daveb@geac.UUCP (12/04/87)
Brad Templeton writes: There's no rule that says we can't have some aliases so that you're at TO.ON.Ca as well, is there? Rayan writes: There are no such rules. The problem in this case is that there is no mechanism to do this kind of aliasing in a global fashion, or even within a single network. The only way I can think of to accomplish this, is if *all* mail goes through a gateway machine whose mailer can do the translation. rae@unicus.UUCP (Clith de T'nir) writes: I would assume that, with the official existence of ".Ca" [note 'nice' capitalization :-)] that there now exist in various places alias tables that say If mail with '.ca' on the end shows up, send it to foo.domain Could this not be expanded to say If mail with '.ca' or '.can' or '.cdn' or '.canada' on the end shows up, send it to foo.domain And finally I say... All joking aside, to get a domain-and-usenet mailer up, you pretty-well have to put in a mapping table that can transform all the elements of the domain string: bear in mind that you get x@y-addresses, y!x-addresses, x%y- and/or y%x-addresses (interpretation varies with net in use!) and @USC-ISF.ARPA:Q-Smith addresses. Not to mention variants like Fred Fonebone <Fonebone @USC-ISIQ.ARPA>. Having been one of the implementors of GCOS Internet Mail (along with Drew Sullivan, Brian Ruptash & Dr. Paul D. Stachour), I strongly recommend any implementor look at the RFC's and talk to the ARPAnauts before attempting to reinvent the wheel. It is almost easy to write a user-agent-level mapper which drives off the site's mapping tables. And the more you try to avoid generality in parsing and transforming the naming schemes, the more trouble you will have. Generality isn't just desirable: you won't get anything that works if you aim too low. --dave (careful!) c-b ps: we ended up with a host/domain table and a user table, bot simple ascii flat files, both readable on average with one read() each, and both trivial to edit with a text editor: Honeywell: official_name: HONEYWELL type: domain state: active name_table >netmail>host_table LosAngeles LA LADC official_name: LADC.HONEYWELL type: gateway state: active fdorward_queue: $_ladc and so on... -- David Collier-Brown. {mnetor|yetti|utgpu}!geac!daveb Geac Computers International Inc., | Computer Science loses its 350 Steelcase Road,Markham, Ontario, | memory (if not its mind) CANADA, L3R 1B3 (416) 475-0525 x3279 | every 6 months.