Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!umich!samsung!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!wuarchive!psuvax1!psuvm!TUBVM!HABERNOL
From: HABERNOL@TUBVM.CS.TU-BERLIN.DE (Thomas Habernoll)
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.mailbook
Subject: Re: BSMTP header
Message-ID: <MAILBOOK%90020705392307@DEARN>
Date: 7 Feb 90 02:30:57 GMT
Sender: MAIL/MAILBOOK subscription list <MAILBOOK@RICEVM1>
Reply-To: MAIL/MAILBOOK subscription list <MAILBOOK@RICEVM1>
Lines: 57
Approved: NETNEWS@PSUVM Gateway

One more vote from a header mangler (it's not my free will, I'm paid
to do so :-)  In a perfect world we wouldn't need to mess around
with headers. As the world is not perfect we need tools that allow
us to fix it. For postmasters it is often much easier to change
the header instead of writing long explanations to a user why this
header should be changed. Therefore I can't use the new version of
MAIL - some of the changes I have to do are not supported by
commands, some would be arbitrary tedious if not done by overtyping.

I would be pretty quiet if a way to manipulate headers were to the
advantage of a small number of experienced users only, and would do
harm to novice users. But this isn't the case here. Regardless of the
grade of experience it violates the rule of least astonishment if
a change of a header line doesn't has the effect one would expect.

>[when to check for parsable headers]
>Which would you prefer: when the user types over the header lines and
>produces something unparseable, [1. immediately after the change,
>2. when sending]

The check should be done immediately. The actual sending may be a long
time after the mistake was made (suspend/resume), and even if it is in
the same session it may be hard to remember what you intended to do
when you introduced the error.

>            Do we really want to have to depend on people entering
>the exact syntax of an RFC822 address by hand?

No, but then, some people are doing a better job here than some
mailers/gateways :-)  There are some gotchas which would make it
worthwhile if the software could do a sanity check. But sometimes
minimal knowledge of RFC822 is useful if not a prerequisite for using
e-mail (lacking a perfect world). A typical modification (which is done
much easier by editing the header instead of using a command interface),
e.g. when replying to a mail:

 cryptO02731Id%unspellable.host.some.where%huh.whats.that%broken.gate.way
becomes:
 cryptO02731Id@unspellable.host.some.where

No program can know that broken.gate.way is broken, and that
huh.whats.that is an extremely expensive mail path. Not everybody
has to know this, but everybody who knows should have a chance to
show another user what is to be done to get his mail through without
retyping all these cryptograms from scratch. Therefore, please, let
us mess around with all these funny header lines in the most convenient
way.

I wouldn't care how to modify headers in MAIL/MAILBOOK if it were not
such a good program, both for novice and experienced users. I'm getting
a lot of questions from our users regarding addresses, gateways, bang
and percent hacks, but I'm getting close to zero questions regarding
MAIL/MAILBOOK. And even if a hardnosed user dares to mention this
software, you may be sure it's just because s/he is looking for some
advanced features.

  Thomas