Dave-Platt@ladc (Dave Platt) (05/23/85)
We've had a slightly similar experience with our SMTP interface.
By way of introduction: we (Honeywell's Los Angeles Development
Center) run our own O/S (CP-6) and mail package ("MAIL" - clever, no?)
and speak to the outside world via SMTP over an X.29 link to
an ARPA-node Multics site in Cambridge. We look to the outside world
like a "local part" of CISL-SERVICE-MULTICS.
From what I've learned, the Multics SMTP software has only a partial
implementation of quoted names... it can accept quoted names in the
"local part" of a simple address, but not in a more complex address
with routing information included. Eg., <"Dave Platt"@LADC> will work,
but their receiver barfs on <@CISL-SERVICE-MULTICS.ARPA:"Dave Platt"@LADC>.
Their software doesn't crash, it just rejects the address as being
illegal.
For this reason (and because we've been told that many mailers cannot
generate quoted names or handle names that contain blanks) we've gone
to a scheme such as that mentioned earlier - when we send mail outwards,
our mailer converts all embedded blanks into hyphens; when we receive,
the receiver looks up the name as given by the sender, and if it doesn't
find it then maps hyphens into blanks and tries again. Most mailers
seem to be able to handle names with hyphens, and we've had generally
good luck with this scheme.
It does seem a shame, though, that so many mailers don't accept a
legal construct. We've found it much more practical to modify our
own software so that its output is acceptable to the "lowest common
denominator", rather than expecting everybody to handle every
construct permitted by the RFCs... unfortunate, but that seems to be
the way the world is working these days.