[news.software.b] Reply-To: nits

bob@tinman.cis.ohio-state.edu (Bob Sutterfield) (09/13/89)

I received the following comment from a correspondent:

   (b) I'm more upset, personally, by people like you who set up
       "Reply-to:" entries that break vnews.

In the way I had my Reply-To: arranged, I was going by the last
paragraph of RFC1036 2.1.6 and the first sentence of 2.2.1 which
indicate that Reply-To: could contain any RFC822-legal "Internet
format" mail address.  But I completely missed the last sentence of
2.2.1 which might disallow the notation I've been using [name
<address>] by specifying the other [address (name)] as an option.

I had always considered that Reply-To: was of interest only to
mailers, and therefore only needed to be an 822-legal address.  But it
now seems that 1036 addresses the issue more directly than I had
originally though.

In the interests of being conservative in what I generate, I have
changed my Reply-To:, for now, just in case.  Any comments?

brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton) (09/13/89)

That's good, because non-conforming reply-to lines might have upset
a newsclip program that looked at them.   One of newsclip's primative
data types is a 'userid' and it parses a news style from line to read it.

Headers from, reply-to, sender and approved are all of this data type.
Of course it's rare to use reply-to as a header.

I should write a parser for full 822 names, but the rfc is a pain to
decode on this point and it seems much moe hairy that it needs to be.

Unless somebody has a quick 822 parser they want to give me or point me at.
-- 
Brad Templeton, Looking Glass Software Ltd.  --  Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473