ietf-822
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Re: Mandatory From field, anonymity, and hacks

2004-07-26 20:56:40

In the case of an MUA, an invalid address will result in a notification
or bounce

only if it's an envelope recipient address.

No, MUAs often send raw message text to an executable transport agent
(e.g. sendmail) which examines the message header to determine recipients.

in that case, sendmail is performing part of the MUA's function. nothing says that the entire MUA has to be implemented in a single program.

As noted above, the most important thing is that the sender envelope
address be usable.

in a news-to-mail gateway?

No, for general gateways -- Usenet news has no equivalent of a sender
envelope address, as noted.

it's easy to lose context in these kinds of discussions. and when talking about gateways it's really important to consider these issues on a case-by-case basis, and carefully consider each case separately.

Usenet news is an application of the RFC [2]822 Internet Message Format.


no more than SMTP is an application of the FTP protocol.

SMTP replaced FTP mail-specific commands(and the short-lived MTP) for
transport of messages. The mail-specific FTP commands, MTP, and SMTP
transport(ed) Internet Message Format content (RFCs 561, 680, 724, 733,
822, 2822). As do POP (several versions), IMAP, NNTP, LMTP, and RFC 2476 submission protocol. It's certainly true that NNTP is a different protocol
from SMTP, and both differ from POP (although there are similarities in
those three, e.g. byte-stuffing), and all three of those differ from IMAP.
Nevertheless, they all transport Internet Message Format content.

nope.  that kind of overgeneralization just causes confusion.

Keith