montnaro@sprite.steinmetz (Skip Montanaro) (11/30/87)
Internet mail to our local network of Suns goes through a VMS VAX which adds a little something extra to return addresses. For instance, zip@zap.domain is transformed into zip%zap.domain.tcpip@csbvax.steinmetz. Undoing this in the sendmail.cf file is pretty easy, but sendmail only generates a From field in the correct format, it doesn't rewrite the From: field. On the other hand, GNU Emacs discards the From field (in rmail-nuke-pinhead-header, I believe), preferring to display the From: field, which defeats my attempts at making mail headers more readable (and useful to the mail software running on our Suns). I can patch the rmail.el code to pay attention to From, however, the business of which field (From or From:) is better, preferable, or more authoritative has always been somewhat perplexing to me, and I'd like to get it straight before butchering things. What's the straight dope? Can I make sendmail rewrite the From: field? Can somebody from the Free Software Foundation explain rmail's behavior? I imagine this is either old hat or uninteresting to most readers of these groups, so reply directly to me and I will summarize if there is enough interest. Thanks, Skip (montanaro@ge-crd.arpa or uunet!steinmetz!sprite!montanaro)
davidsen@steinmetz.steinmetz.UUCP (William E. Davidsen Jr) (12/01/87)
In article <8013@steinmetz.steinmetz.UUCP> montanaro@ge-crd.arpa (Skip Montanaro) writes: | Internet mail to our local network of Suns goes through a VMS VAX which adds | a little something extra to return addresses. For instance, zip@zap.domain is One of the other burning questions is, should the "Reply-to:" field override all others and be used instead of any from field. That would solve your problem, if only everybody's mailers did the same thing. -- bill davidsen (wedu@ge-crd.arpa) {uunet | philabs | seismo}!steinmetz!crdos1!davidsen "Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward" -me
markl@PTT.LCS.MIT.EDU (12/04/87)
In-Reply-To: davidsen@steinmetz.steinmetz.UUCP's message of 1 Dec 87 16:21:47 GMT
Repository: PTT
Originating-Client: thyme
From: davidsen@steinmetz.steinmetz.UUCP (William E. Davidsen Jr)
Keywords: GNU Emacs, sendmail
Date: 1 Dec 87 16:21:47 GMT
Reply-To: davidsen@crdos1.UUCP (bill davidsen)
Distribution: na
One of the other burning questions is, should the "Reply-to:" field
override all others and be used instead of any from field. That would
solve your problem, if only everybody's mailers did the same thing.
--
bill davidsen (wedu@ge-crd.arpa)
{uunet | philabs | seismo}!steinmetz!crdos1!davidsen
"Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward" -me
Depends on whose brand of standard you like. If you follow the
Internet RFC-822 standard, there is a specific hierarchy of fields to
reply to. It is, in priority order, "reply-to:", followed by "from:",
followed by "sender:" (if present).
markl
Internet: markl@ptt.lcs.mit.edu
Mark L. Lambert
MIT Laboratory for Computer Science
Distributed Systems Group
----------cfe+@andrew.cmu.edu.UUCP (12/08/87)
RFC-822 does indicate a standard order of fields to reply to, but it isn't all three of those. It's to use the Reply-To: field, if present; otherwise, the From: field. You never reply to a Sender: address. What I mean by ``reply to'' is that when a user asks to reply to a message (say, X), then the user's mail agent may assist the user by providing values for the fields in the header of a new message. Typically, the To:, Subject:, and In-reply-to: (if not also References:) fields are derived from the fields of message X. When the mail agent provides a value for the To: field, it should use the value that was in the Reply-to: field of message X, or the From: field of message X in case message X had no Reply-to: field. (Whether the user agent makes use of the contents of the To: or CC: fields of message X is pretty much up to the user agent.) This case is different from a system's automatically returning an error message to the sender of a piece of mail. In that case, RFC821 and RFC822 technically disagree, but what it's come down to is that you return the mail to the argument of SMTP's MAIL FROM: command, if you got the mail via SMTP.