUCP (Joel West) writes: > In article <1954@peora.UUCP>, jer@peora.UUCP (J. Eric Roskos) writes: > > > Okay, first question. Given a path > > > > > > a!b!c!...!p!q!r!stuff@z > > > > > > which name(s) do we try to look up? > > > > My algorithm was to look up "a", iff "a" is not a neighbor. > > "z" definitely should not be looked up; that is the essence of > > what I've been arguing for for a long time now, > > although jer@peora.UUCP, like some other uucp-only sites, expresses > a preference for ! precedence, many of us have to co-exist in > the ARPA-mandated RFC-822 world, which requires "@" precedence. > > If someone wants to have "!" precedence for his personal use, fine. > But anything that claims to be a generalized smart mailer must > support "@" precedence, at least as an option. As > remarked in an earlier message, learn from DEC and Sun and don't show > your particular addressing problems and perversions to the rest > of the net. > -- > Joel West (619) 457-9681 I agree strongly with the last comment. @ should basically always take precedence, since most organized networks use the @ standard (exclusively?). But while this standard isn't completely adopted, the pathalias files (or other nodelist files) kept by smart mailers could keep information about how each node prioritizes the @ and the !, and thus be able to know exactly how to create paths from that information. Knowing this, hopefully most mail would arrive at any given host with a path that it can recognize the way it wants to. {hplabs,dual,ptsfa,lll-crg}!well!ulmo