🚀 go-pugleaf

I originally asked: 

andys> We are running Solaris 2.1 and I've noticed a change in
andys> sendmail.  To better integrate with the multimedia mailtool,
andys> sendmail makes sure there are Content-Type and Content-Length
andys> headers in every message.  Since it now *knows* the body length
andys> of a message, it has no need to prepend a '>' to every line
andys> beginning with \nFrom.  So it doesn't.  The result is that when
andys> my boss forwards a message to me, inc splits it into two parts

>>>>> On 8 Jan 93 23:36:22 GMT, jromine@binky.ics.uci.edu (John Romine) said:

jromine> What happens if a message already has a content-length header, but
jromine> Sun's sendmail doesn't agree with the length given?  TOPS20 used
jromine> a mailbox format which included file lengths... it sure was a pain
jromine> to edit those mailbox files.

I haven't tested what sendmail does with pre-existing content-length
headers if broken transport agents change the body length.

jromine> As for MH, it supports the UUCP-style (From user date ...) and
jromine> MMDF-style (ctrl-A) mailbox formats.  It doesn't support the newly-
jromine> discovered Solaris-broken-UUCP-style mailbox format.

jromine> It seems likely that other UAs will also not understand the
jromine> Solaris-broken-UUCP-style mailbox format.  Perhaps fixing
jromine> /bin/mail to write the '>' characters is the right thing to do?

No, it is not in the cards for me to mung /bin/mail.  Another poster
pointed out that sendmail *does* have an option to quote From_ lines,
which I may do, although I'd much rather teach MH to grok
Content-Length headers (the ugly hack is building as we speak).  My
reasoning is that Sun did *not* break UUCP-style maildrops, but rather
they unbroke them in preparation for things like a) their multi-media
mail, b) MIME, and c) X.400, all of which use content-length to give
you a definitive answer to the question "Where does the $%$##@# body
end, anyway?"  IMHO, the >From convention is an ugly hack to deal
with the fact that the UUCP-style maildrop was deficient.  Since the
lack of >From-ing only affects the local system (since remote
/bin/rmail's will do what's right for themselves), I'll fix any local
3rd party tools to match Sun.  Now if they'd only have mailtool use
MIME instead of X-Sun headers.....


--
Andy Sherman
Salomon Inc  -  Unix Systems Support  -  Rutherford, NJ
(201) 896-7018  -  andys@sbi.com or asherman@sbi.com
"These opinions are mine, all *MINE*.  My employer can't have them."