Subject: Pine 4.0 wishes

From: Christopher Hicks <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 9 Apr 1997 04:00:00 -0400 (EDT)

I read through the archives for the list on the web site and saw that some
people had posted some requests for features.  I'd like to comment upon
some and add some

SIGNATURES: In UNIX you can create a named pipe that is a program which
will randomly create a signature.  There are examples of this in
/Programming Perl 2E/.  That's helpful, but it'd be nice to have certain
people receive certain signatures.  I don't mind my friends getting some
of my 'less polite' signatures, but it'd be bad if i posted the same to a
list or one of my clients.  Which leads to

CENTRAL ADDRESS BOOK: I know that this is a listed feature for an upcoming
release, but I wonder who is working on it.  I'm a competant developer and
would like to at least beta test if not more.  I use pine's comment
facility to track phone numbers, addresses, birthdays and such.  It'd be
nice if I could arbitrarily add fields.  I'd like to be able to use a
server for this so that I could share some entries and some fields with
others.  

One thing that should be part of this is better support for Fcc.  I have a
folder for each person I correspond with, but some people have several
email addresses.  If the username is different, this means i have to mung
through more than one box to find the correspondance for an individual. 
This is a bother.  So, it should be possible to define "alternative
addresses" for someone so that replies can be Fcc'ed properly.  Mailing
lists that change their name or maintain multiple 'inputs' would also be
helped by this.

INCOMING FOLDER CONTEXT: Different things should be settable on an folder
by folder basis.  I have all my mail forwarded to my main box and then
procmail'ed into a ton of incoming folders.  (This seems very common.) 
But when I respond to queries in one of my webmaster folders, the From: is
my address.  My main address already has too much stuff coming to it.
Reconfiguring for each reply isn't very practical.  If nothing else, it'd
be nice to be able to select from the alt-addresses already defined.  But
ideally signature, From:, saved-message directory, etc. should be able to
be overriden for a folder.

SCRIPTABLE: It'd be so cool if I could use pine from a script without
having to use expect (or the appropriate perl equivalent).

ObDisclaimer: I love pine.  I greatly appreciate everybody who has
contributed to it.  I laugh at elm users.  I have a link to the pine site
from my web page.  The above requests in no way disparage the wonderful
product as it currently exists.  Its better than anything you can buy.
Thank you all.

</chris>

  If toast always lands butter-side down, and cats always land on their
  feet, what happen if you strap toast on the back of a cat and drop it?
                                                         - Steven Wright

---

From: Robin S Socha <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 9 Apr 1997 11:26:57 +0200 (CEST)

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

On Wed, 9 Apr 1997, Christopher Hicks wrote:

[...]
  >list or one of my clients.  Which leads to

I'd "ME TOO" that in general, but of course it's not a feature everybody
needs, and setting up a sending filter that can to that isn't such a big
deal. Since you're a "competant developer" (see below) and have "Programming
Perl 2E" (see above), it should be a cakewalk, shouldn't it? Do it, create a
patch, submit it, done. Everybody will love you, me included. TIA.

  >server for this so that I could share some entries and some fields with

Ok, I hate GUIs... BUT, I'd like to advertise a program I found a couple of
days ago. It's called "addressbook" and is written in tcl/tk. It's a *very*
neat little program that will let you store all the information you
mentioned and more, and it will launch pine with a click of the little gray
rodent (don't mention the m-word *yukk*). But this might be what you're
looking for. Pine's got too much of an overhead as it is, imvho, and
bloating it even more would seem to be counter-productive. Here's the url:
	
	http://wwwmayr.informatik.tu-muenchen.de/~durka/addressbook/

[Fcc:]

[INCOMING FOLDER CONTEXT]
I didn't quite get what you mean, honestly :-)

Cheers,
Robin

P.S.
  >  feet, what happen if you strap toast on the back of a cat and drop it?

If you did that with one of my cats, I'd sentence you to 5 months of using
Windows 95 with Netscape mail.

