At 12:45 AM 11/29/99 -0500, Roger Fajman wrote:
>> Here's one battle I want to watch from very far away.
[...]
>> Somebody is wrong here. and I've a feeling it isn't the qmail people.
>
>It's not qmail that's broken. There are very few characters that are not
>allowed on the left side of an email address. LISTSERV uses asterisks for
>a similar purpose and we've run into problems with Banyan Mail gateways
>that don't seem to like that.
This is true. I now send a click-on-me URL in all of my confirmations,
with a "get" mode URL with parameters on the command line that include the
user's e-mail address and the token. This brings up a CGI which, if
everything checks out, forges the confirmation mail from their address to
my fixed majordomo address. Invoked without arguments it brings up a
simple form that gives them space to cut and paste those items. (I use an
MD5 hash instead of the Majordomo hash).
All of the direct e-mail approaches work as well, including the mailto URL
that might just format the mail for them.
I gave up on trying to figure out how to make everyone's mailer work, how
to get them to send plain text, how to turn off line wrap and so forth.
And, frankly, this does not extend anyone's capabilities, it is just a
convenience item.
Since I did this simple piece of work, I have had many many fewer
complaints about "Can't figure out how to subscribe, please help", and many
fewer user interactions that make me spend time solving problems. I note
that most folks still go the e-mail route for confirms, but, maybe 25%
confirm via the web.
In any case, you might consider using the web to finesse the broken e-mail
system.
Alternatively, consider providing an instructional page that explains how
the end user caught in this pickle can telnet to port 25 of the system that
MX's for the target and manually put in the e-mail to this weird address
from themselves. :-)
--
The largest civil rights organization in the USA? By far, it is the NRA.
Nick Simicich mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://scifi.squawk.com/njs.html -- Stop by and Light Up The World!
