From: "Eric Thomas" > ........ Outlook sent '.shape' but > did not double the period! As this style snippet happens to be > unimportant, messages display normally if the MTA accepts '.shape' > as 'shape' with no further ado. SMTPL did not do that, as I like for > errors to be visible so that they can be corrected, but as it is > Microsoft I have no choice but to accept that I am wrong and they < are right, so I have changed SMTPL to accept this sequence. The SMTP Transparency provision (RFC 2821, subclause 4.5.2) requires: - Before sending a line of mail text, the SMTP client checks the first character of the line. If it is a period, one additional period is inserted at the beginning of the line. - When a line of mail text is received by the SMTP server, it checks the line. If the line is composed of a single period, it is treated as the end of mail indicator. If the first character is a period and there are other characters on the line, the first character is deleted. If I understand the explanation here, Microsoft is clearly wrong--it didn't double the period, as required--but SMTPL did something more extreme than simply losing the period, which would also be wrong. It's not an SMTP end-of-message flag unless the ENTIRE LINE consists of a single period. Hal Keen