uucp scripts (continued)

[Alexis Rosen]

In article <46455 at apple.Apple.COM> ksand at Apple.COM (Kent Sandvik) writes:
>In article <1990Nov9.132804.26574 at panix.uucp> alexis at panix.uucp (Alexis Rosen) writes:
>>Kent Sandvik wrote:
>>>It's practically impossible to provide a sendmail.cf file that will work
>>>for all sites and network configurations. To start with sendmail is a little
>>>bit, eh, bohemian.
>>
>>I disagree- The script I posted works well for (as far as I can tell) any
>>uucp-only Mac. If you hacked it to run TCP/IP as well (which I think I
>>managed, but I won't swear to it) you'd have a script that covers 99% of
>>A/UX users' needs.
>
>You don't assume that the whole email world consists of bang and ampersand
>email addresses (uucp and Internet). You have DECNET nodes, BITNET, 
>soon X.400 sites, various local networks with totally different email
>headers, Compuserve...

Unless you're a big-time mail admin (who knows sendmail as well as E.A.)
that's probably exactly what you can assume. Most people will set up their
mac to talk to either a few local-net hosts or a few uucp neighbors, and
a forwarding host (again either uucp or network).

BTW, don't you mean "at-sign," not "ampersand?" And don't forget percents...

>Then you place an A/UX machine in one place on the node tree, and voila
>you need some time to configure your sendmail scripts in order to speak
>to the rest of the world. 
>
>It is true that you could make something that you believe that will work
>for 99% of the cases, but you spend 99% of you time trying to fix the
>last 1%.

Exactly my point. So spend that 1% of the time to make 99% of us happy
(as opposed to the ~0% happy with sendmail now). The other 1% know better
than to expect you to set up a central mail hub for them anyway.

>>nonexistant) QA that went into uucp. I get the feeling that every A/UX
>>person in Apple was born with a Thinnet connector in their bellybutton.
>>They haven't shown much concern (through 2.0) for serial stuff.
>
>Well, I do not have a Thinnet connector in my physical body, but I have 
>used sendmail and A/UX 1.0 via modem since 1988.

So have I. You've got my sympathy.

>I personally hardly belive that one should spend a lot of time fixing
>sendmail so it's userfriendly, especially in the advent of new 
>electronic mail networks and X.500 servers.

User friendly? How about mail-friendly? I don't care how ugly it is. I just
want it to work the way it's supposed to. I can't wait five years for X.500
to get my mail across town, I can walk it over considerably faster than that.

>Regards,
>Kent Sandvik

A/UX 2.0 is a wonderful product. But I'm afraid you're defending one of its
weakest parts...

---
Alexis Rosen
Owner/Sysadmin, PANIX Public Access Unix, NY
{cmcl2,apple}!panix!alexis