Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!HUB.UCSB.EDU!aks From: aks@HUB.UCSB.EDU (Alan Stebbens , ks@hub.ucsb.EDU) Newsgroups: comp.mail.mh Subject: Re: Use Domain In Hostname Or Not? Message-ID: <9003091812.AA17719@somewhere.ucsb.edu> Date: 9 Mar 90 18:12:46 GMT References: <9003090210.AA02290@vixmax.pa.dec.com> Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Organization: The Internet Lines: 56 vixie> This isn't about MH and these are the wrong places to vixie> discuss it, but because you mentioned it and because I vixie> don't think what you suggest will work, I'd like to follow vixie> up. I think you're wrong ;^) I think MH *can* do what is desired. I'll "Cc" the mh-users list, though, so that what we're talking about can be validated. aks> This is doable, if you use MH: you could write a mhl-format aks> file which would make the names look pretty only when they aks> were "show"n or "scan"ed, but kept in their original format aks> in the file, so that when you "repl"y, a different mhl-format aks> could be used to ensure full hostnames for correctness. vixie> mhl-formal lacks the ability, so far as I know, to only vixie> print the domain and/or subdomain if it is different or vixie> otherwise nonequivilent to the local domain. We couldn't vixie> very well have mhl-format strip *all* @domains, lest we get vixie> mail from "smith" or even "John Smith " and have to vixie> wonder which domain he came from. One only wants to strip vixie> out the @domain if it is "equivilent" to the mail reader's vixie> domain -- which means that the local- parts mean the same vixie> thing (refer to the same users, mail groups, etc). The idea wasn't to strip *all* domains, only the domains for the local hosts; we've configured sendmail to do just that, in both directions, so that local domains are stripped on input, and added on output. However, we *never* strip host names, even on the local system. This keeps anyone's aliases from ever masking a real user id. If you didn't want to change sendmail, or couldn't, then my original suggestion was that "mhl" could show only the mbox for local hosts, and the proper address for non-local hosts. The way to make MH do what I've suggested is in the mhl.format file, you have a line like: From:addrfield,formatfield="%<%1(eq(type{from}))%(mbox{from})%|%(proper{from})%>" Which says if the type of the "From:" field address is 1 (which means "local), then place the local mailbox name, otherwise place the RFC822 proper address. Here's where mhl format experts can correct any mistakes [please!]. Note: This doesn't work if the MH [BERK] option has been enabled, which disables RFC822 address parsing. I guess the [BERK] option assumes that sendmail does all of the address parsing for you, since their sendmail.cf file seems to be a "standard" for comparison. Alan Stebbens (805) 961-3221 Center for Computational Sciences and Engineering (CCSE) University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) 3111 Engineering I, Santa Barbara, CA 93106