🚀 go-pugleaf

According to fair@Apple.COM (Erik E. Fair):
>In the referenced article, chip@tct.uucp (Chip Salzenberg) writes:
>>Why, oh why, must a site registered with the DNS and complying with
>>RFC822 in every way suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous header
>>rewriting, just because they happen to use UUCP as their mail transport?
>
>Because they're not using SMTP to do the transport. The UUCP E-mail
>protocols have different rules and requirements.

I am genuinely puzzled by this fixation on "the UUCP protocol".

(EMAIL 101 excerpt, for new readers:) As far as I know, the use of
"the UUCP protocol" for E-Mail implies _only_ that mail is transferred
using a request of remote execution of the "rmail" command, with the
message on standard input and with destination address(es) as command
line arguments.  Also, the message should begin with a From_ line.
These items are often referred to as the "message envelope."

Unless I have completely missed the boat, RFC822 does not attempt to
describe the envelope (rmail arguments and From_ line -- or, for that
matter, SMTP MAIL FROM and RCPT TO strings).  So let us leave aside,
for now, all consideration of the envelope.

Therefore examining only the body of the message, what reason is there
to consider a site deficient in implementation of RFC822 based solely
on its choice of transport (UUCP rmail)?  I see no reason.

>But what I'm really wondering is why Salzenberg and the people who
>agree with him want all us kind, generous, charitable gateway/forwarder
>sites to do all the work for him?

This statement genuinely puzzles me.  I'm trying to point out that, on
balance, header rewriting for mail exchanged by RFC822-compliant sites
that happen to use UUCP as a transport is counterproductive, i.e. it
causes unnecessary work.  I am attempting explain that gateways don't
have to turn all those perfectly good domain addresses into bang paths
in most cases.  I don't understand why such an effort should be
considered an attempt at freeloading.

>If you wanna be smart, take RFC976 to its logical conclusion, and
>convert the dom.ain!user stuff back to user@dom.ain at your site, for
>your mailers, and enjoy the fruits of that labor.

Well, as I mentioned in an article that you may not have read, I've
done exactly that for Elm 2.4dev.  But I'm concerned with other sites
besides my own.  And I have a strong aversion to unnecessary header
rewriting in the mail transport.

Considering my long effort to save everyone work, and the results, the
phrase "tilting at windmills" comes unbidden to mind.  <sigh>
The way things are going, I may have to hack Smail to put in, for
local mail only, some form of address rewriting rules.  <double sigh>
-- 
Chip Salzenberg at Teltronics/TCT     <chip@tct.uucp>, <uunet!pdn!tct!chip>
"Please don't send me any more of yer scandalous email, Mr. Salzenberg..."
		-- Bruce Becker