On that mailer thing, Howard (E.): > ... we have each been focussing on different aspects of the whole email > process.
Indeed. > I believe that the traditional unix mailbox format is older than > the Internet email transport protocol (SMTP) and related RFCs. It is. Though in that olden time those *nix mails did have the "raw" format - with the "dot-line" and _without_ that added "From (no colon)" delimiter. > > 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. I wasn't really precise: sure the RFCs don't determine what you do with any stuff once it _has_ been transported over the net - there's no whatsoever "standard" for further/local processing. Which is a bit of a problem as you cannot "mix" (part of) applications from then on: as there is no standard on those variations of formatting either. I simply wanted to plead for not changing the (indeed standardised) "raw" format as late as appropriate in that transport/transformation sequence. IMHO the fetchmail/receiving client should just do this, and not do any transformation - otherwise you're stuck with a specific reader/lister further down the chain which would understand exacly this transformed version (only). What I do resent v-a-v a number of Linux mail clients, btw, is precisely that they do not give any explanation of those format changes they do. Which makes it unnecessarily cumbersome to handle the outcome the way you would like it (and not, the way the program/mer defines.) A case in question: > I downloaded mail with "nm /receive" I ran "nm2mail mbox.txt" in > the \mail directory, which converted the .txt/.wrk files to a > single unix mailbox, called mbox.txt. I had to go to some pains to do exactly the opposite, namely to write a thingy that (a.) restitutes the "dot-line" which is scrapped by Netmail and (b.) re-assembles the original stream of "raw" mails (stored by Netmail into those distinct *.txt files) into a one-file folder or mailbag - this then can be read by quite a number of offline readers instead of the specific one you mention. Though that's not the salient point. But rather, that it took quite some time and effort to find out what transformations Netmail does; and then to re-invent the wheel. // Heimo Claasen // <hammer at revobild dot net> // Brussels 2002-02-10 The WebPlace of ReRead - and much to read ==> http://www.revobild.net 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
