Mon, 12 Jul 1993 09:04:37 EDT
|
The message I received from "F. Scott Ophof" said:
...
>
> But if Internet mail contains addresses like <...-request@...> or
> <owner-...@...> in the "Sender:" header to indicate the item comes
> from an MLM, that to me doesn't ensure that those addresses will
> consistently reflect the relevant mailing list. In other words, if
> the "Sender:"-addr is:
> <OWNER-listname@somewhere> or <listname-REQUEST@somewhere>
> will the following ALWAYS be true?
> <listname@somewhere>
> or could it also be:
> <[log in to unmask]>
> or worse yet:
> <[log in to unmask]>
>
> And besides <OWNER-..@..> and <..-REQUEST@..>, are there any other
> such words that have the same ("guaranteed") behaviour?
I see a number of people have responded to your question, and most
seem to be on the mark. However (and you probably know this already)
the use of prefixes "owner-" or suffix "-request" are really
implementation-dependant. I know that the mail software I run
(sendmail) looks for and "carbon-copies" to an "owner-" address when
bouncing list-related mail.
Our older machine which ran MMDF looked for a "-request" address
instead.
I would imagine that list maintainers would use a combination of
"From:", "Reply-To:" and "Errors-To:" headers to ensure that postings
to the list are replyable in a consistent manner. That way the burden
of reliability rests with the maintainer rather than a list user.
>
> Recently I've seen items from some "Revised LISTSERV"s which have
> "X-List:" headers, and that header-line has up to now consistently
> displayed the relevant and correct list-address itself.
> Do I sense an intention to use (and advertise using) that header for
> that SINGLE purpose? If so, how does one ensure that that header
> will only be used for THAT purpose?
I've paraphrased a relevant portion of RFC 822 which explains the
use of "X-" prefixed fields.
. 4.7.4. EXTENSION-FIELD
.
. A limited number of common fields have been defined in
. this document. As network mail requirements dictate, addi-
. tional fields may be standardized. To provide user-defined
. fields with a measure of safety, in name selection, such
. extension-fields will never have names that begin with the
. string "X-".
.
. Names of Extension-fields are registered with the Network
. Information Center, SRI International, Menlo Park, California.
.
.
. 4.7.5. USER-DEFINED-FIELD
.
. Individual users of network mail are free to define and
. use additional header fields. Such fields must have names
. which are not already used in the current specification or in
. any definitions of extension-fields, and the overall syntax of
. these user-defined-fields must conform to this specification's
. rules for delimiting and folding fields. Due to the
. extension-field publishing process, the name of a user-
. defined-field may be pre-empted
.
. Note: The prefatory string "X-" will never be used in the
. names of Extension-fields. This provides user-defined
. fields with a protected set of names.
I've seen various forms of "X-" addresses, none of which are really
"standard" (like X-List and X-Mailing-List). They may be in (very)
common use, but they don't appear to be guaranteed to exist in the
future.
>
> Regards.
> $$\
-Ravin
__________________________________________________________________
Ravin Asar | National Science Foundation
| 1800 G St. NW #440
| Washington, DC 20550
Official: [log in to unmask] | Phone: (202) 357-5934
Personal: [log in to unmask] | Fax: (202) 357-7663
__________________________________|_______________________________
IMHO
|
|
|