- -----
Robin S. Socha,
Political Science Dept., Bonn University, Bonn
Key fingerprint = 7F F2 84 73 CF E9 2C 92  F6 6E F9 B4 8F FE AC 1E
To get my pgp public key, send an e-mail with the subject "get pgp-key"

GMC d++ s+:+ a- C++ UL++$>+++$ P+>++$ E>+ W- N+ o@ w--- M-- PS--- PE+++ Y+
PGP++>+++ t+() 5-- tv++(+) b+++ DI++ D+(++) G++>+++ e++>+++ h r++>+++ y+**

---

From: Christopher Hicks <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 9 Apr 1997 10:30:19 -0400 (EDT)

On Wed, 9 Apr 1997, Robin S Socha wrote:
> deal. Since you're a "competant developer" (see below) and have
> "Programming Perl 2E" (see above), it should be a cakewalk, shouldn't
> it? Do it, create a patch, submit it, done. Everybody will love you, me
> included. TIA. 

I keep forgetting about all the uses filters can be put too.  But it'd be
a lot "cooler" to be able to have this happen without having to go through
picking a filter.  I already use filters for pgp, so I'd end up having to
choose whether to sign something or give it a signature.  Bleck.

> 	http://wwwmayr.informatik.tu-muenchen.de/~durka/addressbook/

I consider tcl harmful.  Durka's product is nice and I have played with
it, but I still avoid tcl-based tools if possible.  (Of course its not as
bad as csh.)

> I didn't quite get what you mean, honestly :-)

Think of each incoming folder as a 'persona' or 'role' that should have
appopriately associated From: email address, signature, etc.

</chris>

---

From: "Steve \"Stevers!\" Coile" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 9 Apr 1997 09:44:11 -0400 (EDT)

>choose whether to sign something or give it a signature.  Bleck.

Perhaps it's time for someone to start a library of Pine filters?

--
    Steve Coile           P a t r i o t  N e t      Systems Engineering
 [email-masked]      Patriot Computer Group        (703) 277-7737

---

From: Christopher Hicks <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 9 Apr 1997 11:26:39 -0400 (EDT)

> Perhaps it's time for someone to start a library of Pine filters?

Even cooler would be to have a screen that allowed a series of filters to
be applied in the order the user wished.

</chris>

---

From: Robin S Socha <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 9 Apr 1997 17:32:38 +0200 (CEST)

>On Wed, 9 Apr 1997, Robin S Socha wrote:

[appending random sigs]
  >a lot "cooler" to be able to have this happen without having to go
  >through picking a filter. I already use filters for pgp, so I'd end up
  >having to choose whether to sign something or give it a signature. Bleck.

Err... no >:-> Being an "experienced programmer" (or whatever the exact term
was) who also owns some KeWL Perl book, you should be able to use one filter
that "does it all", or maybe two of them. I have one for pgp (which either
signs or encrypts) and one for random flames in the signature. You could
always combine those into one if necessary. Again: do it, send the patch,
we'll love you!

  >it, but I still avoid tcl-based tools if possible. (Of course its not as

Ok, show me a shell program that is as powerful and easy to handle, and I'll
jump for it. But for the "power user", having something to click on and to
open and close and stuff is always nice. Remember the people in the office
next door? They *do* want GUIs >:->

  >appropriately associated From: email address, signature, etc.

I really don't see the problem... How many filters do you want? Two, afaics:
pgp and signature. So that really isn't a problem. Use Aldo Valente's papp,
insert an additional "which signature do you want" filter, and you're there.

If I'm not totally mistaken, formail and not pine should be able to handle
the header part. It's u*ix world, after all. You don't want pine to become
u*ix's MS Mail, do you? (1,7MB is big enough, right?) I guess that the vast
majority of people can live quite well without the things you suggested
(after all, pine's supposed to be "simple"), and adding them if you
*personally* need them doesn't seem too big a deal. No offence intended, but
what you're asking for is, imvho, against the u*ix spirit. If God had wanted
us to use bloated stuff like MS Mail, he wouldn't have created the "|" >:->,
which proves that Gates is the devil...

Later,
Robin

-----
Robin S. Socha,

Microsoft isn't the answer. Microsoft is the question, and the answer is NO.

