ietf-smtp
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Re: "Envelope", yet again

2005-05-23 15:23:11

On Mon, 23 May 2005, John Leslie wrote:

   I believe we need to talk about SMTP-as-we-know-it, not SMTP-NG.

This is why I'm very reluctant to expand the term "envelope" to include
any message data. We should acknowledge the deliberate ambiguity of the
Internet message header, which contains user-level and transport-level
information and information that is somewhere in between. By contrast the
SMTP envelope has always been clearly defined, until recent discussions
which have tried to fit the X.400 layering model onto Internet email's
layering model. Unsurprisingly, the two don't match and the resulting
architectural description doesn't work very well.

Tony.
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