Re: [exim] deny message limit of 80 characters?

On Wed, Nov 22, 2006 at 01:37:04PM -0800, John W. Baxter said:
> On 11/22/06 2:20 AM, "chuckee" <mi6@???> wrote:
>
> > I cannot seem to get Exim to send a deny message that is anything longer
> > than 80 characters to Outlook or Outlook Express. Deny messages that are
> > longer than 80 characters show up in some other email clients, but I want to
> > know if there is any way that Outlook users can see anything more than 80
> > characters.
> > If the deny message that is sent to an Outlook user is even 1 character
> > longer than 80 characters, then Outlook doesn't display any of the message
> > at all!
>
> MUAs differ so much in what they do that it is impractical to emit long
> messages to them. Some show the first line of a multi-line message; some
> show the last line; some show the whole thing. Because of the first two
> possiiblities, there is no right place to put a single copy of the most
> important information.
>
> This is an area in which accepting then bouncing usually works better
> (although then you can run into systems which convert any error into
> something bland like unknown user). (Please, only accept then bounce when
> accepting from MUAs, not other MTAs.)
>
> Besides that, some go to great lengths to hide the fact that there was an
> error (leading to support calls from Outlook Express users about "I can't
> get my mail" when the real problem was that OE couldn't send a message, hid
> the complaint, and then didn't try to retrieve mail).

The length limit is a big reason that many admins set the MTA to give a
very brief message with a URL that goes to a page with more detail.

I can confirm that Outlook (2000 specifically) will not return any
indication at all to the user that the MTA has rejected a message in
some cases. Hopefully MS has addressed this bug in newer versions of
outlook (I haven't tested.)