Thus said Ken Hornstein on Wed, 06 Nov 2024 18:04:29 -0500:

> >As I  stated before,  I completely agree  with Ralph's  assessment (I
> >think it was  Ralph) that nmh should do nothing  do address this. But
> >that then leaves the question, what should be done.
>
> I am a LITTLE confused by this  sentiment. You want nmh to do nothing,
> but you wrote a patch for it?

At the time  that wrote the patch  I was convinced that  nmh should deal
with  this better  and  that's why  I  fussed over  it.  After time  and
discussion I changed  my mind and started working  with the organization
that  is sending  bad emails.  So far  I've had  little success,  mostly
because the people  responsible for generating the  emails are extremely
"shielded" and I cannot seem to  get ahold of anyone technical enough to
understand  the  problem.  I've  spoken  with  numerous  people  in  the
organization, but nobody knows how to escalate it to the next level.

That being said, I  don't have a problem with having a  "fix" in nmh for
this, I'm just no  longer clamoring that it *must* be  done. I am, after
all, running my own patch.

Also, at  the time,  from what  I could tell,  the organization  that is
sending me these poorly formatted emails was the only one and the emails
that they sent  me were not important  enough for me to  care that much.
Now I  see that we have  yet another sender (ups.com)  that has suddenly
started getting away with sending such garbage (computational garbage).


> I think part of it was that there was a bug in your original patch and
> it got  fixed but it  seemed like it needed  some more testing  and at
> least I forgot about it.

Yes, there was a  bad bug in my original which I  did correct. I've been
running my final version of the patch  for as long as it has existed; in
fact, the only reason why I  can share statistics about emails with long
lines that  I've received  is because  of this patch.  I just  apply the
patch locally to my system. I'm only  one person though and so a measure
of one, and the  email ecosystem is vast and so  it definitely could use
more  testing  (people who  are  willing  to  risk losing  or  corrupted
emails).

Maybe Stephen would be willing to apply  my patch and see how it goes in
his environment?

Also, I'm  not opposed to  some other solution  to patching inc  than my
code. I  take little pride in  it. It's a  sad "fix" for a  lame problem
that  shouldn't exist.  Is  there  perhaps a  public  mailing list  that
discusses email issues like this where  we could actually get some voice
that would be  recognized by big players? Something like  NANOG? I think
it would be  interesting to solicit some observations  of others outside
the nmh community  about violations of the relevant RFCs  and what to do
about said violations. Is nmh really that wrong?

Andy


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