Subject: Re: Single Recipient Distributions

From: Bill Williams <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 15 Nov 93 03:51:02 EST

On Fri, 12 Nov 1993 19:38:28 -0800 (PST) you said:
>Actually, when using BCC, the recipient will see the originator's name (in
>the From: ) line, but they will not see their own nor any other recipient's
>name, as there will not be a To: line.

Mmmmm....  interesting. I  am not  an e-mail  guru but  this tidbit  has
turned on  the "oh,  so that's it"  light. I am  a SysAdmin  for several
systems here including (this) VM/CMS  System and (those) AIX 3.2 Systems
where I use pine/pico for MUA.

I notice that  using my MUA for  this system -- RiceMail --  that when a
BCC: is used  a TO: is required  -- meaning that "this item  is going to
somebody and  one or more  Blind Carbon Copies  are going to  some other
people"  which seems  to  be a  logical operation.  (You  gotta have  an
'original'  for  there to  be  carbon  copies.)  Just  for the  sake  of
clarification, RiceMail and pine are not  competitive -- pine is no more
suitable for  VM/CMS than  RiceMail would  be for unix.  They both  do a
very similar menu-type MUA for each of these non-alike platforms, so I'm
*not* saying "why doesn't this MUA work like that MUA".

There have  been occasions when  some undeliverables have fallen  to the
electronic floor  down at the electronic  post office and in  looking at
those  items there  is  not 'To:'  --  only 'Apparently-To:'  addresses.

Is the absence of a 'To:' valid?  I should think 'To:' would be required
for  CC: and/or  BCC: operation.  Or  does it  matter to  the MTA  (Mail
Transport Agent) handling delivery?

This  is not  a rhetorical  question,  nor even  a vital  one. I'm  just
curious about this for better understanding.

 ---------------------------------------
   Bill Williams -- ETSU Systems Support
    East
    Tennessee             (615) 929-6853
    State   <[email-masked]>
    University        <[email-masked]>

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From: David L Miller <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 15 Nov 1993 10:06:03 -0800 (PST)

Bill,

Pine does not complain unless *all* destinations are blank, including "Fcc:" 
The Fcc-only case is broken in Pine 3.87, but it will be fixed in 3.88.  I
have not seen any Transport problems with Bcc-only mail... 

--DLM

|\ |  |\/|  David L. Miller    [email-masked]  (206) 685-6240
|/ |_ |  |  Software Engineer, Pine Development Team   (206) 685-4045 (FAX)
University of Washington, Networks & Distributed Computing
4545 15th Ave NE, Seattle WA 98105, USA

---

From: Steve Hubert <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 15 Nov 1993 10:58:58 -0800 (PST)

> those  items there  is  not 'To:'  --  only 'Apparently-To:'  addresses.

The Apparently-To is added by sendmail, which is trying to be helpful, I 
guess.  It is not a standard.  We've disabled this feature in our sendmail.
 
> Transport Agent) handling delivery?

The absence of a To is valid.  RFC822 says you need at least one 
destination address, which can be a bcc.  RFC821 doesn't really care 
about headers at all, it just cares about envelope addresses, which you 
certainly do have in this case.

Steve Hubert <[email-masked]>
Networks and Distributed Computing, Univ. of Washington, Seattle