Re: Sender header?

[Kai.Grossjohann@CS.Uni-Dortmund.DE (Kai Großjohann)]

On Thu, 24 May 2001, Stainless Steel Rat wrote:

> * Kai.Grossjohann@CS.Uni-Dortmund.DE (Kai Großjohann) on Thu, 24 May
>   2001
> | By default, Gnus creates a From header for all outgoing messages.
> | This is because From is mentioned in message-required-mail-headers and
> | message-required-news-headers.
> 
> And nobody complains about From being wrong.  Therefore it is safe
> to assume that in cases where a correct From field is (or would be)
> generated, a correct Sender field would also be generated when the
> From field is not canonical for the sending host.

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.

Right now, if user-mail-address is set, Gnus behaves as follows:

  - If no From header is specified, generate one using
    user-mail-address.

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

  - If the Sender header is redundant, delete it.

I wish to change it as follows:

  - If no From header is specified, generate one using
    user-mail-address.

  - Generate a Sender header using user-mail-address.

  - If the Sender header is redundant, delete it.

It seems that my suggestion is what you want, since you assume that
the algorithms for generating From and Sender headers are the same.
However, in the current Gnus they are not the same.  I want to make
them the same.

> | > | Only add a Sender header if the From header is different from
> | > | the normal value.
> | > This is what Gnus does now, yes?
> | No.  As you can see in this message, Gnus automatically adds a
> | Sender header.  I have changed the variable user-mail-address.
> 
> Then what I said is correct, and what Gnus does is also correct as
> far as RFC 2822 is concerned.

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?

> I have several mailboxes: ratinox@rei.nerv.gweep.net,
> ratinox@newsguy.com, SamuraiRat@hotmail.com,
> ratinox@peorth.gweep.net, and others.  They are all me, but that
> does not mean ratinox@newsguy.com == ratinox@peorth.gweep.net.  They
> are different mailboxes.  If I were to send a message from my local
> machine (peorth.gweep.net) and address it from my Hotmail address,
> the MUA is required to generate a Sender header with
> ratinox@peorth.gweep.net as its contents.

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.

> You have done exactly the same thing.  The fact that your mailboxes
> are within the same domain is irrelevant, and lucy should have an MX
> record that points it at the cs.uni-dortmund.de mail servers, which
> in fact it does, which makes Kai.Grossjohann@lucy.CS.Uni-Dortmund.DE
> a valid mailbox.

I am lucky that user-login-name at system-name is a valid mail address
and that mail sent there reaches me.  However, not everybody might be
as lucky.

As I see it, Gnus has no way of automatically finding out what is the
email address of the user running Emacs.  Therefore, it should be
possible to tell Gnus.  But just this is not possible.

> Put susinctly, Gnus is doing exactly what it should, when it should,
> according to RFC 2822, and I do not understand why you want to break
> it :).

I do not understand why you think I'm breaking anything.

kai
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