On Thu, 14 Sep 1995 12:10:43 -0400 Dave Lampson <[log in to unmask]> said:
 
>Nathan, I  would strongly  urge *you*  to take a  look at  your manuals.
>Nowhere  are  the step-by-step  mechanics  of  moderated lists  covered.
>There's plenty  of stuff in there  about philosophies and how  to set up
>the  basics of  the list,  but nothing  about how  to actually  edit and
>redistribute the messages or what to expect when you do edit messages.
 
There would need  to be as many  sets of instructions as  there are major
mail packages  out there. The  hard reality is  that, while all  the mail
packages all have commands called  "forward" or "resend" or "reply", they
do very different things on different mail programs. There is no Internet
standard  saying what  a command  called  "forward" should  do, and  each
vendor has used his own definition,  resulting in a total mess. Most mail
programs do not even identify themselves,  so there's no way for LISTSERV
to compensate for known idiosyncrasies.
 
>No, it  is not  that simple. If  you "forward" the  message back  to the
>list, then  it appears that  all messages posted  to the list  come from
>you,  and you  get  those  nasty embedded  headers.  This is  completely
>unacceptable, and  something even  Majordomo is  smart enough  to handle
>correctly.
 
This isn't about  being "smart" vs not  "smart". There are a  lot of ways
for a mail  program to "forward" a  message. If you make a  matrix of all
the forward commands in the world vs all the mailing list managers in the
world, and  whether or  not they work  the way you  want them  to, you'll
probably find a bunch of X scattered more or less randomly.
 
>You can bounce mail, and that retains  the header info and just adds the
>"Resent-by" line and approval line.
 
I assume that your  mail program won't allow you to  edit the message, so
this doesn't work for you. Other mail programs allow you to edit the text
when you "bounce" (an action which  they may call "forward" or "resend").
Many (most?) mail programs don't let you edit headers at all, so there is
no universal  method that  would work everywhere,  except when  you don't
want to modify the message. Then LISTSERV  can use the copy it had stored
and there is no idiosyncrasy to worry about.
 
  Eric