On Sun, 13 Jan 2002 03:11:10 -0500, I had written: > Hello fellow Arachnids:
> I just received several copies of an email addressed to about a > hundred recipients in the "To:" header. The purpose of the email > was to inform the sender's correspondents of his new email address. > The message body consisted of a brief note to explain the purpose. > It appears that the sender thought he was sending a perfectly > legitimate email. Of course we might well criticise him for not > having sent the message to a hundred or so "BCC:" recipients > instead of to the same number of "To:" recipients, but that is > beside the point that I wish to discuss here. I don't know why I > received several copies of the same message. Maybe an operator > error, maybe a server error. Afer having conducted a few experiments I have come to some conclusions and have decided to reply to my own post. > From the raw CNM message files received by my Arachne I see that > the sender wanted to indicate both his real legal name *and* his > nickname in the "From:" header. > The format he used for his "From:" line was like this: > From: "Samuel\"my_nickname\"Heywood" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > The above is just an example for illustration purposes only to > indicate the type of format he used for his "From:" header. The correct format for the above hypothetical example would have been this: From: Samuel "my_nickname" Heywood <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > The sender left his "Subject:" header blank. > BTW, the mailer program the sender was using was MicroSoft Outlook, > Build 10.02616. Maybe his mailer program automagically writes > "From:" headers in this format for those who want to indicate both > their real legal names and their nicknames. > When the CNM message files were rendered into HTML by Arachne some > very strange things happened and my inbox got all screwed up in the > most unspeakable ways. I couldn't use Insight for reading my > messages, but I was able to read them by examining the raw CNM files. > It appears that no messages and no data were lost. There was no real > damage but there sure was a hassle to contend with because I could > read my messages only as CNM text files. > Among the problems encountered were the "From:" headers and the > "Subject" headers in the HTML rendering of every message in the inbox, > to include also the messages that were sent to me by others. The main cause of the problem was simply too many addressees included in the "To:" header. Editing the raw CNM file so as to delete the excessive lines of names in the "To:" header will correct the problem. > Has anybody else experienced a similar problem which we might > attribute to a really strange formatting of the "From:" header? The "From:" header wasn't the problem, although it was rendered with some really strange characters, probably as a result of the excessive lines of names in the "To:" header. > BTW, does anyone know of any correct RFC compliant methods whereby > one can indicate in his "From:" header both his real legal name *and* > his nickname? I want to be helpful to the sender of the message I > received by informing him as to how he might best correct the problem > he is causing. I figured out the the right way to do it. See my hypothetical example above. The format in the "From:" header wasn't the main cause of the problem. Sam Heywood P.S. In future versions of Arachne there ought to be included a trouble-shooting section for Arachne's built-in mailer, InSight. A new Arachne user might not have any idea how to deal with a problem involving a message having too many recipients listed in the "To:" header. The method of fixing it is simple, but the problem might appear to a newbie as something absolutely horrendous because such a message can seem to be messing up everything in his inbox. -- This mail was written by user of The Arachne Browser - http://arachne.cz/
