On Thu, Apr 27, 2000 at 11:06:55AM -0400, Sam Roberts wrote:
> From: Jose Monteiro <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
> I'm not familiear with Gnus, but I am with RFC822, and this
> style of address is garbage.
>
> > [EMAIL PROTECTED] (John Doe)
> This ^^^^^^^^^^ is an RFC822 header **comment**, and
> should not be interpreted to mean **anything**. That some
> programs still generate it is lame. That some programs understand
> the convention is understandable in the interest of compatibility
> with wide-spread but broken implementations. The way mutt does
> it is the right way, and should be understandable to any program.
Unfortunately, it's not understandable to every program. In
particular, premail needs a particular comment to work. Yes, it
shouldn't have been done that way, but it was, and it's apparently no
longer being supported and I don't know of any alternative programs
with similar functionality to premail (if anyone does, _please_ point
me to them).
Mutt has/had the capability of supporting this type of addressing by
specifying "configure --enable-exact-address" (which means Mutt
doesn't automatically reformat the address), however recent versions
have a warning in the INSTALL file that this feature is broken and
should not be used. Too bad for users that need the feature. :(
> Also, the usenet news message format spec (can't recall the
> RFC) states that the usenet news format *must* be compliant with
> RFC822.
The draft of the RFC822 Update (Jan. '99) says this:
3.4
[...]
Note: Some legacy implementations used the simple form where the addr-
spec appears without the angle brackets, but included the name of the
recipient in parentheses as a comment following the addr-spec. Since the
meaning of the information in a comment is unspecified, implementations
SHOULD use the full name-addr form of the mailbox if a name of the
recipient is being used instead of the legacy form. Also, because some
legacy implementations interpret the comment, comments SHOULD NOT
generally be used in address fields to avoid confusing such
implementations.
It doesn't say "MUST NOT" be used (which it does say about things that
are prohibited), so I don't see any RFC violation if Mutt by default
reformats the address (honors the "SHOULD NOT"), but allows the user
to specify the commented form when it's necessary.
I hope the bug in the "--enable-exact-address" feature gets fixed soon.
-rex
--
Photons have mass? I didn't even know they were Catholic.
