arnold@jarthur.Claremont.EDU (Arnold de Leon) (02/11/90)
Rn patches 41-44 removed the "Reply-To:" from Pnews. Instead a "From:" this inserted. Unfortunately this causes inews (from B news Pl. 19) to not append the .signature files. Tracking this was particularly fun since followups worked just fine. A fix would be to have Pnews generate a "Reply-To:" lines instead of "From:" lines. Hopefully my signature appears below. -- Arnold de Leon arnold@jarthur.claremont.edu Computer Science Dept., HMC uunet!jarthur!arnold Claremont, CA 91711 arnold@hmcvax.bitnet
tale@cs.rpi.edu (David C Lawrence) (02/12/90)
In <4331@jarthur.Claremont.EDU> arnold@jarthur.Claremont.EDU (Arnold de Leon): > Rn patches 41-44 removed the "Reply-To:" from Pnews. Instead a "From:" this > inserted. Unfortunately this causes inews (from B news Pl. 19) to not append > the .signature files. Tracking this was particularly fun since followups > worked just fine. > A fix would be to have Pnews generate a "Reply-To:" lines instead of > "From:" lines. There are several fixes and this is one of the worst. Look at the article you posted. The From: line and Reply-To: line are exactly the same. Now, since From: is a required header line and Reply-To: is not why not just save everyone the bytes and keep the Reply-To: line out all together? You could: a) Not have B News inews only append .signature if there is a Reply-To:. (Does it really behave this way? Why?) b) Insert your .signature manually each time or come up with some better way to have it happen automatically. Adding Reply-To: is not a better way. c) Switch to C News. This is very much admittedly overkill for this but you have the benefit of an inews that you can change easily to reflect local policy and an inews that does not behave like you have described by default. d) Don't use a .signature. Then you're saving even more bytes.
arnold@jarthur.Claremont.EDU (Arnold de Leon) (02/12/90)
In <4331@jarthur.Claremont.EDU> I wrote: [.signature not being included by inews if "From:" line present] >> A fix would be to have Pnews generate a "Reply-To:" lines instead of >> "From:" lines. In article <FL8!2=@rpi.edu> tale@cs.rpi.edu (David C Lawrence) writes: > >There are several fixes and this is one of the worst. David is right, there are better fixes. When I posted the original article I had not tested other solutions. Pnews can leave the "From:" and "Reply-To:" lines out entirely. At least with B news (PL 19) inews will insert a valid "From:" line. -- Arnold de Leon arnold@jarthur.claremont.edu Computer Science Dept., HMC uunet!jarthur!arnold Claremont, CA 91711 arnold@hmcvax.bitnet
davidsen@crdos1.crd.ge.COM (Wm E Davidsen Jr) (02/13/90)
In article <FL8!2=@rpi.edu> tale@cs.rpi.edu (David C Lawrence) writes: | There are several fixes and this is one of the worst. Look at the | article you posted. The From: line and Reply-To: line are exactly the | same. Now, since From: is a required header line and Reply-To: is not | why not just save everyone the bytes and keep the Reply-To: line out | all together? Sorry, the From: and Reply-To: lines are not always the same for several reasons. A user may elect to have mail go to a personal machine, for instance, and many mail systems feel free to rewrite the From: line but leave the Reply-To: alone. This becomes even more true when the From: field becomes a series of bang addresses ending in an @node notation. This may or may not be useful, and the path may not be reversable. Reply-TO: has the function of describing the address to be used for returning communications, and it is not synonymous with From:. Saving bytes is a nice thing, but having reliable communications is another, more difficult, problem. -- bill davidsen (davidsen@crdos1.crd.GE.COM -or- uunet!crdgw1!crdos1!davidsen) "Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward" -me
wisner@hayes.fai.alaska.edu (Bill Wisner) (02/13/90)
In article <2126@crdos1.crd.ge.COM>, davidsen@crdos1 (Wm E Davidsen Jr) writes: > Sorry, the From: and Reply-To: lines are not always the same for >several reasons. A user may elect to have mail go to a personal machine, >for instance, and many mail systems feel free to rewrite the From: line >but leave the Reply-To: alone. You're missing the point ENTIRELY. If you want to insert a Reply-To: header so that mail gets directed to the right place, that's just dandy. But why, WHY, should the news software automatically generate a Reply-To: header that is *identical* to the From: header? Utter brain death. Larry Wall must have been having a bad day. When you have two headers that contain exactly the same information, ONE MUST GO. It is true that mailers are known to rewrite From: lines (although no mailer should *ever* rewrite any From: line with a fully qualified domain name, Yea, Verily and Forsooth, praise SMTP!) but I defy you to name one USENET site that does. Bill Wisner <wisner@hayes.fai.alaska.edu> Gryphon Gang Fairbanks AK 99775
chip@chinacat.Lonestar.ORG (Chip Rosenthal) (02/13/90)
wisner@hayes.fai.alaska.edu (Bill Wisner) writes: >If you want to insert a Reply-To: header so that mail gets directed to the >right place, that's just dandy. But why, WHY, should the news software >automatically generate a Reply-To: header that is *identical* to the From: My gripes about the old (patchlevel 40) headers were: (1) Reply-To: was useless. It just duplicated From: and there wasn't an easy way of configuring it otherwise. Bill, remember when you were messing with rn on killer years back and I wanted a Pnews hack so that my messages would have Reply-To's to my vector address? Well...you still owe that :-) (2) Pnews shouldn't provide blank Sender:, Expires:, or References: fields. The only one of these which should be entered by a hoomun bean is Expires:. And if you don't know how to put one in yourself, you shouldn't be screwing around with it. The XENIX portability patches I mentioned here a couple of days ago also include some bug fixes. Pnews is effected. Specifically, I did the following: (1) The "From:" line, which was added in the post-40 patches is no longer there. This will fix the problem with inews not appending signatures. (2) The "Reply-To:" is reinstated, but only if you've got a REPLYTO environment parameter defined. Otherwise, it doesn't appear. (3) The "Sender:", "Expires:" and "References:" blank lines have been removed. On the other hand, maybe this omitting the .signature thing isn't such a bad deal... -- Chip Rosenthal | Yes, you're a happy man and you're chip@chinacat.Lonestar.ORG | a lucky man, but are you a smart Unicom Systems Development, 512-482-8260 | man? -David Bromberg
peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva) (02/13/90)
In article <1990Feb12.202553.12619@hayes.fai.alaska.edu> wisner@hayes.fai.alaska.edu (Bill Wisner) writes: > When you have two headers that contain exactly the same information, ONE > MUST GO. Fine, then the place to do that is in Pnews *after* the editing is done. The user still gets to see a valid reply-to line. Why don't you make the change and post it? Or maybe this might be better in anne.jones. -- _--_|\ Peter da Silva. +1 713 274 5180. <peter@ficc.uu.net>. / \ \_.--._/ Xenix Support -- it's not just a job, it's an adventure! v "Have you hugged your wolf today?" `-_-'