jbuck@epimass.UUCP (06/05/87)
rn assumes that everyone is in the UUCP domain, and generates
Reply-To headers accordingly. In many cases, the result is not
disasterous (if the site is on the UUCP map, say), but sometimes it
is. For example, check this article out (irrelevant stuff zapped):
From: mischief@panda.STANFORD.EDU (Trudy Leonhard)
Newsgroups: soc.singles
Subject: Re: Feeling old...
Message-ID: <1715@panda.STANFORD.EDU>
Date: 3 Jun 87 03:56:56 GMT
Reply-To: mischief@panda.UUCP (Trudy Leonhard)
Organization: Stanford University
hello, networld? AM I GETTING THROUGH ANYMORE???!!!!???? Have they cut me
off? Hell, I knew it was rough to get out of NJ - but is the price no
more net.postings?
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The person in question is probably feeling lonely because mail
replies to her postings are going to a completely different machine:
namely the panda on the UUCP map, in Concord, Mass.
The solution is trivial. rn shouldn't generate a Reply-To header at
all! People can always add one if the reply should go to someone
else besides the poster. Meanwhile anyone on a domainized machine
should delete or change the reply-to header.
--
- Joe Buck jbuck@epimass.EPI.COM (in the brave new world of domains!)
{seismo,ucbvax,sun,decwrl,<smart-site>}!epimass.epi.com!jbuckmlandau@diamond.bbn.com.UUCP (06/05/87)
In news.software.b (<1234@epimass.EPI.COM>), jbuck@epimass.EPI.COM (Joe Buck) writes: > >rn assumes that everyone is in the UUCP domain, and generates >Reply-To headers accordingly. In many cases, the result is not >disasterous (if the site is on the UUCP map, say), but sometimes it >is. For example, check this article out (irrelevant stuff zapped): The real solution is to fix Pnews (and a few other parts of rn) to understand about domains. This is one area in which rn lags way behind the world at large, and the 2.11 news distribution in particular. However, Larry Wall is reported to be working on a major new release of rn, so perhaps we'll see more support for domain names? In the meantime, it really isn't hard to fix Pnews to generate the correct headers, as this article demonstrates. (Check the Reply-To header!) -- Matt Landau "Lead me not into temptation... mlandau@diamond.bbn.com I can find it myself."
gnu@hoptoad.UUCP (06/05/87)
Not only is the header occasionally harmful, when rn puts in the wrong
address, but it is also stupid, since in 99% of the cases I've seen,
it contains exactly the same string as the "From:" header. Check a
few yourself.
Howabout a patch to rn that simply removes these headers? They're
a waste of space and an occasional nuisance. Do they do anybody
any good?
--
Copyright 1987 John Gilmore; you may redistribute only if your recipients may.
(This is an effort to bend Stargate to work with Usenet, not against it.)
{sun,ptsfa,lll-crg,ihnp4,ucbvax}!hoptoad!gnu gnu@ingres.berkeley.edulwall@sdcrdcf.UUCP (06/05/87)
The code is already in metaconfig and the new Pnews.SH to do this. So whenever
the new rn comes out, it'll be fixed.
But it *is* easy to fix in Pnews. That's the sort of reason Pnews is a shell
script.
Now, if I just fix Pnews to get around inews's quoting and signature
limitations, I'll be nearly everybody's hero. :-)
Larry Wall
{allegra,burdvax,cbosgd,hplabs,ihnp4,sdcsvax}!sdcrdcf!lwall