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From: honey@umix.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.mail.misc
Subject: Re: routing in the user agent
Message-ID: <1735@umix.cc.umich.edu>
Date: Sun, 27-Sep-87 21:26:14 EDT
Article-I.D.: umix.1735
Posted: Sun Sep 27 21:26:14 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 29-Sep-87 01:37:41 EDT
References: <7333@e.ms.uky.edu> <1631@umix.cc.umich.edu> <1758@ncr-sd.SanDiego.NCR.COM> <7352@g.ms.uky.edu> <1599@ukecc.engr.uky.edu>
Reply-To: honey@citi.umich.edu (Peter Honeyman)
Organization: Center for Information Technology Integration, Univ of Michigan
Lines: 28

it appears that greg and i are in violent agreement (except on a small
matter of infamy).

yes, the MTA has to be a able to route messages.  (in a previous note,
i said something about a DA doing the routing.  i take it back.  i mean
the MTA.)  this is a vacuous point, since the MTA has the fundamental
responsibility for the most basic routing decisions: picking the
delivery channel.

the utility of UA routing is as greg suggests: letting users inspect
the routes, as a sanity check.  this allows mail hackers to employ
arbitrarily complex routing algorithms without having to worry (too
much) about host name collisions, etc.  

mind you, "under user control" means precisely that: the default action
is to ship the specified addresses to the MTA untouched.  and of
course, the MTA remains the final arbiter of routing decisions.

this is not a gedanken experiment: i added a comand to the UA i use (a
hacked up Mail) a long time ago, and it's quite satisfactory.  i don't
\always/ use its routing capability, but i use it enough to be
convinced it's a good thing.

david and edward seem to doubt whether routing in the UA can be done at
all, or whether there is such a thing as routing.  we disagree on the
basics, and will probably never find a common ground, which is ok too.

	peter