argv@turnpike.Eng.Sun.COM (Dan Heller) (06/02/90)
In article <1990Jun1.213148.21808@chinet.chi.il.us> les@chinet.chi.il.us (Leslie Mikesell) writes: > One thing that *is* a problem is trying to do a reply to all the > recepients of the message from a dumb uucp site. Mailx uses > 'r', Elm uses 'g', Mush uses replyall, AT&T PMX-mailers use <F5>(Ans) > <F2>(All) to try to interpret the To: and Cc: lines, BTW, Mush is the only one of these (as far as I know) that is configurable. That's how mush has been so successful at emulating other user agents. But that's just the user interface aspect; the functionality of what happens behind the scenes is another issue. > and they all produce fairly bizzare results. At least in mush, these results are configurable. That is, you can tell mush to construct a return path to mail in various ways depending on details about your site. For example, you can tell it to truncate all addresses to be simple user/host.dom.ain syntax, or, to route all domain based mail thru a particular host... Or, recipient addresses can be routed thru the original author's host, via a "better path" if you know it (and care to provide it), etc... Where to get this information can be obtained from any set of Headers that you choose as well. The options are lengthy, but this flexibility allows for just about every site and configuration to be able to use and reply to mail with as little header editing by the user. Great for sysadmins who hate having to answer user questions.. > The most likely thing to work > (short of tossing the uucp path concept entirely), is to reverse > the From_ path and stick it in front of the other addresses, then > collapse any obvious duplications ( A!A A!B!A). Unfortunately, this > doesn't work well if user@host or domain!user notation is used. Mush's algorithms for constructing reply addresses consists of many heuristics including some of those you mention here. It gets around the syntax differences (e.g., ! vs @) by converting all addresses to ! format first for consistency and then returning them (if necessary/desired/possible) to the original format the address was found in. (Note: this is not always possible and is highly dependent on the options you've chosen.) Not forgetting the original comment/question that brought up this whole issue -- yes, uunet does munge headers incorrectly (From: Return-Path:, Reply-To:, etc (by my observation)), but so far, Mush has always been able to reconstruct return addresses pretty well (tho, not always :-). The Mush man page goes into detail about the options available, how to set them, and what it does to addresses in each case. -- dan ---------------------------------------------------- O'Reilly && Associates argv@sun.com / argv@ora.com Opinions expressed reflect those of the author only.
les@chinet.chi.il.us (Leslie Mikesell) (06/05/90)
In article <136556@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> argv@turnpike.Eng.Sun.COM (Dan Heller) writes: >> One thing that *is* a problem is trying to do a reply to all the >> recepients of the message from a dumb uucp site. >Mush's algorithms for constructing reply addresses consists of >many heuristics including some of those you mention here. It gets >around the syntax differences (e.g., ! vs @) by converting all >addresses to ! format first for consistency and then returning >them (if necessary/desired/possible) to the original format the >address was found in. Unfortunately, I'm pretty much stuck with AT&T's PC mail UA's (Access Plus and PMX-Starmail) unless I can find something else that runs under DOS with background transfers and an idiot-simple interface with a built-in editor and binary file attachments. The To: and Cc: lines are pre-munged as they are moved to the PMX IN folders by reversing the From_ line and deleting duplications. However, it doesn't know anything about domain names or aliasing so group replies tend to be routed back through the originating machine even when that is obviously not necessary. I guess rabid rerouting by the MTA is the only way to fix things (no flames, please - I don't advertise connections to anywhere else...). The only other possibility seems to be to have the delivering MTA pre-pre-mung the To: and Cc: lines into the real hostnames so PMX will get it right, but I don't really want the users to see that stuff. Has anyone else solved this? Les Mikesell les@chinet.chi.il.us