Xref: utzoo comp.mail.uucp:2663 comp.mail.misc:1560 Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!ateng!chip From: chip@ateng.ateng.com (Chip Salzenberg) Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp,comp.mail.misc Subject: Re: smail 3.x Message-ID: <1989Jan20.173422.1110@ateng.ateng.com> Date: 20 Jan 89 22:34:21 GMT References: <392@mjbtn.MFEE.TN.US> <6616@killer.DALLAS.TX.US> <430@zinn.MV.COM> <7095@xanth.cs.odu.edu> <437@zinn.MV.COM> <5068@b-tech.ann-arbor.mi.us> Organization: A T Engineering, Tampa, FL Lines: 40 Being an Smail 3 alpha tester, I feel obligated to comment on Jon Zeeff's criticism of Smail 3's feature set. According to zeeff@b-tech.ann-arbor.mi.us (Jon Zeeff), Smail 3 can't: >1) Send copies of all mail this site bounces to a specified user. Very >important for catching problems. No doubt a very simple patch: simply invoke the child bounce-delivery instance of Smail with "postmaster" as an additional argument. >2) Rewrite addresses in a header very well (or very flexibly) when changing >from uucp format to domain format. xxx!foo.com!user was rewritten to >xxx!foo.com!user@thissite.domain instead of user@foo.com. Smail's behavior in this respect is RFC987-conformant. It's a conservative choice, one that will seldom break things. Again, there's nothing to stop you from changing it in your copy. >3) Support rerouting if the specified route failed. This is a philosophical choice. (I happen to agree with Smail here.) >4) Convert outgoing addresses to pure uucp form for dumb uucp only sites. >(some of my neighbors don't understand user@domain). This "feature" would really be a misfeature of the worst kind. If I am mailing from a smart site, to a smart site, via a dumb site, I do NOT want to rewrite all addresses into UUCP form! The character of the next site in the bang path should *NOT* affect the message header. > In general, I felt that smail 3.x had a bit of an attitude about how >things should be done and wasn't going to give you the flexibility to >do it differently. Want something? Modify the source yourself! It's not encrypted, you know. -- Chip Salzenberg or A T Engineering Me? Speak for my company? Surely you jest! "It's no good. They're tapping the lines."