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From: honey@umix.cc.umich.edu (Peter Honeyman)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.misc,comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: Info on IDA Sendmail kit / pathalias
Message-ID: <1251@umix.cc.umich.edu>
Date: Sun, 20-Sep-87 01:44:36 EDT
Article-I.D.: umix.1251
Posted: Sun Sep 20 01:44:36 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 20-Sep-87 21:14:58 EDT
References: <117@rdlvax.RDL.COM>
Reply-To: honey@umix.cc.umich.edu (Peter Honeyman)
Organization: University of Michigan Computing Center, Ann Arbor
Lines: 40
Xref: mnetor comp.mail.misc:543 comp.unix.wizards:4360
UUCP-Path: {uunet,rutgers}!umix!honey


isaac is looking for help with internet gateways in pathalias.  some
time ago, i hacked up a hosts.txt -> pathalias filter, called arpatxt.
i posted it to net.sources about 18 months ago, but it never caught
on.  this may have been

	o because arpatxt lacked a man page, or

	o because pathalias had to be told in an obscure way on the
	  command line what to expect, or

	o because pathalias' handling of private host definitions was
	  still pretty raw (so were domains, for that matter), or

	o because arpatxt wasn't that useful for non-internet sites, or

	o because arpatxt + pathalias needs a lot of hand-holding,
	  especially in identifying name conflicts between the internet
	  and the usenet map, or

	o because pathalias is stubborn in its refusal to generate
	  routes like aecom!weinreb@seismo.css.gov, which makes some
	  people unhappy.

to my knowledge, princeton!marc and i were the only active arpatxt
users until recently, and things were pretty laid back.  but about a
week ago, sun!david popped up with a bug report and some fresh ideas.
lots of mail, ftp-ing, and sccs id's ensued and most of the problems
mentioned above were fixed.  in fact, just by coincidence, i posted
arpatxt, now elevated to a pathalias tool, to alt.sources this
evening.  see pathalias.1 for details.  (pathalias is also up for grabs
in ~ftp/pub/honey/ on citi.umich.edu.)

the last problem, dealing with addressing syntax, gets to the heart of
mailer science.  and although pathalias has a lot to say about the
issue, i get the feeling isaac is not going to like the policy.
(unless seismo.css.gov!aecom!weinreb is satisfactory, and even that is
frowned on with pathalias -D, of which i am enamored.  in any event,
isaac should probably be mx-ing for aecom.yu.edu in the first place.)

	peter