[comp.protocols.iso.x400] Automatic "I am on vacation" message generators

huitema@mirsa.inria.Fr (Christian Huitema) (05/20/88)

> 
> 	However, getting back to the X.400 case, what does the spec
> say about mailing lists, and such? Are they supposed to behave like
> the typical Internet case, and not explode the mailing list into
> the recipient field of the header? (i.e. can the solution I proposed
> still win in X.400 land?).
> 
> 	Erik E. Fair	ucbvax!fair	fair@ucbarpa.berkeley.edu
> 

There are currently several different non standard implementations of
mailing lists in the current X.400(84). Most of them will not put any recipient
indication in the P2 headers. With the 1988 standard comes the spec of a
MTA layer list distributor that even let the content of the message (header,
body) absolutely untouched.

But they HAVE TO put the list of recipients in the new writing of the
"envelope". And the algorithm suggested by Erik will hardly be
implementable, as there is absolutely no requirement that the header of
"normal" messages contains the full address of the recipients. Some systems
only put the "local id" of the recipient, i.e. some human readable
unformatted string.

Still, a good point for X.400(88) is that messages coming through D.List
will be recognizable by looking at special fields in the envelope.

Christian Huitema