🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <m4vzFMA$h9n0Iw+v@controlware.demon.co.uk>
           mark-news@controlware.demon.co.uk "Mark Rogers" writes:

> I know it does it, and I know why it does it, but has any serious
> thought gone into fixing it?

I sincerely hope not - it would break PCElm.
-- 
Raj Rijhwani        (umtsb5/16) |  This is the voice of the Mysterons...
raj@courtfld.demon.co.uk        |  ... We know that you can hear us Earthmen
scarlet@fido.zetnet.co.uk       |  "Lieutenant Green:  Launch all Angels!"
http://www.courtfld.demon.co.uk/raj/ (demon, and gods, willing...)

In article <882902776snz@courtfld.demon.co.uk>, Raj Rijhwani
<raj@courtfld.demon.co.uk> writes
>In article <m4vzFMA$h9n0Iw+v@controlware.demon.co.uk>
>           mark-news@controlware.demon.co.uk "Mark Rogers" writes:
>
>> I know it does it, and I know why it does it, but has any serious
>> thought gone into fixing it?
>
>I sincerely hope not - it would break PCElm.

What I am suggesting is that KA9Q follows the setting of "smtp
separator", which if set would surely break PCElm anyway? Or do people
set a separator for KA9Q that PCElm doesn't recognise for some reason?
-- 
Mark Rogers (Software Engineer)       -o-      mark@controlware.demon.co.uk
2M_ControlWare, Yaxley, Peterborough, ENGLAND.

Mark Rogers wrote:

> KA9Q prepends any line beginning with "From "
> in a message body with ">".

> I have "smtp separator" set to something other than "From " so finding
> "From " at the start of a line isn't an issue.
 
> It ought to be easy to change the compare from "From " to
> whatever 'smtp separator' has been set to.
 
In this sort of situation, if I don't have access to the source code I 
sometimes patch the executable; search for the string I don't want, and 
change it to something else (of no greater length). For example, somewhere 
in the KA9Q suite the response to a posting is hard-coded to "<whoever>
writes:"; I patched that to "<whoever> wrote:" after somebody  suggested 
that this was better.

Best wishes,
-- 
Michael Salem (email: use "Reply" command, or mgs at michaels.demon.co.uk)
RFC 1855: Quote less than you contribute; keep sig down to 4 lines

In article <882960668snz@siberia.demon.co.uk>, Claire
<9712q$cl@siberia.demon.co.uk> writes

[of the storage format for a mail program]

>From a quick scan, I can't see anything on this in the RFCs

You will not. The RFCs discuss interworking between systems ("on the
wire") not your private arrangements on your own machines.

-- 
richard                      richard.clayton    @    T U R N P I K E .com
                                                     tel: +44 1306 732300
"Assembly of Japanese bicycle require great peace of mind" quoted in ZAMM

Claire (9712q$cl@siberia.demon.co.uk) wrote:
> 
> From a quick scan, I can't see anything on this in the RFCs (821,
> 822, 1123), tho I guess I may have missed it.  But I imagine that

I can't find it explicitly mentioned either, if it was anywhere I'd
expect it to be in 822 'cos it's not an SMTP issue anyway.

> something like this must be required on UNIX systems, or on any
> others that use the "From " lines as message separators, so I
> assume that its use is widespread.

Yep, sendmail does the conversion here, so all incoming/outgoing mail
with a From at the start of a line gets the ">" prepended. As far
as mailreaders are concerned surely they should do the conversion.

> It doesn't seem to me like a big problem, anyway.

As long as the recipients collection of mail/mailreader can handle
it, then it shouldn't be. And IMO any collection system that is
going to deliver mail which is to be read by a mailreader that
uses "From " as the message separator should handle it. It
shouldn't matter whether the sending system prepends the ">" or
not.

