From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.emacs.gnus.general/6160 Path: main.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: "Sudish Joseph" Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.gnus.general Subject: Re: Mail without `From:' lines Date: 06 May 1996 10:53:15 -0400 Sender: Message-ID: References: NNTP-Posting-Host: coloc-standby.netfonds.no X-Trace: main.gmane.org 1035146656 2759 80.91.224.250 (20 Oct 2002 20:44:16 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@main.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 20 Oct 2002 20:44:16 +0000 (UTC) Cc: ding@ifi.uio.no Return-Path: ding-request@ifi.uio.no Original-Received: from ifi.uio.no (ifi.uio.no [129.240.64.2]) by deanna.miranova.com (8.7.5/8.6.9) with SMTP id IAA16374 for ; Mon, 6 May 1996 08:50:42 -0700 Original-Received: from VNET.IBM.COM (vnet.ibm.com [199.171.26.4]) by ifi.uio.no with SMTP (8.6.11/ifi2.4) id for ; Mon, 6 May 1996 16:54:38 +0200 Original-Received: from ATLSER by VNET.IBM.COM (IBM VM SMTP V2R3) with BSMTP id 3977; Mon, 06 May 96 10:54:26 EDT Original-Received: by ATLSER (XAGENTA 4.0) id 3944; Mon, 6 May 1996 10:54:07 -0400 Original-Received: (from sj@localhost) by galaxy.atlissc.ibm.com (8.7.5/8.7.3) id KAA03416; Mon, 6 May 1996 10:53:15 -0400 Original-To: Per Abrahamsen In-Reply-To: Per Abrahamsen's message of 05 May 1996 09:59:44 +0200 Original-Lines: 46 X-Mailer: September Gnus v0.78/Emacs 19.30 Xref: main.gmane.org gmane.emacs.gnus.general:6160 X-Report-Spam: http://spam.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.gnus.general:6160 Per Abrahamsen 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