UCB Mail tries to be too smart

[Mark Sirota]

In article <918 at ur-cc.UUCP> I write:
> I ask the net: Is this true?  Do "most Internet sites use RFC822 as their
> *internal* mail representation also"?

Well, from a truly impressive number of responses both posted and mailed,
it would look as though the majority recommends using RFC822 format
internally.  I will be changing my sendmail.cf's to do this.

Thanks to everyone who participated.

I would like to restate the following responses, just because they say it
so well.  First, Craig Everhart makes it clear why you should use RFC822
internally, and secondly, Kurt Shoens gives a persuading reason why UCB
Mail (or any other MUA) should not rewrite addresses.

In message <IY0LJDy00VsL86fHFj at andrew.cmu.edu> "Craig F. Everhart" <cfe+ at andrew.cmu.edu> writes:
| I can think of re-sending and forwarding (packaging onemessage inside the
| body of another) as example user actions that often aren't handled in a
| correct manner when local host names are stripped (or abbreviated), and I
| imagine that there are others.  Just to be clear, the problems I cite
| occur when a piece of mail is sent locally, then that received piece of
| mail is re-sent or forwarded elsewhere; the addresses in the headers
| aren't usually updated correctly.  What happens when some external
| recipient of such mail tries to use the addresses in the headers of that
| mail?

In article <701 at ks.UUCP> kurt at ibmarc.UUCP (Kurt Shoens) writes:
> Sounds like Mark is right.  At the time UCB Mail was written, there WAS no
> sendmail to rewrite outgoing addresses, so it was felt necessary to do the
> editing on reply that is now causing the troubles.  In terms of the Right
> Thing thing, it feels wrong to me to have both sendmail and Mail rewriting
> addresses; UCB Mail should stop doing so.
-- 
Mark Sirota - University of Rochester, Rochester, NY
 Internet: msir at cc.rochester.edu
 Bitnet:   msir_ss at uordbv.bitnet
 UUCP:     ...!rochester!ur-cc!msir