-- 
<URL:http://www.pierrot.co.uk/>                                     Team AMIGA
Where pain predominates, agony can be a valued teacher.  --Frank Herbert

In article <QYG+dGAmVNo0IwD5@controlware.demon.co.uk>
    Mark Rogers <mark-news@controlware.demon.co.uk> writes:

> In article <882902776snz@courtfld.demon.co.uk>, Raj Rijhwani
> <raj@courtfld.demon.co.uk> writes
> >In article <m4vzFMA$h9n0Iw+v@controlware.demon.co.uk>
> >           mark-news@controlware.demon.co.uk "Mark Rogers" writes:
> >
> >> I know it does it, and I know why it does it, but has any serious
> >> thought gone into fixing it?
> >
> >I sincerely hope not - it would break PCElm.
> 
> What I am suggesting is that KA9Q follows the setting of "smtp
> separator",

Seems reasonable to me.  When I contemplated fixing Arc KA9Q I was just
going to make the ">" code conditional on having the separator set to
"From".  I suppose making it insert ">" before any instance of the separator
in the body is a better idea.  Mind you, that will only improve matters
if mailers which detect a particular separator detect "\nseparator" and
not just "separator", but it's still a better idea than mine.

--Paul

In article <9712241446.3nyj@pierrot.co.uk>
           tez@pierrot.co.uk "Terrance Richard Boyes" writes:

> Claire (9712q$cl@siberia.demon.co.uk) wrote:
> > 
> > ..
> > something like this must be required on UNIX systems, or on any
> > others that use the "From " lines as message separators, so I
> > assume that its use is widespread.
> 
> Yep, sendmail does the conversion here, so all incoming/outgoing mail
> with a From at the start of a line gets the ">" prepended. As far
> as mailreaders are concerned surely they should do the conversion.

You haven't used PCElm then :-)  Well, in its default state
anyway which uses "From " as mail separator.  Incoming mail
is fine because ka9q prepends the '>' as described, and
outgoing mail is presumably handled similarly by the receiving
smtp server.  The problem is with PCElm's "sent" files which
are written transparently - any body text with lines beginning
"From " are interpreted as the start of the next message if
one attempts to look at them; the index shows entries like
"From: somebody".  This is obviously workaroundable by defining
and using a specific "smtp separator" (in both ka9q and PCElm)
but by the time one discovers this one's mailbase is large
enough to be not worth the effort of postfixing it.  (I keep
promising myself to write a mailbase converter, but always
manage to find something else to do...)

> 
> > It doesn't seem to me like a big problem, anyway.
> 

I'd agree with that - annoying but not big.  Perhaps the best
solution would be for those nice Demon (who support the DOS
DIS suite) to supply the DIS package with a default "smtp
separator" setting (eg. @@@@) in both autoexec.net and PCElm
and the problem above would not arise.  If a separator were
mandatory, one could dispense with the '>' processing.

However, as Michael Salem said earlier in the thread, it's
pretty simple to patch your net.exe if you don't want the
aggro of fixing the source and recompiling.  It's impossible
to give a definitive patch here as there are now so many
versions of NET about, but as an example using the GremNOS
textwin-lite .EXE changing the byte at offset 2012Dh in the
EXE from 74h (JZ) to EBh (JMPS) will prevent addition of
the '>' by the smtp server.

However, using such a method though to add in the necessary
code to check the "smtp separator" setting would take much
more effort, and probably better done at source.

Pete
(Who might well get around to writing that converter if
 mother-in-law becomes unbearable...)
-- 
Pete
demon.ip.support.pc is for discussion of IP-related issues using plain
DOS software - *not* PC hardware, Windows, Netscape, Turnpike, MSIE...
Read the "Which Group" FAQ:- ftp.demon.co.uk/pub/doc/general/whichgrp.faq

In article <882960668snz@siberia.demon.co.uk>, Claire wrote:
> Hmm.  If it was something that could be disabled, I can't see
> any problem with a change.   But even tho I don't use PCELM much
> these days (prefer Pegasus), I would be loathe to see any changes
> that would break it it, and not escaping any line is the message
> body beginning "From " would certainly break it.  From another
> quick reading, it would also break the PM-Demon gateway.

My point is that KA9Q uses "smtp separator" as its message separator, or 
"From " otherwise. If you use "From " then you would expect it to be 
escaped. If instead you used "smtp separator" to specify using "Something 
Else" as delimeter it would be reasonable to expect that "Something Else", 
rather than "From ", would be escaped. At present that is not the case.

Mark.
-- 
int MeaningOfLife (void) { return 42; }   // mcr@holly.demon.co.uk
function MeaningOfLife :integer; begin MeaningOfLife := 6 * 9 end;

In article <882997599snz@pdlmail.demon.co.uk>,  wrote:
>  
> However, as Michael Salem said earlier in the thread, it's
> pretty simple to patch your net.exe if you don't want the
> aggro of fixing the source and recompiling.  

