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Re: plan for april 5th xmpp conference... (progress!)

2004-04-03 17:04:54

Pete Resnick wrote:
On 4/2/04 at 6:22 PM -0800, Phillip Hallam-Baker wrote:
What is the defined, actual, use of resent?

I'll leave reading section 3.6.6 of RFC 2822 to you all, but the short answer is:

When a user wants to re-send a message, leaving all of the original headers in-tact but sending it to someone else, Resent-* fields are prepended to the message to indicate where it came from. This is often referred to as the "Bounce to another user" or "Redirect" feature in MUAs. It results in the recipient getting a message such that when they reply, the reply goes back to the original author, not the re-sender.

(Of course, in a resent message, the MAIL FROM is the resender.)

From reading 3.6.6, I get the feeling that the most frequent encounter with Resent-* field I have, mail I receive through mailshell.com, is impropoer usage of the fields.

If you're unfamiliar with MailShell, they forward mail from a disposable address like <mxcomp(_at_)millenix(_dot_)mailshell(_dot_)com> to my real email address. However, messages passing through that address would have the following set of header fields:
Return-Path: <mxcomp-bounce(_at_)millenix(_dot_)mailshell(_dot_)com>
Resent-Message-ID: 
<2002443213142936(_dot_)30431(_dot_)qmail(_at_)mailshell(_dot_)com>
Errors-To: mxcomp-bounce(_at_)millenix(_dot_)mailshell(_dot_)com
Bounce-To: mxcomp-bounce(_at_)millenix(_dot_)mailshell(_dot_)com
Resent-To: millenix(_at_)zemos(_dot_)net
Resent-From: mxcomp(_at_)millenix(_dot_)mailshell(_dot_)com

This usage is 'forwarding' as described in that section, correct?


Philip Miller


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