Xref: utzoo comp.mail.headers:234 comp.mail.misc:821
Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!munnari!vuwcomp!csvaxa!edward
From: edward@csvaxa.UUCP (Edward Wilkinson)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.headers,comp.mail.misc
Subject: Idea for changes to sendmail rewriting rules
Message-ID: <180@csvaxa.UUCP>
Date: 29 Jan 88 17:06:04 GMT
Reply-To: E.Wilkinson@massey.ac.nz
Organization: Computer Centre, Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand
Lines: 48
Keywords: sendmail, ruleset


Disclaimer: please excuse me  if this idea seems   silly - I'm  only a
beginner at sendmail hacking :-)

After getting rather confused  (as  many seem  to do)   fiddling  with
sendmail's rewriting rules, I tried to think of a way to improve them.
What  follows  are  a few   preliminary ideas which   I  hope  will be
discussed, critisized, improved & hopefully not ignored!

<1> My current problem is that I can't work  out exactly which sets of
rewriting rules get applied to which headers.  How  about having a set
of rules for each header. e.g.

From(1):-

	rule#1
	rule#2
	etc,etc

The (1) is a number similar to the current setup, so that you can call
this ruleset as  a  `subroutine'  from  elsewhere if  necessary. There
would  be  a set of  these  rules for  the  header  & another for  the
envelope.   If   no ruleset  appears    for  a particular  header,  no
transformation   is applied.

<2> There  could be a  couple of reserved rulesets, such  as Initial &
Final which would  respectively be applied  at  the start of  each and
every address manipulation.

<3> Lastly, there could be general sets of rules which could be called
from  all over  the place to  do common sets of transformations. These
would be  like the  current rulesets which  get called  from different
places.

I don't think that these  ideas would be hard  to implement, but would
make sendmail's configuration file a little easier to read, understand
and therefore  modify.

Any and  all discussion on  these ideas is  welcomed  and if  I'm just
being completely  ridiculous, PLEASE someone  tell  me! I suppose this
article comes from the fact that I can't understand sendmail as it is.


-- 
Ed Wilkinson @ Computer Centre, Massey University, Palmerston North, NZ
uucp: ...!uunet!vuwcomp!{massey, csvaxa}!edward       DTE: 530163000005
Greybook: E.Wilkinson@nz.ac.massey            Phone: +64 63 69099 x8587
CSNET/ACSnet/Internet: E.Wilkinson@massey.ac.nz    New Zealand = GMT+12