rob@pbhyf.PacBell.COM (Rob Bernardo) (08/21/88)
THE ISSUE: Many mailers including elm, allow the sender to save a copy of outbound mail in a format similar to saved received mail. When listing the contents of a mail folder, some users find it more informative to list the repicient instead of the sender when the user is the sender. That is to say, if you've sent the mail, the listing will show who you sent it to, instead of showing your ownlogname. (Mailx has this as option that can be set in your .mailrc.) The main issue here is whether to do this conversion upon *storing* a copy of outbound mail, or upon *display*. THE WAY IT WORKS UNDER ELM 2.1ALPHA AS INITIALLY RELEASED TO THE TESTERS: In the original 2.1, elm performs the conversion upon *storage*. The "from line" of saved inbound mail is stored in the form: From [sender's logname] [date] while the "from line" of saved outbound mail is stored in the form: From To: [recipient alias or address] [date] When *displaying* the contents of a folder, elm detects the "To:" in the "from line" and writes To [recipient alias or address] in place of [sender's name or address] WHAT I PROPOSE IS THIS: In the proposed change, elm performs the conversion upon *display*. In otherwords, the "from line" of saved mail (whether inbound or outbound) is stored with the form: From [sender's logname] [date] Upon *display*, elm checks to see if the logname in the "from line" is the user's logname. If so, the "to line" is parsed in it's place, and the logname or address derived from it is displayed with the word "To" prepended. In other words, in displaying the contents of a folder, mail sent by the user is displayed as: To [recipient's name or address] in place of [sender's name or address] BENEFITS OF THE CHANGE: 1. In the old method, information is lost, that is to say, the sender's identity is not preserved in the saved copy of outbound mail. If for some reason, a person other than the original sender of the mail were to read a mail folder, this user would not know who the sender was, even by examining the mail folder directly (e.g. with an editor). In the new method, the sender's identity is preserved in the saved copy. 2. In the old method, if the recipient was initially specified as an alias rather than as an address, it is the alias that gets stored in the "From To:" line. Since aliases can be deleted from or altered in one's alias database, information about the recipient of the letter can be lost or misleading. Furthermore, even if the alias has not been changed, discovering who the actual recipient is would involve examining the alias database. The new method does not have this difficulty. 3. The old method has two formats for the "from line", while the new method has one format for the "from line", a format that is compatible for use with other mailers such as mailx. -- Rob Bernardo, Pacific Bell UNIX Small Bus. Systems Development & Maintenance Email: ...![backbone]!pacbell!rob OR rob@PacBell.COM Office: (415) 823-2417 Room 4E750A, San Ramon Valley Administrative Center Residence: (415) 827-4301 R Bar JB, Concord, California