[ On Friday, May 9, 2003 at 11:04:52 (-0700), WJCarpenter wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: [Exim] -t and Resent- header lines
>
> ph> Where does emacs add its Resent- header lines? Does it obey 2822
> ph> or not?
>
> No simple answer to this one. As you have no doubt heard, emacs does
> something else besides send mail as it's primary task (can't recall
> what it is at the moment, but I'm sure it's documented :-). It's
> also, uh, customizable.
Indeed! :-)
A more complete answer is that the default emacs release includes some
tools in "lisp/sendmail.el" which provide an interface to the "sendmail"
program's command-line. Those tools do nothing with resent-* headers,
at least not now after my patch was accepted. :-)
> emacs does not have anything like what you would call an architecture
> for email. Instead, it has an amalgam of packages written by separate
> authors doing what they think is right. There are, in fact, multiple
> MUA-like packages in popular use, and there are multiple "middleware"
> packages which help those MUA-like packages talk to MTAs. For any
> package that starts to look comprehensive and the right place to
> implement any correct way of doing things, there are vast tracts of
> emacs users who use something else entirely. It would be possible but
> startling if all of the MUA-like packages were consistent on a point
> like this.
Yes, exactly.
Those MUA packages, including the "RMAIL" package which is also included
in the default release, often use the sendmail.el tools, the default
"middleware" package, to interface with the "sendmail" command-line
program on the host system. To send a message the sendmail.el tools
will try to invoke "sendmail" with "-t" and then feed it the contents of
the message which has been composed by the MUA package, assuming that
the MUA and/or the user have arranged to make the headers of that
message appear as desired such that the "sendmail" program can properly
extract the destination addresses from those headers.
My patch to the emacs sendmail.el tools removed some broken half-assed
attempts to parse message headers in an attempt to discover the
destination addresses instead of just letting the MTA do it. The latter
is of course the right thing to do for all sendmail-compatible MTAs,
except for Exim when there are resent-* headers present, as we've since
discovered.
--
Greg A. Woods
+1 416 218-0098; <g.a.woods@???>; <woods@???>
Planix, Inc. <woods@???>; VE3TCP; Secrets of the Weird <woods@???>
