On May 15, 8:21am, Dave Crocker wrote:
} Subject: Re: Second Draft of "Implications of MIME for MTAs"
}
} A "mail gateway" performs store-and-forward electronic mail transfers
} between two environments that are using *different* electronic mail
} format syntax or semantics. Hence, transfering email to any of the
} existing, national email services, or transfering to any X.400 service,
} or even transfering into a non-MIME RFC822 environment is performed
} by a gateway, rather than a simple relay.
This is a reasonably good definition except that there isn't any way to
identify a "non-MIME RFC822 environment". If I've compiled metamail and
stowed it away in ~/bin, my environment is MIME-capable even though the
"official" status of my site may be otherwise. The MTA at the final
destination of the message may have some chance of determining "non-MIME",
but other gateways can do no better than "non-RFC822".
Unless your definition of "non-MIME" is considerably narrower than my
interpretation, e.g. you mean to imply "non-8-bit-clean" or the like ...
--
Bart Schaefer Vice President, Engineering
schaefer(_at_)z-code(_dot_)com Z-Code Software
Corporation