Indeed, although it needs to be remembered whenever the executable is 
replaced. IMHO the current behaviour is a bug, and from what I can tell 
relatively straightforward to fix, so on that basis a fix would be the 
ideal option. However, I am only too aware that I'm not actually planning 
to perform the fix myself, so if those who currently maintain the "active" 
versions of KA9Q disagree with me then that's my tough luck :-)

[I'm quite capable of getting the source and changing it, but my previous 
attempts at getting Turbo C++ 3.0 to compile the code have failed, and I'm 
not inclined to spend much time trying to work out why (as C++ is not a 
language I use a great deal). I probably ought to look at the code and post 
a fix, though; that would be a little more helpful. Where can I get a 
"current" version of code? I know where the official release is, but I'd 
rather look at a tweaked version.]

Mark.
-- 
int MeaningOfLife (void) { return 42; }   // mcr@holly.demon.co.uk
function MeaningOfLife :integer; begin MeaningOfLife := 6 * 9 end;

In article <dyNxFej030n@sktb.demon.co.uk>, Paul L. Allen wrote:
>  
> Seems reasonable to me.  When I contemplated fixing Arc KA9Q I was just
> going to make the ">" code conditional on having the separator set to
> "From".  I suppose making it insert ">" before any instance of the separator
> in the body is a better idea.  Mind you, that will only improve matters
> if mailers which detect a particular separator detect "\nseparator" and
> not just "separator", but it's still a better idea than mine.

At present, PC-Elm and the like use "\nFrom " as the separator. To all intents 
and purposes this can be interpreted as "\nFrom *\n". (Note that "From " is 
merely required to start a line, not be its sole contents.) When a separator 
is used as far as KA9Q is concerned it represents the whole line, so 
"\n[defined separator]\n" is the search key; whether or not PC-Elm expects 
such a separator to be the entire line or just start it I don't know. (I've 
interpreted some of the comments in this thread as meaning that PC-Elm does 
support user-defined separators, something which i was not previously aware 
of.)

In practice a common user defined separator is "^A^A^A^A" (ie control-A times 
four), which is unlikely to appear in a message let alone on a line by itself. 
The obvious exceptions are malicious use and test mail. 

Mark.
-- 
int MeaningOfLife (void) { return 42; }   // mcr@holly.demon.co.uk
function MeaningOfLife :integer; begin MeaningOfLife := 6 * 9 end;

In article <27938-971227-v2k@holly.demon.co.uk>
           mcr@holly.demon.co.uk "Mark Rogers" writes:

[re: patching .exe]
> Indeed, although it needs to be remembered whenever the executable is 
> replaced. IMHO the current behaviour is a bug, and from what I can tell 
> relatively straightforward to fix, so on that basis a fix would be the 
> ideal option.

Agreed, though in theory at least NET.EXE doesn't change that
often - the official (and some would say broken) release is
still 2.16d.  As to the current behaviour being a bug, I'm not
sure, though it's certainly IMO not very elegant :-)  I could
not find anything in the RFCs I checked, but then from what
Richard Clayton said in an earlier post I wasn't surprised.
ISTM from looking through various ka9q sources that 'smtp
separator' was an afterthought - the definitive Unix "From "
mechanism being the de facto standard at the time.

>               However, I am only too aware that I'm not actually planning 
> to perform the fix myself, so if those who currently maintain the "active" 
> versions of KA9Q disagree with me then that's my tough luck :-)

Well FWIW here's my suggestion to implement the behaviour you
want, though whether it will break other mail systems I don't
know. [This is complicated somewhat by the fact that escaping
the "From " has been moved in the GremNOS build from the
'getmsgtxt()' function into 'copy_data()' (a more logical place
IMO) but the principle remains the same.]

