Please reply on list. Thanks.
> Quite frankly, it is obvious that many of you do not work for large
> organizations, and don't even understand that there is another major
> reason for disclaimers, such as the use of a company standard footer.
>
> If you have thousands of employees, and what a standard footer at the
> bottom of every email and want to ensure it is accurante and enforced
> on all outgoing emails, and this is just for display/information
> purposes, not a legal disclaimer, then it is quite apparent how
> useful a feature it is, especially in large organizations that have
> corporate standards.
(I'm not quoting in context, since the original was off-list)
a) I don't think there is a problem with the level of understanding;
rather, there are good reasons of both technical and policy for not
mangling mails at the MTA. It is, however, true that this is less
problematic than it otherwise might be if it is being consciously done
in a way specific to one organisation and when that organisation has a
standard configuration where the results of such mangling are
predictable.
b) Enforcing standard footers for informational or identity purposes is
certainly a reasonable thing to want to do under certain circumstances,
and this is understood. However adding footers at the MTA is not by any
means the only viable way to do this, and in many ways is not a
particularly good solution, though it is certainly convenient if you
have all the mails flowing through a central point. "Convenient"
doesn't always mean "good" though.
c) Notwithstanding what you say, the reality from the overwhelming
majority of "large organisations" (and plenty of small ones) that I've
seen is that in fact, any attempt at standardising footers is mostly
done to impose nonsensical and frequently offensive
"disclaimers" (often quite clearly done without any use whatsoever of
actual Common Sense) and not for reasons of branding, consistency,
information purposes or visual identity. For this reason I think you
will appreciate the general hostility to such things, even if
intentions are good.
d) Regardless of the pros and cons, I've explained how to do this
easily and quickly (did this perhaps not give you a hint that I think
it can be acceptable, if not ideal, under certain circumstances?). I'm
not sure what more you want, except perhaps some example routers and
transports. If that's what you need, do ask. But it really is pretty
much as simple as sticking the relevant bit of text in a file and
calling alterMIME from a transport filter.
Good luck.
Tim
P.S. They may or may not be an accurate reflection of your abilities,
but giving your name, not top-posting and not hijacking threads will
tend to encourage people to take you more seriously as an e-mail
administrator.
