-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA256 On Friday, June 19 at 02:43 PM, quoth Rocco Rutte: > Hmm, I think the reason is rather that nobody thought of this case. > A problem with assigning it a locally generated Message-ID is that > it's locally generated, i.e. nobody else that. If this is, for > example, a mailing list message, and you assign a new one, you'll > break everybody else's References because they don't know you > generated an ID for it.
That's true, but... > Anyway, shouldn't the first MTA in the mail path that sees a message > without an ID assign one? Nope. Message-ID is an optional field, according to RFC 822. Some MTAs *do* add Message-IDs to messages, but they're not required to and so not all of them do. More recently RFC 2822 says all messages *should* have a Message-ID field, but doesn't explicitly encourage MTAs to add one to messages that don't have one. Because of this, I think an argument similar to the one you made above could be made against MTAs adding Message-ID headers: they can only add a locally generated header, and cannot guarantee that every recipient of the message will receive that Message-ID header with that message. As an example, qmail will only add a Message-ID header if the message is added to the queue via qmail-inject (i.e. if its almost certainly a new message). If the message comes in via SMTP, qmail does not add a Message-ID header (after all, when coming in via SMTP, it's not necessarily likely that this is the entire list of recipients of the message). As an example of a message that got distributed to the mutt list without a Message-ID header, check out the one from Dave Feustel on April 6th (Subject: "Use gvim with mutt to compose email"). It's missing a Message-ID header AND a Date header (and the latter isn't even technically optional, it's *required*). Of course, if you use sendmail or some other MTA, it will have added those headers locally (if it was generated locally, you'll probably notice that the Message-ID has your own hostname in it, rather than Dave's sending hostname). For example, the MARC archives added their own header; notice that http://marc.info/?l=mutt-users&m=123903727123112&w=2 shows a Message-ID that was added by mailer.progressive-comp.com, which is one of their own servers. In any case, if MTAs are "allowed" to add Message-IDs to messages even if the message did not originate locally, then why can't mutt do the same? It's true that, if we then reply to that message, nobody will recognize the referenced message-id, but so what? I don't see how that would have any major drawbacks compared to refusing to generate a local message-id. ~Kyle - -- I couldn't give you something mediocre even if that's all you asked for. -- Michelangelo, in The Agony and the Ecstasy -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Comment: Thank you for using encryption! iQIcBAEBCAAGBQJKO50eAAoJECuveozR/AWeCmoQAJu35SeNSM1X5z/zAvaEDO75 BSPfytbfxTiOM8Qx3awV05g90gJsGBrg8ZWj2h2A9/u24pftHTWxCEIi4QhKKI7z sav6rFq+Cc7XP4Ou5slzec4nAT1t0jzyg0fa+p1e0Qjq8MxxAqUUW66abCXKSljq SE0P24xyzENU3DysXWOJ+8yR0pQ+ZfKBqbcIPLcqx68dMiegmnjzaZRRCrTThzpS vgJXD9C+2xAZ6/+YJx/q3W0oWbFmgJzn/g0TdzYrfDJrpszfWIa73aPaa1yu/U8t 2HSxCwUjl0i2GpSO8Piw1PwAn6nxPf+KnejPpaSQRtLAT0SotL4kgW2Dus6RTYgw XlDsTu6y84sbhSIU1IMdwIdrxTppJgCv7kxz3c9TPzRLbtPqOtz9en02BLd6wdKQ VUlWAlU7P197BprqNZoei2ZoyFHOg7ILzZ66sDUSCRpuaBkf6sbUMkeMxmTiLItR 3Kb5BWq/oZvfsJF9vOTvOIJyIxl1UpEJBHygbzm95aE08I5baUEku1fc7SfGv63Y JLvgL1ECXn3n2KGzSHIo3t5TQgnLDo7pAx0dsgTv9N3Ro0Xli/tgFZTkVHmFcK2c CJSTPBoPRFREaJl4JprHO/eawf+0UCjqlKA7qfVd21wumi8cz4MGVj/Q2h+Zk6ve baM4wFHCLdLMCKyrzwFa =wtSZ -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
