On 2000-12-02 10:43:07 -0500, Sam Varshavchik wrote:
>>> Sendmail has been rewriting 8bit to quoted-printable content
>>> for decades, when relaying 8bit mail to 7bit-only relays.
>> First of all, sendmail has of course not done that "from the
>> beginning", since it's considerably older than MIME. That MIME
> Sorry to confuse you with facts, but the entire purpose behind
> sendmail's creation was to be able to push mail between widely
> dissimilar systems that used widely different mail formats.
Oh yes, of course, it has been rewriting 8bit to quoted-printable
"for decades", which was your original claim - see above. You may
wish to notice that quoted-printable hasn't been specified before
the early nineties. Maybe you try to get _your_ facts straight.
> A small quote from the Oreilly book
> (http://www.bigmouse.net/literature/Oreilly/sendmail/prf1_02.htm):
> Responding to these and other changes, Eric evolved
> delivermail into sendmail. To ensure that messages transferred
> between networks would obey the conventions required by those
> networks, Eric took a "liberal" approach - modifying address
> information to conform, rather than rejecting it. At the time,
> for example, UUCP mail often had no headers at all, so
> sendmail had to create them from scratch.
> Facts can be a stubborn thing, heh? Sendmail has been rewriting
> messages for years -- yes, "from the beginning" -- even before
> MIME came into being. MIME is just a modern standard for
> rewriting mail in today's environment.
You may wish to notice that there is a difference between rewriting
headers (which sendmail has been doing for a long time), and between
messing around with the mail body.
>> rewriting stuff is a rather new invention,
> No it's not.
Of course not - when you rip things out of context.
> Anything that requires mail to be delivered from point A to point
> B with its headers intact is a completely broken protocol.
This is ridiculous. One could, just as well, argue that any
protocol which isn't even able to transport messages without messing
around with them is broken.
>>> Bottom line: RFC 1847 is broken. It breaks several decades'
>>> worth of established mail protocols and conventions.
>> This is nonsense. Please try getting a clue about e-mail
>> standards before you start coding.
> Well, then, Einstein, go ahead and code up a mail server, to show
> me how.
Why should I? There are nicely working MTAs which (1) don't ignore
the relevant specifications and (2) whose authors do have a clue.
Try looking at sendmail, postfix, or qmail for reference.
--
Thomas Roessler <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
