On Mon, 10 Jan 2005, Dave Crocker wrote:
the history of the word is rather richer than you seem to be indicating.
I'm not denying that; I'm arguing that its meaning - the MAIL FROM and
RCPT TO SMTP commands - in the context of Internet email has been
consistent for 15 years, according to usage in the RFCs.
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.
If I were being petty I would argue that in Internet email none of the
message data is strictly needed to accomplish transmission and delivery
:-)
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.
I agree that you aren't inventing anything, but your usage seems to me
to be a couple of decades old, and not what people currently understand.
As noted, RFC2821 uses the term envelope with the qualifier SMTP.
Not always, in fact it introduces the term "envelope" without the "SMTP"
qualifier and uses it 2/3 of the time without and 1/3 with. The same is
true for 1123.
Hence, SMTP Envelope is not necessarily the same as 'envelope'.
Not according to my detailed survey of the RFCs. I can post the complete
results if you like.
Ultimately, I'm not hung up on the particular word,
Good! Please, please choose another one.
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.
I think this is a rather abstract concept which isn't well expressed by
Internet email. That's probably why there isn't an established term for it
in this context, and that's why the message header is an anarchic dumping
ground. Perhaps you want people to be more careful about their usage of
the message header, but I don't think a descriptive architecture document
is the place for such prescriptive measures. Instead it should help the
reader to understand why the header is such a mess.
Tony.
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