Aucbvax.4787
fa.editor-p
utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!editor-people
Thu Oct 29 10:03:07 1981
mail systems standards
>From JWALKER@BBNA Thu Oct 29 09:14:08 1981
The following message is typical of many that have been arriving
lately via the Editor-People mailing list.  At least, I can only
guess from the contents that they are arriving via editor-people.
They lack any To field, indicating that they have been composed
either in an editor by someone who does not know about message
format standards or by a quite ersatz message system.  In
addition to lacking a To field, they lack the "header" for the
Text field (which is a blank line).

    29-Oct-81 12:09:11-EST,411;000000000001
    Mail-from: SU-SCORE
    Received-Date: 29-Oct-81 1209-EST
    Mail-from: ARPANET site UCB-C70 rcvd at 29-Oct-81 0853-PST
    Date: 28 Oct 1981 21:30:36-PST
    From: decvax!utzoo!xxxxx at Berkeley
    Re: Alto User's Handbook
    Some of us who ARE interested to know that this document is now
    cleared for release would ALSO be interested in having a slightly
    more detailed mailing address than "Sara Dake at Xerox-PARC".


I protest this form of message being sent to a mailing list on
the ARPAnet.  At least some message systems that parse messages
according to the usual standards can't present this message in a
reasonable fashion.  The "text" field gets displayed in the
middle of the headers (because it is parsed as "unrecognized
other field", whose print position happens to be in the middle).
I can't use my mail reader to search for messages of this kind --
with no To: field and no Subj: field, there isn't a whole lot
available to search for.  The only real tip-off is the presence
of ! in the From: field.

I hope that whoever is responsible for the software (if it is a
message system that creates these messages) will find time to
make the messages sent conform to the standards.  (If people are
just creating the messages and "posting" them via an editor, then
they should take a little time out to study the usual conventions
involved in a draft message.)  It would make things more pleasant
for all of us readers.

Thanks.
Jan

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 Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman.