Hi Peter,
At 13:00 19-07-2007, Peter J. Holzer wrote:
> No, local mailboxes does not refer to the local part of the address
> only. A host may handle mail for more than one domain.
In practice, yes. I am talking about the assumed intention of the author
here. Of course I don't *know* what they intended, but:
| MUST include at least
| recognition of local mailboxes as "user names". However, since
| current Internet practice often results in a single host handling
| mail for multiple domains, hosts, especially hosts that provide this
| functionality, SHOULD accept the "local-part(_at_)domain" form as a "user
| name
sounds to me very much as if the authors saw a contrast between "local
mailbox" and "local-part(_at_)domain". Otherwise, why would the second
sentence start with "however"? And why is it there at all if it was
already stated earlier that a mailbox is identified by an address of the
form "local-part(_at_)domain"? The phrase "user name and domain" earlier in
the section strengthens that impression.
That's a special case where a single host handles mail for multiple
domains. The "local-part(_at_)domain" can be considered as a "user name"
in such a situation.
>
> In this example:
>
> C: VRFY <smith(_at_)example(_dot_)com>
> S: 250 smith <smith(_at_)example(_dot_)com>
>
> the mailbox is smith(_at_)example(_dot_)com(_dot_)
Yes, of course. What are you trying to say?
That was an example to show that local mailbox may be more than the local-part.
I think the current RFC is rather clear that pointed brackets are not
required. An implementation may accept them, but it may not require
them. I know that implemenations exist which do require them but I think
they are very rare and am willing to treat that as a bug and would
rather not include it into the RFC. VRFY is already enough of a mess.
I used pointed brackets in my examples. Should they be removed?
Regards,
-sm