[GremNOS 0.2: SMTPSERV.C]
...
static void
copy_data (FILE *from, FILE *to)
{
    char *buf;
    int last_had_newline = TRUE;
#if PDLMOD
    char *local_sep;     /* don't reassign the global var */
    int   local_sep_len;

    /* decide once (per mail) rather than on every line */
    if (smtp_separator != NULLCHAR)
        local_sep = smtp_separator, sep_len = strlen (smtp_separator);
    else
        local_sep = "From ", sep_len = 5;
#endif

    buf = mallocw (LINELEN);
    while (fgets (buf, LINELEN, from) != NULL)
        {
#if PDLMOD
        if (last_had_newline && strncmp (buf, local_sep, sep_len) == 0)
#else
        /* Escape 'From ' at the beginning of a line for unix mail compatibility  */
        if (last_had_newline && strncmp (buf, "From ", 5) == 0)
#endif
            fputc ('>', to);
        if (fputs (buf, to) == EOF)
            break;
        pwait (NULL);
        last_had_newline = (strchr (buf, '\n') != NULL);
        }
    free (buf);
}

Also, on a related topic the coding of 'doseparator()' in
SMTPCLI.C could be improved somewhat: although it is rather
unlikely that one would want change the smtp separator during
a single session, the memory alloc'd to the first one is not
free'd (unless it is explicitly de-assigned by issuing an
intervening smtp separator [nothing] command.) 

[SMTPCLI.C]
...
static int
    doseparator (argc, argv, p)
int argc;
char *argv[];
void *p;
   {
   int i;
   char *t;

   if (argc < 2)
        {
        if (smtp_separator)
           free (smtp_separator);

        smtp_separator = NULL;
        }
   else
        {
        t = mallocw (81);
        ... etc.

might be improved with:

static int
    doseparator (argc, argv, p)
int argc;
char *argv[];
void *p;
   {
   int i;
   char *t;

    if (smtp_separator != NULLCHAR)
        {
        free (smtp_separator);  /* free previous setting regardless */
        smtp_separator = NULL;
        }

   if (argc > 1)
        {
        t = mallocw (81);
        ... etc.

Just a thought.

Seeing the way this thread is going, I've set followups to
d.i.d only.
-- 
Pete
demon.ip.support.pc is for discussion of IP-related issues using plain
DOS software - *not* PC hardware, Windows, Netscape, Turnpike, MSIE...
Read the "Which Group" FAQ:- ftp.demon.co.uk/pub/doc/general/whichgrp.faq

In article <27937-971227-v2k@holly.demon.co.uk>
           mcr@holly.demon.co.uk "Mark Rogers" writes:

> In practice a common user defined separator is "^A^A^A^A" (ie control-A times 
> four), which is unlikely to appear in a message let alone on a line by itself. 
> The obvious exceptions are malicious use and test mail. 

It derives from MMDF which uses it, but with MMDF each message is bracketed 
by four ^A characters at start and end.  (i.e. you get
^A^A^A^A
..message...
^A^A^A^A
^A^A^A^A
..message...
^A^A^A^A

(Like you I'm not aware of any such setting being available for KA9Q, 
although PCElm can be configure to work with a *single* delimiter line.)
-- 
Raj Rijhwani        (umtsb5/16) |  This is the voice of the Mysterons...
raj@courtfld.demon.co.uk        |  ... We know that you can hear us Earthmen
scarlet@fido.zetnet.co.uk       |  "Lieutenant Green:  Launch all Angels!"
http://www.courtfld.demon.co.uk/raj/ (demon, and gods, willing...)

pete$no$pam@pdlmail.demon.co.uk wrote:
>            tez@pierrot.co.uk "Terrance Richard Boyes" writes:
> 
> > Yep, sendmail does the conversion here, so all incoming/outgoing mail
> > with a From at the start of a line gets the ">" prepended. As far
> > as mailreaders are concerned surely they should do the conversion.
> 
> You haven't used PCElm then :-)  Well, in its default state

Oddly enough nope, AmigaElm OTOH...

> anyway which uses "From " as mail separator.  Incoming mail
> is fine because ka9q prepends the '>' as described, and
> outgoing mail is presumably handled similarly by the receiving
> smtp server.  The problem is with PCElm's "sent" files which
> are written transparently - any body text with lines beginning

Ah, ours works :) Just tested it to check. I would have expected
the code to be deep in the bowels of the original UNIX code and
hence it'd be unlikely that the later versions had lost it!

> I'd agree with that - annoying but not big.  Perhaps the best
> solution would be for those nice Demon (who support the DOS
> DIS suite) to supply the DIS package with a default "smtp
> separator" setting (eg. @@@@) in both autoexec.net and PCElm
> and the problem above would not arise.  If a separator were
> mandatory, one could dispense with the '>' processing.

And to fix PCElm to use the '>' if required...

