🚀 go-pugleaf

On 3 Jan 91 22:59:49 GMT, Makey@Snoopy.Logicon.COM (Jeff Makey) said:

Makey> In article <aynnmf.356@wang.com> fitz@wang.com (Tom Fitzgerald) writes:

fitz> Many machines (including UUNET) disobey RFC1123 in this respect, and get
fitz> mail delivered.  Many other machines comply with RFC1123, and generally
fitz> lose mail from UUCP sites that has %'s in the destination address.

RFC 1123 is a horrid kludge, at least in this respect. RFCs are
supposedly only meant for sites on the Internet *only*. As far as the
other RFCs go, there is nothing else but the Internet.

Makey> The recommendation in RFC 1123 that internet hosts give higher
Makey> precedence to % than to ! (e.g., mail addressed to a!b%c should
Makey> be delivered to c, which then interprets a!b) is unfortunate,
Makey> because it is unreasonable for internet hosts that are also UUCP
Makey> hosts to do so.  On the other hand, it is good advice for
Makey> internet hosts that are *not* also UUCP hosts, since they would
Makey> not normally be expected to use ! as a routing operator.

Ah yes, but a host that is both an on the Internet and another network
and passes mail between the two is a gateway. There is no provision (let
me scream this as many times as I can) for gateways to other networks in
the RFCs, as the Internet is supposed to be entirely self-contained.

The RFC 1123 (which is in itself a kludge) suggestion only makes sense
for a mail gateway, and is totally superfluous, as on the Internet '!'
*is not* a routing operator -- it is just a character in the local part
of an Internet address. RFC 1123 makes '%' into an Internet routing
operator, and obsoletes "@a,@b:u@c" style notation. Argh.

Note that IMNHO a gateway between UUCP and RFC complying networks should
interpret things *differently* depending on the source of the message --
if the message came in from an UUCP mail style network, then '@' *and*
'%' have no special meaning, if it came in from an RFC mail style
network, then '!' has no special meaning. Things would be much clearer
if gatewaying did not happen by parsing local addresses in the RFC style
world, because they were not designed that way.

	Note that in the the UUCP style world there is in a sense no
	local address part -- '!' acts as a routing, naming, and
	addressing operator, because no UUCP site should even look at
	what is beyond the first '!' in the envelope, and local delivery
	only happens when there are no '!' in the envelope. IMNHO bang
	"paths" are a *vastly* better and more flexible technology than
	RFC or Janet style addresses. (This paragraph courtesy of the
	"Campaign for a Bangista Internet").
	

This is all extremely distasteful. There is something rotten in the
state of ... OOPS, sorry wrong play :-).
--
Piercarlo Grandi                   | ARPA: pcg%uk.ac.aber.cs@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk
Dept of CS, UCW Aberystwyth        | UUCP: ...!mcsun!ukc!aber-cs!pcg
Penglais, Aberystwyth SY23 3BZ, UK | INET: pcg@cs.aber.ac.uk