solomon (06/19/82)
Some mailers (most notably /bin/mail) do not automatically include a To: field in mail sent. If the "r" command in B netnews uses such a mailer, your response will not indicate who it was intended for. Such information is extremely valuable, especially if the letter goes astray (as it so often does). I suggest that readnews go to extra pains to insure a To: field such as (1) use a mailer that supplies it, such as /usr/ucb/mail, (2) supply the necessary option to make the mailer supply it (such as mail -t ...), or (3) add its own To: line (may be hard, since the header lines are separated from the body by a blank line, usually supplied by the mailer. To be of maximum use (especially in ARPA-land), the To: line must be part of the header). BTW, readnews should follow the same convention for its own headers: The header is separated from the body by a blank line. This convention would prevent that bug we've been seeing where the first line of a joke is stripped off because it starts "Q: How many ..."