-- 
<URL:http://www.pierrot.co.uk/>                                     Team AMIGA
We should declare war on North Vietnam.  We could pave the whole
country and put parking strips on it, and still be home by Christmas.
 - Ronald Reagan

In article <9712241446.3nyj@pierrot.co.uk>
           tez@pierrot.co.uk "Terrance Richard Boyes" wrote:

>Claire (9712q$cl@siberia.demon.co.uk) wrote:
>> 
>> something like this must be required on UNIX systems, or on any
>> others that use the "From " lines as message separators, so I
>> assume that its use is widespread.
>
>Yep, sendmail does the conversion here, so all incoming/outgoing mail
>with a From at the start of a line gets the ">" prepended. As far
>as mailreaders are concerned surely they should do the conversion.

That's the point, they can't because when they see

>From fred

They can't tell whether the > was in the original or one inserted
by the system.  All *nix systems I know are 'broken' like this, I
don't know why no-one ever fixed it there.  You can see it in the 
*nix mailreaders, they have exactly the same problem.

I'm currently planning to port elm - not the PCElm thing - to
DJGPP.  AFAICS it should be pretty easy, because it's configured
for GCC anyway...

(If you want me to see replies, please mail as well; I'm currently
working in Germany and can't get the Demon newsgroups there.  If
someone knows of a public access NNTP server which carries them and 
allows posting from non-Demon sites I'd be interested...)

.-------------------------------.-------------------------------------.
|    chris@keris.demon.co.uk	|  FIAWOL (Filking Is A Way Of Life)  |
`-------------------------------^-------------------------------------'

In article <882960668snz@siberia.demon.co.uk>
   9712q$cl@siberia.demon.co.uk (Claire) writes:

>Hmm.  If it was something that could be disabled, I can't see
>any problem with a change.   But even tho I don't use PCELM much
>these days (prefer Pegasus), I would be loathe to see any changes
>that would break it it, and not escaping any line is the message
>body beginning "From " would certainly break it.  From another
>quick reading, it would also break the PM-Demon gateway.

The PM-Demon gateway always breaks messages when it finds "\nFrom ".

-------------------------------------------------------------------
Phil Randal                                philr@hwcces.demon.co.uk
Environmental Services Department
Hereford and Worcester County Council
Worcester, UK

In article <dyNxFej030n@sktb.demon.co.uk>,
Paul L. Allen <pla@sktb.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>Seems reasonable to me.  When I contemplated fixing Arc KA9Q I was just
>going to make the ">" code conditional on having the separator set to
>"From".  I suppose making it insert ">" before any instance of the separator
>in the body is a better idea.  Mind you, that will only improve matters
>if mailers which detect a particular separator detect "\nseparator" and
>not just "separator", but it's still a better idea than mine.

Elm itself is quite clever.  I forget the exact pattern, but it looks
for something formatted like a "From " line - IIRC from experiments, it
requires both an address with an @-sign and a correctly formatted date
before it treats it as a separator in a mailbox.  It's a pity that we're
now stuck with a raft of lesser software which just looks for the "From ".

Nick

Nick Leverton (leveret@warren.demon.co.uk) wrote:
> 
> Elm itself is quite clever.  I forget the exact pattern, but it looks
> for something formatted like a "From " line - IIRC from experiments, it
> requires both an address with an @-sign and a correctly formatted date
> before it treats it as a separator in a mailbox.  It's a pity that we're
> now stuck with a raft of lesser software which just looks for the "From ".

What about local emails... They don't necessarily have an @ sign in.

-- 
<URL:http://www.pierrot.co.uk/>                                     Team AMIGA
The first rule of magic is simple. Don't waste your time waving your hands and
hoping when a rock or a club will do.  - McCloctnik the Lucid

In article <9801101536.3qhs@pierrot.co.uk>
   Terrance Richard Boyes <tez@pierrot.co.uk> writes:
>Nick Leverton (leveret@warren.demon.co.uk) wrote:
>> 
>> Elm itself is quite clever.  I forget the exact pattern, but it looks
>> for something formatted like a "From " line - IIRC from experiments, it
>> requires both an address with an @-sign and a correctly formatted date
>
>What about local emails... They don't necessarily have an @ sign in.

Maybe it doesn't need the "@" sign.  I meant to check at home, but
forgot - sorry.  It certainly does more stringent checks than just the
first five characters.

Nick