---

From: Christopher Hicks <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 9 Apr 1997 12:01:21 -0400 (EDT)

On Wed, 9 Apr 1997, Robin S Socha wrote:
> Err... no >:-> Being an "experienced programmer" (or whatever the exact
> term was) who also owns some KeWL Perl book, you should be able to use
> one filter that "does it all", or maybe two of them. I have one for pgp
> (which either signs or encrypts) and one for random flames in the
> signature. You could always combine those into one if necessary. Again:
> do it, send the patch, we'll love you! 

Well, that's not a very general solution.  I already have two pgp filters
(one for signing and one for encrypting).  So I'd end up having to have
5 filters:
	Sign + random sig
	Encrypt + random sig
	Sign
	Encrypt
	random sig

If we come up with something else (and apprantly people have other
filters) then we'd end up with up to eleven filters.  The maintenance
of this is totally unnecessary if pine handled running multiple filters
cleanly.

And I do intend to send patches.  A lot of the reason I posted was to try
and coordinate with whoever I needed to.

> Ok, show me a shell program that is as powerful and easy to handle, and
> I'll jump for it. But for the "power user", having something to click on
> and to open and close and stuff is always nice. Remember the people in
> the office next door? They *do* want GUIs >:->

They're more than welcome to work with GUI's.  My intent was to have a
server store the information (possibly LDAP or something similar) and have
pine be one of many clients for it.  If people want to use a GUI to access
it, fine.  But I'm not going to try and run X across a modem (when I'm
stuck in some German backwater where the dial tone puts Trent Reznor to
shame) just to be able to cut and paste from my address book into pine.

> Use Aldo Valente's papp, insert an additional "which signature do you
> want"  filter, and you're there.

What is papp?

> If I'm not totally mistaken, formail and not pine should be able to
> handle the header part. It's u*ix world, after all. 

Really?  I don't see how.  How can formail determine what folder I was in
when I sent something?

> You don't want pine to become u*ix's MS Mail, do you? (1,7MB is big
> enough, right?) I guess that the vast majority of people can live quite
> well without the things you suggested (after all, pine's supposed to be
> "simple"), and adding them if you *personally* need them doesn't seem
> too big a deal. No offence intended, but what you're asking for is,
> imvho, against the u*ix spirit. If God had wanted us to use bloated
> stuff like MS Mail, he wouldn't have created the "|" >:->, which proves
> that Gates is the devil...

The same logic easily leads us direclty back to mailx.  I don't want to
bloat the product.  I don't want to add features that confuse people.  The
beauty of pine is that these things can be cut on by people who want them. 
(And lots of local UNIXheads I know would cut all of the features on that
I mentioned.)  If I had to buy a bigger machine to run a pine with the
features I wanted, I would happily do so.  I sit in pine 24-7.  But
nothing I've talked about is going to require massive amounts of code.  In
fact, the address book stuff is already being considered for addition. 
And that code will be vastly larger than the folder-by-folder
configuration stuff.  As for, against the UNIX spirit, both pine and perl
are against the UNIX spirit.  You're more than welcome to go back and use
mh (or mailx) and sh.  They're perfectly in keeping with the UNIX spirit. 

</chris>

---

From: Robin S Socha <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 9 Apr 1997 18:48:48 +0200 (CEST)

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

  >> [using filters]

  >	Sign + random sig Encrypt + random sig Sign Encrypt random sig
  >filters) then we'd end up with up to eleven filters. The maintenance of
  >this is totally unnecessary if pine handled running multiple filters
  >cleanly.

Ok, KISS didn't work, so I'll try using ascii-art:

			    use filter?
			   /	      \
			yes		no
			 |		   \
			pgp?		send mail
		     /	     \
		yes		no
	     /      \		 |
	sign   or  encrypt?      |
	       \  / 		 |
	add random sig    or   send ?
			|
			V
		send mail or add another filte, etc., etc. ...
		
Got it? papp (Pine And PgP) is doing exactly the above pgp part, btw.		

[Central Addressbook]
  >shame) just to be able to cut and paste from my address book into pine.

The German ISDN system is better than anything I've seen so far. Trent
Reznor doesn't sample dial tones. 

