On 19 Jan 1999, Russell Nelson wrote: > Okay, VERP has solved the bounce problem. Now we need VERB (Variable > Envelope Recipient in Body) to solve the unsubscribe problem. > Basically, we need qmail-remote to merge the envelope recipient into > the message somewhere. The problem, of course, is *where* to insert > it. What I did for one customer is to insert it whenever a certain > magical character sequence was seen. This worked for them because > they could ensure that that magical sequence only appeared where they > wanted it. So how do we ensure that out-of-band data (the insertion > point marker) doesn't get confused with in-band data (the email > message itself). I'd say that it should be either a command-line arg for qmail-remote, or an environment variable. It could be control/remote-verb-cookie, but that makes it more difficult to have different ones for different lists, e.g. The only problem with both command-line args and environment variables, is that I can't see an easy way to hack them in, without significant patches. The control/remote-verb-cookie method would be a relatively simple patch. About making sure that it's not confused with actual message data, that's difficult, because it isn't out-of-band: it's part of the message body. However, it doesn't have to be easy to type, and since it's not actually being transferred, just stored locally and then munged, it could include control-characters. So you could use \000\000VeRbHeRe\000\000, where the \000's are actual ASCII NULs. This has the "advantage" that people aren't likely to type the cookie while discussing it on the list. :-) > In case it's not obvious what I'm getting at, imagine if you could say: > -- > To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > instead of the usual: > -- > To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > -- > -russ nelson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://crynwr.com/~nelson > Crynwr supports Open Source(tm) Software| PGPok | There is good evidence > 521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315 268 1925 voice | that freedom is the > Potsdam, NY 13676-3213 | +1 315 268 9201 FAX | cause of world peace. > -- "Life is much too important to be taken seriously." Thomas Erskine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> (613) 998-2836
