Netscape2.0 sees multiple emails in "included" mails.
D. J. Bernstein
[ referring to >From quoting in mbox ]
> Programs that do this are brain dead and broken.
On the contrary. This quoting (unfortunately) loses information within a
message, but what you are proposing---the Pine strategy---is much, much,
much worse, because it sometimes gets confused about the boundary
between messages.
From Berkeley's OCF not long ago: ``This reminds the Site Manager to
note that Pine has a bug that sometimes causes it to miss the
start-of-message "From" line. This has caused some users to complain
they're not receiving mail, when in fact it is being appended as part of
their last message without their notice. The Site Manager's Official
Supported Solution(tm) is not to use Pine.''
This sort of ``bug'' is guaranteed by Pine's strategy. If you don't
want to get confused, you MUST quote lines in messages that look like
the From_ line. The only question is how to define ``look like.''
(The best solution I've seen is mboxg format, which has the same
>From_ quoting as traditional mbox format, and also >>From_, >>>From_,
etc. Not wonderful, but at least it's reversible.)
---Dan
Rahul Dhesi
d...@koobera.math.uic.edu (D. J. Bernstein) writes:
>(The best solution I've seen is mboxg format, which has the same
>>From_ quoting as traditional mbox format, and also >>From_, >>>From_,
>etc. Not wonderful, but at least it's reversible.)
I posted such a proposal to Usenet in 1995, but I did not call it the
'mboxg' format. Did somebody propose and name it before that, or did
somebody reinvent mine and rename it?
== begin saved posting ==
Date: 24 Jun 1995 08:41:06 GMT
From: Rahul Dhesi <dhesi>
Newsgroups: comp.mail.sendmail,comp.mail.mime
Subject: Re: How can I send mail with the word "From" at the start of a line?
Organization: a2i network
For storing mailboxes in index format, the simplest approach is the
one used by MH: one message per file, and a mailbox is a directory.
For storing messages in a single file, here is a simple scheme that
will remove all ambiguity. It's a combination of old and new
strategies.
1. (old) 'From ...' (standard pattern) at beginning of line (BOL)
begins a message
2. (old) 'From ' at BOL, when part of the message body, is
converted to '>From ' before the message is added into
a mailbox.
3. (new) '>From ', '>>From ', '>>>From ', etc., at BOL, when part of the
message body, are escaped by prepending on '>' before the message
is added into a mailbox.
4. (new) The mail agent always strips out one '>' from any instance of
'>From ', '>>From ', '>>>From ', etc. at BOL, before showing the message
to the user or moving it from a mailbox into any non-mailbox location.
Ok, look at the advantages of this scheme.
1. A mail reader using the above scheme is 100% compatible with
existing mailbox formats.
2. Said mail reader will correctly show 'From ' at BOL in a message
body, by stripping out the superfluous '>' that is added by existing
mail delivery agents.
3. If said mail reader finds occurrences of '>>From ', '>>>From ',
etc., at BOL in a message body, it may unnecessarily strip out one '>'.
In practice this is unlikely to cause problems.
4. Mail readers and delivery agents can be incrementally revised to
use this scheme.
--
Rahul Dhesi <dh...@rahul.net>
"please ignore Dhesi" -- Mark Crispin <m...@CAC.Washington.EDU>
== end saved posting ==
--
Rahul Dhesi <dh...@rahul.net>
"please ignore Dhesi" -- Mark Crispin <m...@CAC.Washington.EDU>
D. J. Bernstein
> I posted such a proposal to Usenet in 1995, but I did not call it the
> 'mboxg' format. Did somebody propose and name it before that, or did
> somebody reinvent mine and rename it?
``mboxg'' is my name. I take no credit for the concept---I'm sure that I
heard it from someone else before I ever thought about the issue. It's
quite possible that your article is where I first saw it; I'm afraid I
don't remember. (I didn't know back then that I'd be writing a mailer.)
> "please ignore Dhesi" -- Mark Crispin <m...@CAC.Washington.EDU>
``I propose that we all ignore Bernstein'' ---Mark Crispin <m...@panda.com>
Anyone else? :-)
---Dan
Rahul Dhesi
d...@koobera.math.uic.edu (D. J. Bernstein) writes:
>``mboxg'' is my name. I take no credit for the concept---I'm sure that I
>heard it from someone else before I ever thought about the issue. It's
>quite possible that your article is where I first saw it; I'm afraid I
>don't remember.
In the absence of any other prior claims, I propose we call it the
'mboxrd' format.
--
Rahul Dhesi <dh...@rahul.net>
D. J. Bernstein
> In the absence of any other prior claims, I propose we call it the
> 'mboxrd' format.
That'll work. I've updated the qmail documentation.
I should note that I'm not particularly happy with any brand of mbox
format: mbox simply isn't reliable. If the computer crashes while it's
delivering a message, your mbox will be corrupted. The same is true of
mh folders.
In qmail I'm supporting a new format, maildir, that solves this problem.
Pleasant side effects: (1) maildir works over NFS; (2) you don't need
locks to read and manipulate a maildir. I think (2) will be a big
attraction for programmers.
---Dan
D. J. Bernstein
> D J Bernstein <d...@koobera.math.uic.edu> writes:
> > If the computer crashes while it's delivering a message, your
> > mbox will be corrupted. The same is true of mh folders.
The destructive way. Sequence files aren't adequately protected.
---Dan
Steinar Bang
DJB> I should note that I'm not particularly happy with any brand of mbox
DJB> format: mbox simply isn't reliable.
Agreed.
DJB> If the computer crashes while it's delivering a message, your
DJB> mbox will be corrupted. The same is true of mh folders.
In what way?