What's the problem of setting up a script that pipes the output of a Central
Database into pine's address book format?

  >Really?  I don't see how.  How can formail determine what folder I was in

Now I get it... Ok: "From:" isn't supposed to be altered (vulgo: "forged"),
anyway. Either use another "Reply to:", or set up another user. Since you're
answering as "different people", you'd want that, anyhow. One simple and
fast solution would be to run different instances of pine with different
folder collections and static configurations. I.e., as a webmaster, you'd
launch pine with an rc that has [email-masked] as "Reply to:". Since pine
stays in the cache under u*ix, that would be a matter of seconds. This way,
you'd have only a few configurations, depending on "who" you are. Your way,
you'd have to maintain loads of configurations for various folders. I don't
think this is a wanted behaviour.

[Bloating of pine]
  >beauty of pine is that these things can be cut on by people who want
  >them. (And lots of local UNIXheads I know would cut all of the features
  >on that I mentioned.) If I had to buy a bigger machine to run a pine with
  >the features I wanted, I would happily do so. 

Ok, let's put it this way: Being a "competant developer", you can easily
UTSL and tailor your own version of pine. You can also make the patch
publicly available (as is being done with pgp-filters, e.g.). But -- again,
no offence intended -- I don't see any urgent need for your suggestions
being implemented in the general distrib.
  
[...]
  >As for, against the UNIX spirit, both pine and perl are against the UNIX
  >spirit. 

Pardon?
  
  >You're more than welcome to go back and use mh (or mailx) and sh. They're
  >perfectly in keeping with the UNIX spirit.

C'mon, you know what I'm talkin about... Nobody wants an addressbook
specifically for pine. Rather, you want a global database with a front-end
that launches pine. That's why I suggested taking a look at Addressbook
(wwwmayr.informatik.tu-muenchen.de/~durka/addressbook/), as it does exactly
that: It's got a database and a nice front-end and launches mail, fax, phone
and also can be piped into running applications like emacs (did I mention
that it can output TeX code?). So, you could pipe its (or any other
database's output) into pine address-book format, putting all information
that cannot be stored in appropriate fields into the comment field.

Well, whatever...

Later,
Robin

- -----
Robin S. Socha,

---

From: Mike Brudenell <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 9 Apr 1997 18:09:33 +0100 (BST)

> of this is totally unnecessary if pine handled running multiple filters

I'm not quite sure how Pine supporting multiple filters would help unless
it provided *at send time* some way of letting you select which of your N
filters were to be applied to this message.

I suspect this would involve dextrous finger activity selecting them from
a list (like Take Address uses)?

In which case you could still make use of similarly dextrous finger
activity to include some sort of special line in your message which a
single Mega-Filter could detect, remove, and use appropriately...

Your above 5 filters could still be combined into one providing it picked
up (and then filtered out) some sort of special string _within the message
text_.  For example the last non-blank line, or perhaps one starting
with an unusual string such as "#|".

If this configuration string used (say):

	P	to indicate PGP handling with suboptions like "s" for
		signing and/or "e" for encrypting

	S	to indicate signature handling with subtoptions like
		"r" to indicate a random signature or "f" for a
		flame-style signature (especially for Robin to use!)

Then your above five examples of different combinations could then be
indicated by including a line of the form: 

	Sign			...	#|Ps
	Encrypt			...	#|Pe
	Sign + random sig	...	#|PsSr
	Encrypt + random sig	...	#|PeSr
	random sig		...	#|Sr
	Sign + Flame sig	...	#|PsSf

Things could be further shortened by condensing option/suboption pairs to
single characters.  For example:

	PGP sign	= p
	PGP encrypt	= e
	Random sig	= s
	Flame sig	= f

which would then shorten above examples to:
	
	Sign			...	#|p
	Encrypt			...	#|e
	Sign + random sig	...	#|ps
	Encrypt + random sig	...	#|es
	random sig		...	#|s
	Sign + Flame sig	...	#|pf

Just a thought.

