On Fri, Feb 08, 2002 at 10:38:11PM +0000, Heimo Claasen wrote: > First, almost all replies from a POP(3) server are terminated by a > "dot-line" (except the ERROR messages).
Heimo et al, I have been thinking about this "dot-line" business for a couple of days and perhaps the cause of the misunderstanding is that we have each been focussing on different aspects of the whole email process. This discussion grew out of the more general one of how one might have to convert downloaded mail between one format or another depending on the combination of email transport program and mailreader that one was using (or decided to use). In particular, the question of converting unix mailboxes to SOUP was raised. > But something troubles/intrigues me with *nix (mailer clients, inboxes > and the rest): why do they change the well-convened (RFCs) mail format > by slashing that very dot-line, and adding the confusing "From (no > colon)" as a starter mark ? I believe that the traditional unix mailbox format is older than the Internet email transport protocol (SMTP) and related RFCs. > Because it's clearly some post-processing there that does the > changes. The MDA (mail delivery agent)? > It would be much easier (for programmes as well as inter-OS use) > to comply with the RFC-defined standards. I'm also not sure that the RFCs relating to SMTP (and POP) say anything about how the messages are to be stored on the filesystem. Regards, Howard E. -- <http://www.ncf.ca/~ag221/> To unsubscribe from SURVPC send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe SURVPC in the body of the message. Also, trim this footer from any quoted replies. More info can be found at; http://www.softcon.com/archives/SURVPC.html
