Subject: Re: long "To" fields from distribution lists?

From: Ian Russell Ollmann <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Apr 1995 01:10:32 -0700

On Tue, 11 Apr 1995, Bob Manson wrote:

> Sorry if I missed it in the manual.  People have been complaining about
> long "To" lists in their messages.  Often, a two or three line message
> sent to a distribution list is preceded by a 25 or 30 line header.  Is
> there any way of telling pine to send stuff out to a distribution list
> one name at a time?

There is a really easy way. Instead of typing in the 25-30 names on the 
"To:" line, enter them on the "Bcc:" line. Everyone will get the mail, but 
they wont see any names in the header (including their own name). This 
also prevents people who reply to you from accidentally replying back to 
everyone. The "Bcc:" line is available as part of the Rich Header, which 
comes up in pine if you hit ^R when the cursor is in the header of the 
mail that you intend to send. If you absolutely want something to appear 
in the "To:" line, type in something like this:

To: Various_People <[email-masked]>
Bcc: (25-30 adddresses here. No parentheses.)

That way, a copy will go to you in addition to everyone else, and 
something will appear in the "To:" line which will seem reasonable to the 
uninformed. The informed will no doubt figure out what you did and not 
worry about it. 

				Ian Ollmann

An alternate way is to send the mail to a dummy account with a .forward
with all 25-30 names listed one per line in it, or investigate one of the
many varieties of mail servers for creation of a mailing list.

---

From: [email-masked] (Bob Manson)
Date: Tue, 11 Apr 1995 21:27:51 GMT

thanks
			bob

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: 12 Apr 1995 05:55:09 GMT

Put the cursor in the header area and hit control+r.  This is called the 
'rich header'.  Now put all your addresses in the BCC: field which stands 
for Blind Carbon Copy.  No one sees anyone else's address when they 
receive their mail.  

Kevin

Bob Manson ([email-masked]) wrote:
: Sorry if I missed it in the manual.  People have been complaining about
: long "To" lists in their messages.  Often, a two or three line message
: sent to a distribution list is preceded by a 25 or 30 line header.  Is
: there any way of telling pine to send stuff out to a distribution list
: one name at a time?

: 			thanks
: 			bob

--
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=   Kevin J. Sinclair    Project:  <http://rdz.stjohns.edu/kidopedia/>   \
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-- 
Kevin J. Sinclair <[email-masked]>

---

From: [email-masked] (jeff sumler)
Date: 13 Apr 1995 06:54:25 GMT

>for Blind Carbon Copy.  No one sees anyone else's address when they 

While this is the recommended method in pine for sending mail via pine's
internal aliases, note that there are (at least) two sendmail issues
that may cause the addresses in the mailing list to be visible to
recipients. 

1) Sendmail strips the Bcc: field from outgoing messages. If your
message has no address in the To: header, the message arrives at the
target host with no header To: field (which violates RFC 822). The
receiving sendmail thus adds an Apparently-To: line for every recipient.
Most mailers filter out this header, but if yours doesn't (or if it
offers a "raw header" option) - whoops, you see all the addresses to
which the message was Bcc:'ed . Obviously this can cause a great deal of
embarassment in some circumstances. The current solution is to always
put something in the To: field - a dummy address, even an RFC 822
comment like (My-Mailing-List). (This handling of Bcc: has always been a
problem and various alternatives are being discussed on the sendmail
beta list.)

2) Older versions of sendmail (basically anything prior to Berkeley V8)
maintain a fixed buffer for headre contents, the size of which is
determined at compile time. A very long mailing list may cause
sendmail's header buffer to overflow, with the overflow being insert
into the message (and flagged as overflow). This has also caused much
embarassment when it reveals to the world the contents of a supposedly
"secret" Bcc:

V8 dynamically allocates buffers for message headers, so this problem
goes away. Few vendors ship V* sendmail however, so it is a problem to
be aware of.

Obviously these are sendmail issues but I thought it might be worth
mentioning them.

jeff sumler
Systems Engineer, Indiana University
[email-masked]

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From: [email-masked] (Marty Hyatt)
Date: 16 Apr 1995 15:39:45 -0400

I did the bcc: thing and put in a to: line.  My list is under 50
names, so I don't think any buffer is overflowing.  I did a test and
everybody got it OK without the other addresses being visible
EXCEPT a prodigy user.  What is different with prodigy?