Re: Sender header?

[Stainless Steel Rat <ratinox@peorth.gweep.net>]

Before this gets too long, here is a hint: system-name.  Think about it for
a moment.

* Kai.Grossjohann@CS.Uni-Dortmund.DE (Kai Großjohann)  on Thu, 24 May 2001
| I dare say that people don't complain because people can frob their
| From header via user-mail-address.  They cannot, however, frob their
| Sender header via user-mail-address.

And they should not.  Frobbing it directly would be a violation of the
requirements of RFCs 2822 and 1034.

[...]
|   - Generate a Sender header using user-login-name, followed by "@",
|     followed by system-name.

Which is as canonical as a program can get.  Sender is supposed to be
canonical.  By "canonical" I mean "an attempt has been made to ensure that
the mailbox is valid".  For a correctly configured system, and that
includes the mail hubs and what-not, not just the local machine, `login at
FQDN' is canonical.

I apparantly misunderstood something, because using user-mail-address for
generating Sender would break that.  Therefore it should not be done.

[...]
| I don't know what does RFC 2822 say.  I only know about RFC 822.  The
| local RFC server doesn't seem to know about this RFC.  Can you help
| out?

RFCs 2821 and 2822 obsoleted RFCs 821 and 822 about a month ago.  They
clarify a lot of things, not the least of which is Sender, both by standard
and defacto use.

[...]
| I'm with you so far.  I presume that you have set user-mail-address to
| "ratinox@peorth.gweep.net".  Then my proposal does what you want.

No, I don't.  I have my system configured correctly.  It knows itself as
peorth.gweep.net, so Emacs knows it as peorth.gweep.net, so Gnus knows it
as peorth.gweep.net, and nothing needs to be kludged.

You seem to believe that because only one person is involved in originating
a message and submitting it that the one person has only one identity.
This is not true.  If I were to send a message from rei.nerv.gweep.net (one
of peorth's MX hosts), I am still ratinox@peorth, but I am also
ratinox@rei.nerv.  As the originator of a message I am ratinox@peorth and I
put that in the From header -- how I accomplish that is not relevant.  As
the sender I am ratinox@rei.nerv, and that goes in the Sender header.  It
is up to rei's admins to ensure that ratinox@rei.nerv is deliverable.  And
everything Just Works, no fuss, no muss.

Handling mail incorrectly seems easy, until you discover that everything is
an exception.  Doing it right is hard to set up, but there are few special
cases and everything else Just Works.
-- 
Rat <ratinox@peorth.gweep.net>    \ Happy Fun Ball may stick to certain types
Minion of Nathan - Nathan says Hi! \ of skin.
PGP Key: at a key server near you!  \