Re: message.el: mail-host-address ignored

[Toby Speight <Toby.Speight@streapadair.freeserve.co.uk>]

Rene> Rene H. Larsen <URL:mailto:rhl@traceroute.dk>

0> In article <87n1slizjk.fsf@worldonline.dk>, Rene wrote:

Rene> This came up on the list about 2 months ago, but nothing was done
Rene> about it.  This patch against current CVS will fix the message-id
Rene> generation to match the documentation:
Rene>
Rene> --- message.el.orig	Sat Nov  6 04:15:15 1999
Rene> +++ message.el	Thu Nov 11 02:25:28 1999
Rene> @@ -2939,14 +2939,15 @@
Rene>    (let ((system-name (system-name))
Rene>  	(user-mail (message-user-mail-address)))
Rene>      (cond
Rene> -     ((string-match "[^.]\\.[^.]" system-name)
Rene> -      ;; `system-name' returned the right result.
Rene> -      system-name)
Rene>       ;; Try `mail-host-address'.
Rene>       ((and (boundp 'mail-host-address)
Rene>  	   (stringp mail-host-address)
Rene>  	   (string-match "\\." mail-host-address))
Rene>        mail-host-address)
Rene> +     ;; Else try `system-name'
Rene> +     ((string-match "[^.]\\.[^.]" system-name)
Rene> +      ;; `system-name' returned the right result.
Rene> +      system-name)
Rene>       ;; We try `user-mail-address' as a backup.
Rene>       ((and user-mail
Rene>  	   (string-match "\\." user-mail)

But doesn't this mean that on a network of machines that share a
mail-host-address (quite common IME), that there's a much greater
chance of ID collision?  Don't use mail-host-address for what it's not
intended for - it's okay by me as a fallback, but as you have it,
there's no way to use it for its intended purpose without getting the
undesirable message-id behaviour.  Create a new variable instead, if
you must (message-id-host).

What would be even better is if someone defined a "Message-ID by UDP
or TCP" service one could connect to for unique IDs.

BTW, is there a way to follow-up a message keeping the original MIME
structure?  The labelling of the part containing a patch (above) has
been lost, and I would have liked to keep it.