Re: Mail without `From:' lines

["Sudish Joseph" <sudish@VNET.IBM.COM>]

Per Abrahamsen <abraham@dina.kvl.dk> writes:
> It seems to me that converting the 'From ' line in the absence of a
> `From:' header will be the right thing in all real examples, and no

Here's a real example: *Every* message I receive from the internet has
envelope sender set to a fixed address of this form:
<@smtp.relay,relay.id@vm.node.that.doesn't.speak.tcp.ip>
(also a nice real world example of a valid use of source routes)

> worse than not converting it in hypothetical examples.

Not necessarily.  Using the envelope sender makes sense for local mail
and mail sent to directly connected hosts.  True, this accounts for
the vast majority of mail messages (and ~ 10% of my mail).

Then again, the percentages of messages w/o From: lines is vanishingly
small.  I'd prefer that GNUS did not tear, damage or spindle the
headers (other than X-blah) of any message I receive.  I'll detect the
lack of a From: line when I try to reply to any such errant message,
and I'll be able to make a far better estimate of the actual return
address than GNUS.

Unless, of course, someone wants to write that cool routine to parse
Received: headers to see where the mail originated, and then figure
out how to reply to it.  This is far more likely to be correct than
using envelope sender.

> The `From ' line is an artifact of the mbox format, so leaving it
> alone is not an option with other backends.  Converting is to an `X-'
> header will break if the message is later read by another mail agent
> (like VM), who will then not be able to access the information.  The
> only way to preserve the information is to convert the broken message
> into standard (RFC 822) format.

GNUS current X-From-Line preserves that information.  Putting it in
From: destroys information (namely, the far more important information
that the original message did not have a From: line).  I do not want
to reply to From_ blindly.  I'd prefer that my MUA choked and died on
such messages.

Oh, yes. Please note that replies send to envelope sender can
disappear w/o any fuss.  You won't even have the benefit of a bounce
to know that you must resend.

At least make this an option that defaults to nil.
-Sudish