🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <17601@glacier.STANFORD.EDU> jbn@glacier.STANFORD.EDU (John B. Nagle) writes:
>
>     The X mail system (is this part of X windows?) seems to indulge in
>heavy self-promotion.  Is all the following, taken from incoming mail,
>necessary?  It has little value to the recipient.
>

Things in a mail header that have an "X-" flag are mailer independant.  This
means that anything that starts with "X-" was put in by some mailer somewhere,
either as a comment or to pass commands specifically interpretted by that
mailer, and they are ignored by all other mailers.  I believe that this is
the only way to add lines to the header that is supported as part of the
standard, all lines that don't begin with "X-" have to do with real information
that is documented in RFC822.  It's a little hard to tell what everything below
is doing without looking at the complete header of the message, but most 
of the things are comments.  



>	X-To:         DYNSYS-L%UNCVM1.bitnet@jade.berkeley.edu

I'm not sure where this came from, maybe some strange IBM system on BITNET.

>	X-Mailer: Elm [version 1.5b]
>	X-Mailer: Elm [version 1.5d]

Says that the mail went through the Elm mailer (twice), mainly comments.

>	X-Origin: The Portal System (TM)

Free advertisments for the Portal System.

>	X-Possible-Reply-Path: Ed_Eric_Mitchell@cup.portal.com
>	X-Possible-Reply-Path: mslater@cup.portal.com
>	X-Possible-Reply-Path: sun!portal!cup.portal.com!Ed_Eric_Mitchell
>	X-Possible-Reply-Path: sun!portal!cup.portal.com!mslater

All semi useful stuff from portal listing possible return paths.  I believe
this is actually put in by Elm, but it is not used any mailers I know of, it
has to be interpreted by a human.  There are basically two return paths listed,
one via a domain-ised internet and one via uucp.  I believe that the two 
different versions of the address are just aliases for the same person.  If
the entire world used the domain based systems then this would certainly
be unnecessary, and even with things the way they are it shouldn't be required
if all sites in the intervening path builds the return address correctly.

>	X-St-Vmsmail-To: MIPL3::ST%"jbn@glacier.stanford.edu",RGD059      
>	X-St-Vmsmail-To: ST%"jbn@glacier.STANFORD.EDU",RGD059      
>	X-St-Vmsmail-To: ST%"jbn@glacier.stanford.edu"

These three lines come from the Software Tools Mailer (yeah!!!) running under
VMS, with mail sent from VMSmail (yuch) into the Software Tools system.  

>	X-Vms-To: IN%"jbn@glacier.STANFORD.EDU"

This alse comes from VMS, someone sent the mail from VMSmail into a TCP/IP
based mailer.  I believe this one looks like Excelans's.

  --darren

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Darren Griffiths                                          DAGG@LBL.GOV
Lawrence Berkeley Labs
Information and Computing Sciences Division