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Re: "proper" handling of BCC

2012-04-17 14:59:28

Dave Crocker wrote:

On 4/17/2012 8:35 AM, John Levine wrote:
In case it wasn't clear, the MSA making the envelope from the headers is reasonable, since you can write down a fairly simple rule for how it works.

I think we have a nomenclature challenge here. It is natural to refer to this as something the "MSA" is doing. But it isn't an MSA function. It's an MUA function, as part of preparation for formal posting into the MHS. The best I can suggest is something more implementation oriented, such as "server".

The meta-model this implies is to have "agent" mean networking architecture, per the email architecture spec. And "client" or "server" as references to physical implementations which might have interaction boundaries that are different from the networking architecture boundaries.

If we don't develop a discipline in how we talk about this kind of distinction, we will never develop a community understanding of the difference.

The term that was developed a long time ago, for having a server do 'user' functions is "split UA".

+1.

Dave, I always felt that the idea of Online vs Offline MUA was often not considered when in came to an discussed expected behavior which mostly applied to RFC-based offline MUAs but didn't to Online MUAs.

For example, with the many discussions regarding what an offline MUA may display in RFC5322 headers, it was not an issue with the Online MUA where the UI display rendering is 100% controlled by the backend. We may even defined with a new acronym MAS - "Mail Access Server."

The real distinction is based on how much intelligence the MUA had with the capability and advancement of how much can be offloaded to the user's device. And FYI, the concept of offloading data was patented by IBM long ago, long expired of course, which allowed for rapid growth of offline/offloading software to be developed.


--
Sincerely

Hector Santos
http://www.santronics.com
jabber: hector(_at_)jabber(_dot_)isdg(_dot_)net

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