On Sun, 9 Jan 2005 21:01:58 +0000, Tony Finch wrote:
"Envelope" is understood to be an abbreviation for "SMTP envelope" in RFC
1123 and later email-related RFCs. As I've already said, Dave's draft is
redefining a word which already has a clear meaning, and giving it a less
useful meaning.
Tony,
the history of the word is rather richer than you seem to be indicating.
by way of example, note that RFC2822 says:
In the context of electronic mail, messages are viewed as having an
envelope and contents. The envelope contains whatever information is
needed to accomplish transmission and delivery.
I consider this to match my usage. And, by the way, it matches the use of the
term I've used and heard for a couple of decades. That does not mean that more
constrained use is "wrong", but merely that I'm not inventing anything here.
As noted, RFC2821 uses the term envelope with the qualifier SMTP. Hence, SMTP
Envelope is not necessarily the same as 'envelope'.
Ultimately, I'm not hung up on the particular word, but rather want a common
term that covers the stuff of a message that is not the message itself. That
is, not part of the User-to-User communication but is, instead, involves the
mail handling service.
The definition in the architecture document:
Information that is directly used or produced by the email
transfer service... controls and
records handling activities by the transfer service.
is intended to capture this basic distinction between stuff of the user-to-user
world and stuff of the handling world.
d/
--
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
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dcrocker a t ...
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