In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Neil W Rickert writes:
>>I don't really object to it... but the Lsoft "listserv" mailing list package
>>does. Whenever there's both a From: line *and* a "Sender:" line, listserv
>>concludes that the Sender: line is authoritative.
>What does "authoritative" mean here?
It means that if my "Sender:" line says "[EMAIL PROTECTED]",
that my mail will be rejected from a closed listserv list unless the address
subscribed is "[EMAIL PROTECTED]". This makes it very hard
to use a canonical address.
>Quite apart from the "From:" header and any "Sender:" header, there
>is the information transferred in the SMTP "MAIL From:" command,
>typically referred to by email gurus as the "envelope sender". The
>envelope sender is likely to be the same as is in the "Sender:"
>header. It is more likely that the listserve package is using the
>envelope sender than that it is using the "Sender:" header.
Nope. I asked their tech support people. When they are evaluating whether
a message came from a subscriber, if there is both a "From:" and a "Sender:",
they assume that the Sender is more correct. I think this is wrong, but I
seem to recall being told that their head developer is pretty much unwilling
to grant the idea that, when people disagree about interpretation on an RFC,
the best thing to do is adapt to allow their interpretations.
>The ability to override this in nmh is a recognition that, in our
>current complex world the value automatically determined on your
>computer system might be invalid or inappropriate, due to the
>complexity of today's email world, dynamic IP assignments, the use of
>private hostnames on private networks that connect to Internet, etc.
Yeah, the main problem is that it turns out to be useless data in almost
all cases. In practice, when I send mail, it's always really me sending it,
and the address I put in the From line is always really me, so the Sender
line isn't all that useful.
It would actually be a sort of cool tracking feature if it were something
like X-Sender, but when it's Sender, a lot of mail programs conclude that
it overrides From and Reply-To. (I have a lot of trouble with people on
some Windows-based email package sending replies to my "Sender" address,
too.)
-s
