gordon@sneaky.UUCP (Gordon Burditt) (08/03/90)
>>What the documentation should clearly state for sites that are >>using netnews for ->usenet<- traffic, that INTERNET should ALWAYS >>be #defined (even for sites not "on" the Internet, and even for >>sites not running pathalias). Path: lines DO NOT WORK FOR REPLY. You need a third option here. There are still mailers that think that a@b.c is a mis-spelled local user. >Its never too late to change. If we do nothing, we are stuck with >our present problems. If we fix the software now, people will >start to use it and the problem of mail being sent along Path: >lines will sloowly fade away. > >I propose having three choices for the configuration: > > REPLY_RFC822 - Replies to the contents of From: or Reply-To: > > REPLY_PATH - Replies to the contents of Path: - not recommended > > REPLY_RFC976 - replys to a uucp bang path (for mailers that don't > understand @) constructed by [fill in the blank] And the third choice should be "Replies to the contents of From: or Reply-To: with the address form changed to RFC976 form". Since there are mailers out there that won't understand this either, there should be an option to prepend "neighbor!", where neighbor is a willing site with access to a routing database (This is the poor man's "smart-host" feature for those unwilling or unable to install smail 2.5). I do this manually all the time when replying from RN. If the INTERNET form contains a % or a ! or more than one @, abort the reply attempt, it's not worth it. Otherwise swap the left and right sides of the address delimited by the @, and change the @ into a !. Interestingly, I get about 50% bounces from user@site.domain, less than 10% bounces from site.domain!user (includes re-sending the bounced user@site.domain mail). Most of the bouncing happens from more than 4 hops away, and the To:, From:, and From_ lines generally give little clue what site the mail originated at or was destined for. (I run Smail 3 as a uucp-only site, and so does my neighbor who gets 98% of my outgoing net mail). Gordon L. Burditt sneaky.lonestar.org!gordon