|Wed 1998-09-09 Pamela Greene <pgreene@optics.rochester.edu> list.faq
| No, the only auxiliary headers we're concerned with are the
| Archive-name and the Posting-Frequency. We also care about changes to
| the Subject, Newsgroups, and From headers.
Pamela, since you're on-line :-) , maye you can clarify following to
all of us:
I use utilize RFC comment to carry extra PLUS information. This
simulates the sendmail's real PLUS addressing quite nicely in everyday
mail exchange.
So, my From headers used to look like in periodic postings:
From: <jari.aalto@poboxes.com>
Whereas they now have RFC comment with PLUS infomation
From: <jari.aalto@poboxes.com> (Jari Aalto+list.faq)
I asssume you're only interested in the address change itself
and not the full From-line contents? If I change RFC comment part,
would I need to contact you?
jari
......................................................................
FYI: The RFC coment-plus trick, which I invented few months ago, is
described in my Procmail page. I quote the section if list members find it
usefull to themself too. If somebody uses Emacs/Gnus (Ring a bell?
Anybody?), I have ready RFC-comment plus setting. Ring me if you want one.
The feature will soon be included in my Emacs tools too, so that when you
compose mail, right RFC comment-plus tag is added to From line.
--Multipart_Thu_Sep_10_02:26:38_1998-1
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
ftp://cs.uta.fi/pub/ssjaaa/pm-tips.html
13.3 Using RFC comment trick for additional information
I invented this idea after reading Eli's exellent faq about email
addressing. Please read it (especially section 19.) before you
continue in order to understand what I'm going to present.
I have an account which does not support plus addressing and I was
kinda jelous to everyone that could use this neat sendmail
addressing scheme. The plus addressing helps so much better to deal
with mailing list messages.
But as it turns out, we can simulate in some extent plus addressing
with pure RFC compliant address. We exploit RFC comment syntax,
where comment is any text inside parentheses. According to Eli's
paper, comments should be preserved during transit. They may not
appear in the extact place where originally put, but that shouldn't
be a problem. So, we send out message with following `From' or
`Reply-To' line:
<login@site.com> (First Surname+list.procmail)
Or if your email address's localpart already signify your first and
surname already, you could use simply following. Hoewever, please do
note that many MUAs pick first 2 words from inside the RFC comment
to signify the First and Surname part, so if you just use this
"pure" plus format, you do a disfavour to severl MUAs that might
read your post. The above address syntax is generally best than
this below:
<first.surname@site.com> (+list.procmail)
Now, when someone replies to you, the MUA usually copies that
address as is and you can read in the receiving end the PLUS
infomation and drop the mail to appropriate folder: `mail.procmail'.
About subscribing to mailing lists with RFC comment-plus addess
It's very unfortunate that when you subscribe to lists, the comment
is not preserved when you're added to the list database. Only the
address part is preserved. I even put the comment inside angles to
fool program to pick up everything between angles.
<first.surname(+list.procmail)@site.com>
But I had no luck. They have too good RFC parsers, which throw away
and clean comments like this. Eg. procmail based mailing lists, the
famous `Smartlist', use `formail' to derive the return address and
`formail' does not preserve comments. The above gets truncated to
Also many mailing lists send out messages as `Bcc', so your address
is not even available in headers anywhere, neither is this nice RFC
comment. Ah well, but this RFC comment trick works very well in
private communication, virtually all MUAs copy whole contents of a
`From' or `Reply-To' header to `To' header, preserving comments and
you get the benefit of plus addressing. Here is procmail code
to demonstrate reading the PLUS infomation from RFC comment-plus
field:
RC_EMAIL = $PMSRC/pm-jaaddr.rc # Address explode module
:0
*$ To:\/.*
{
INPUT = $MATCH
INCLUDERC = $RC_EMAIL # Explore grabbed To address
# If COMMENT_PLUS was defined, module found "+"
# address which contained, say, "mail.procmail".
# Save it to folder.
:0 :
* $COMMENT_PLUS ?? [a-z]
$COMMENT_PLUS
}
Pretty simple. And you can put anything inside RFC comment and do
whatever you want with these plus addresses. _NOTE_: there are no
guarrantees that the RFC comment is preserved everytime. Well, the
standard RFC822 says is must be passed untouched, but I'd say it is
90% of the cases where mail is delivered from one server to
another, it is kept.
Exaple: if you discuss in usenet groups, you could use address
Reply-To: <first.surname@site.com> (First Surname+mail.usenet)
And the PLUS recipe above would sink all personal usenet replies to
folder `mail.usenet', supposing the sender's MUA grabbed the
`Reply-To' field and not the `From' field. You can even classify
the usenet groups:
Reply-To: <first.surname@site.com> (First Surname+usenet.games)
Reply-To: <first.surname@site.com> (First Surname+usenet.emacs)
Reply-To: <first.surname@site.com> (First Surname+usenet.linux)
--Multipart_Thu_Sep_10_02:26:38_1998-1--
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