At 09:50 AM 5/23/2001, Craig_Everhart(_at_)transarc(_dot_)com wrote:
What's the fundamental distinction between an agent redistributing mail
to a list and another agent forwarding mail to, say, a new email address
given in a .forward file? Is it only that the list redistribution
rewrites the Return-Path: whereas .forward processing doesn't? Is this
why you see list redistribution as more of a MUA function than an MTA
one?
Part of the difficulty of this type of discussion is that there are two,
very different levels to discuss it at. One is the low-level machine
behaviors, such as you are using. The other is the more architectural
and/or human/group level. I prefer the latter because it provides
conceptual insight and, often, directs a choice more easily and definitively.
If the .forward is simply to get your mail to the "correct" place, making
the original and final addresses essentially synonyms, then it is more at
the MTA level. If the mechanism is used to dispatch mail to someone who is
my agent, then it will might be more of an MUA-level function, in that the
intermediary address needs to be noted, long term.
For mailist lists, I think we need to talk in terms of principal
participants and who (or what) is an explicit part of the public exchange,
versus who (or what) is a conceptually lower-level connector that should
best be invisible to the larger process.
d/
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Dave Crocker <mailto:dcrocker(_at_)brandenburg(_dot_)com>
Brandenburg InternetWorking <http://www.brandenburg.com>
tel: +1.408.246.8253; fax: +1.408.273.6464