I just discovered that the Web-based subscription-management interface did
not offer the SHORTHDR option, and that if I set it for a subscriber, the
display reported it as
    [Special or obsolete header style]

I am worried that this option might disappear entirely, and I am hoping
someone can tell me if that is likely to happen. Here is why I need it.

A whole lot of email systems are now set up with multiple layers of inbound
and outbound system "hops." These might be real system-to-system
transmissions, or they might be system-internal handoffs from one process to
another, documented as separate trace entries in the email header. The point
is that they add "Received:" entries in the header.

Right now, the email world has a whole lot of servers that by default are
configured to reject any email with a certain number of hops recorded in the
header, on the grounds that it might be looping. In fact, a whole lot of
servers with those settings are set five or six hops into an email domain,
and reject anything with more than 15 hops. So a subscriber who's six layers
deep in his own domain sends email to a list server three or four layers
deep in another domain, and that server sends mail out to subscribers
(another three or four hops outbound) who might be five or six layers deep
in their own domains. All of a sudden, a whole lot of list email starts
getting thrown back because of what not-very-smart email servers think is a
mail loop.

The SMTP RFC says that if you reject on the basis of hop count, you should
set the threshold at 100, but NOBODY DOES THAT! at least not by default. Oh,
and guess what: a lot of the rejections come back as "temporary errors" and
don't show up on the list owner's error summaries.

For subscribers who can't (or won't) get their email administrators to raise
the thresholds to 20 or more, my only solution has been to change their
header option to SHORTHDR. Basically LISTSERV chops off the inbound header
trace entries and gets enough headroom to deliver the mail.

I would therefore prefer that the SHORTHDR option not be described as
"special or obsolete"; it is rapidly promising to become the mail header
option of the future.

Can anyone here advise as its probable future accommodation?

Hal Keen