What we really need is a true submission protocol, separate from
SMTP which by definition is a MTA-MTA transmission protocol.
You're absolutely right. (glad someone else is saying it)
I cooked one up. I should submit a fresh RFC, as the only one
describing the protocol is about two years out of date.
Eh Rick, I found RFC1440 and read it. It wasn't exactly what I had in
mind, really. The SIFT/UFT concept reminds me of UUCP with a couple of
added features. Also, I can't see why a file should be sent using MIME
without a proper tagging. I rather see a multipart/uft with one part
application/uft containing the control stuff and a second part
containing the file to be transferred with proper content-type: and
content-transfer-encoding:.
Anyway, my dream of a submission protocol is somewhat more modest.
I wish a MUA (Mail User Agent) could be able to submit a mail in MIME
format without acting as a MTA (Mail Transfer Agent). There are certain
implications as all (client-server) MUA's currently are destined to use
SMTP to submit outbound messages. It has to know if the mailbox address
differs from the identity of the user account. It is difficult as an
administrator to keep large sites MUA configurations synchronised (mail
domain and formal mailbox names, for example).
-- Tomas