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From: earle@jplopto.uucp (Greg Earle)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp,comp.mail.misc
Subject: Re: dynamic routing for UUCP mail
Message-ID: <4234@elroy.Jpl.Nasa.Gov>
Date: Fri, 7-Aug-87 21:22:15 EDT
Article-I.D.: elroy.4234
Posted: Fri Aug  7 21:22:15 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 9-Aug-87 07:13:54 EDT
References: <915@bsu-cs.UUCP> <13680@topaz.rutgers.edu> <4577@felix.UUCP>
Sender: news@elroy.Jpl.Nasa.Gov
Reply-To: earle@jplopto.JPL.NASA.GOV (Greg Earle)
Followup-To: poster
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Organization: Gainfully Unemployed Sun Semi-Wizards, Los Angeles CA
Lines: 29
Summary: Catch-22
Xref: mnetor comp.mail.uucp:747 comp.mail.misc:467

Once upon a time there was no `smart' rerouting, and the UUCP mail world was
without form and light :-).  Then came `uumail' and `pathalias' and suddenly
new vistas emerged.  Slowly but surely, `smail' then arrived, and soon
thereafter we all suddenly became enlightened to the fact that doing `fascist'
automatic re-routing of mail was, perhaps, Not A Good Thing.  Many examples
and counter-examples have been given.

Now consider that we have reached a Catch-22: the general consensus has been
reached that if an incoming `rmail' invocation contains a qualified bang
path, then one should not re-route it, and we should assume that the 
raison-d'etre for the full bang path was that the originator knew where
he/she wished the mail route to take.  Meanwhile, I was just struck with
the rememberance that one of the reasons for the development of smart
mailers in the first place was to get around the fact that replies to news
articles were using the incoming Path: to generate the return path, which
thus occasionally became many, many hostnames long!!  Using smart mailers
enabled using the From: line to generate single RFC822 `user@host.UUCP' or
`user@some.do.MAIN' paths.  Now, the sentiment for `leaving bang paths alone'
is all well and good; but given that replies to Usenet news articles probably
account for a healthy proportion of mail traffic, it seems that taking this
attitude isn't really doing any good in the long run.  6 of one, half a dozen
of the other as the saying goes ...

No, I don't have any solutions, either.  Just thought I'd point this out.

	Greg Earle		earle@jplopto.JPL.NASA.GOV
	(formerly of) JPL	earle%jplopto@jpl-elroy.ARPA	[aka:]
	(currently gainfully	earle%jplopto@elroy.JPL.NASA.GOV
	    unemployed)		seismo!cit-vax!elroy!smeagol!jplopto!earle