[net.mail.headers] Why "BITNET mail follows"??

mcb@styx.UUCP (Michael C. Berch) (03/15/86)

It seems that all or most of the messages that reach me from BITNET
through a gateway have a RFC822 subject line of "BITNET mail follows".
Since the actual message contains a perfectly real and reasonable
subject line, why can't the software that translates the message into
RFC822/SMTP format also find the subject line and generate the proper
header?  Since I read many mailing lists and newsgroups, I like to be
able to scan subject lines or use the KILL feature of "rn". Everytime
I see a "BITNET mail follows" I have to slow down and read the article
to see if it is of interest. (Or else purge all the BITNET stuff
without looking.)

Does anybody know why the BITNET gateways can't cope with subject
lines? (Does anybody besides me CARE?)

Michael C. Berch
Control Data Corp. / Lawrence Livermore Natl. Laboratory
ARPA: mcb@lll-tis-b.ARPA
UUCP: {akgua,allegra,cbosgd,decwrl,dual,ihnp4,sun}!idi!styx!mcb