On Wed, 1 May 91 21:15:27 +0200, Eric Thomas <[log in to unmask]> said:
> RFC822 does not assign any meaning  to tags starting with "X-", and never
> will. These  tags are reserved  for "user-defined fields".  LISTSERV uses
> this field to  place some extra information for the  human reader;
 
Agreed.  But I think that X-To is a bad choice for this purpose.
X-Original-To is used by something else; that might be appropriate
for LISTSERV.  Also, using the "Comment" list option eliminates the
problem.
 
> I had written ACCESS, I would not have used a tag name not containing the
> program name/prefix for  internal information,
 
In hindsight, this is obvious.  But the UCLA ACP (which ACCES/MVS is a
derivation from) is somewhere around 10-20 years old.  "Things were
simpler back then."
 
> and I  would certainly not
> show  such internal  data to  the end  user (what  would you  say if  you
> started getting a bunch of "X-LSVxxx:" tags on each and every posting?).
 
Again you're right.  And when ACP (Acces/MVS) mail is processed by
UCLA/Mail, the X-TO/X-FROM are removed.  The user does not see them.
Well, actually, the relevant information is preserved in a Received
line.
 
All this said, what's the answer?  It should be considered impossible
to get all copies of ACP, Acces/MVS, and OpenLook changed to use
something besides X-FROM/X-TO, and even if the vendors could make this
change in a timely manner, the code that they interface to would need
to be changed at the same time.  Mike Stein is working on a fix for
UCLA/Mail to solve this problem.  It may not be available for a while,
and not all sites will obtain the new release in a timely manner.  And
not all sites with the offending software run UCLA/Mail.  So I think
that it would be a good idea to change LISTSERV to not generate X-TO.
 
 
/Leonard