[comp.mail.misc] "X-" blithering

stewarta@sco.COM (Stewart I. Alpert) (08/04/88)

In article <17601@glacier.STANFORD.EDU> jbn@glacier.STANFORD.EDU (John B. Nagle) writes:
>
>     The X mail system (is this part of X windows?) seems to indulge in
>heavy self-promotion.  Is all the following, taken from incoming mail,
>necessary?  It has little value to the recipient.
>
>
The X-whatever headers are not from any single system. There is an RFC-822 
convention that allows [programs|sites|people|etc] to add their own headers
by proceeding them with 'X-'.  This assures that RFC-822 compliant mailers
won't confuse these with 'officially' defined headers.  These headers may
or may not have any value to the recipient (or sender for that matter). :-)


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