On Sat, 9 Dec 1995 10:52:17 -0500 Mark Hunnibell <[log in to unmask]> said: >I am not sure if I understand you here. It sounds like you are agreeing >that setting subscriptions to FULLHDR just to be able to get the MIME >header lines is a solution that creates a disk space problem for most >system administrators No, I am saying that I disagree completely. >Well... forcing everyone on the planet to change their system >configuration to allow more than 17 hops in a header seems like a rather >excessive position No, it's a perfectly natural position, since a hop count of 17 makes no sense in 1995, LISTSERV or no LISTSERV. There has been the exact same problem with TCP/IP TTL values. Sites with ancient TTL limits were cut off as the Internet expanded. Many of them whined that the solution was to expand the Internet in a different way so that they would not have to fix their software. They also predicted that if people didn't stop expanding the Internet this way, the new sites would just be cut off because people simply wouldn't increase their hop counts, and other providers would come along which *would* be happy to address the very important issue of the hop count. The Internet kept expanding the way it needed to, and people increased their hop counts. >Lets face it too that, as good as LISTSERV is, if you ignore the >real-world requirements in favor of adhering to an abstract philosophy, Every new option increases the complexity of the software and the confusion level of the users. Every day hundreds of people will ask their helpdesk what is the difference between MIMEHDR and FULLHDR. There is also a resource cost for every new type of header. Most sites make no use of SHORTHDR, and having both FULLHDR and MIMEHDR would double the number of files in their mail spool. In real world terms, you are asking for a new option to bypass an ancient default in ONE product, sendmail. Furthermore that limit is only ever an issue in the rare case of peered lists where the recipient is several peers removed from the posting site, and the default has been increased in recent versions. I am telling you that this is a problem in sendmail that has been fixed in recent versions, and that the solution is for the sites with the ancient default to update either their config file or their sendmail. If they aren't willing to do either, there will be other providers that *will* be willing to invest an entire 5 minutes updating one line in their config file so that their users can have access to remote LISTSERV lists. Eric