Cheers,

-- 
Mike Brudenell                                         <[email-masked]>
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Computing Service, University of York, Heslington, York, YO1 5DD, UK
Tel: +44-1904-433811  FAX: +44-1904-433740  http://www.york.ac.uk/~pmb1/

---

From: Christopher Hicks <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 9 Apr 1997 14:01:21 -0400 (EDT)

On Wed, 9 Apr 1997, Robin S Socha wrote:
> The German ISDN system is better than anything I've seen so far.

It pains me to say this, but I was more impressed with Bell Atlantic.  Of
course, half of my complaint was that getting any packets back to the
states was nearly impossible.  (One packet every two minutes.)

> Trent Reznor doesn't sample dial tones. 

He wouldn't need to sample the dial tones in Germany.  He could go
direct to CD.

> What's the problem of setting up a script that pipes the output of a
> Central Database into pine's address book format? 

Because editing would be nice and sticking everything in the comment field
is a big thing I'm trying to get away from.

> Now I get it... Ok: "From:" isn't supposed to be altered (vulgo:
> "forged"), anyway. Either use another "Reply to:", or set up another
> user. Since you're answering as "different people", you'd want that,
> anyhow. One simple and fast solution would be to run different instances
> of pine with different folder collections and static configurations.
> I.e., as a webmaster, you'd launch pine with an rc that has
> [email-masked] as "Reply to:". Since pine stays in the cache under
> u*ix, that would be a matter of seconds. 

I tried running pine under different accounts.  But its not as efficient
as the tab key.  Having different rc's would be easier, but the only
difference would be that I wouldn't have to type a password for each.  To
check mail would require cycling through 20 accounts.  Bad idea.

On the "Reply To:" versus "From:" issue, I'd rather maintain the
appearance of multiple people a little better.  People ignore Reply To:
way too often.

> This way, you'd have only a few configurations, depending on "who" you
> are. Your way, you'd have to maintain loads of configurations for
> various folders. I don't think this is a wanted behaviour.

No.  My way would only require maintaining as much per folder as you
wanted to.

> publicly available (as is being done with pgp-filters, e.g.). But --
> again, no offence intended -- I don't see any urgent need for your
> suggestions being implemented in the general distrib. 

I intend to make patches available.  A lot of my purpose in posting was to
see if anybody else was working on these things since some of them are on
the official to do list.  I wouldn't consider any of this "urgent" either.

> [...]
>   >As for, against the UNIX spirit, both pine and perl are against the
>   >UNIX spirit.
> Pardon?

pine can't be called from a script.  That's rather against the spirit of
UNIX.  perl goes entirely against the 'simple tool' philosophy by throwing
everything together into one tool that (if you need it to be) isn't very
simple.

> specifically for pine.

That's what LDAP and addressbook are for.

> Rather, you want a global database with a
> front-end that launches pine. 

No, you want a back-end that's accessible through pine.  Pine is already a
front end for a weak address book functionality.  I'm just trying to
'open it up' by allowing it to work against a backend.

</chris>

---

From: Christopher Hicks <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 9 Apr 1997 14:03:16 -0400 (EDT)

On Wed, 9 Apr 1997, Mike Brudenell wrote:
> I'm not quite sure how Pine supporting multiple filters would help
> unless it provided *at send time* some way of letting you select which
> of your N filters were to be applied to this message. 

I was thinking that it would be a screen that would look like the options
screen.  You could use x to check off filters, and reorder them using some
other keys.  (Of course this wouldn't come up if you didn't have
enable-multiple-filters checked in your config.)

</chris>

---

From: [email-masked] (Steve McIntyre)
Date: 9 Apr 1997 16:49:09 GMT

In article <[email-masked]>,
>be applied in the order the user wished.

Definitely, yes.

-- 
Steve McIntyre, CURS Secretary, Cambridge, UK.   [email-masked]
I sent ten dollars to death.net and all I got was... well, nothing.
"Can't keep my eyes from the circling sky,                 +------------------
"Tongue-tied & twisted, Just an earth-bound misfit, I..."  |Finger for PGP key

---

From: Christopher Hicks <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 14 Apr 1997 01:37:54 -0400 (EDT)

On Wed, 9 Apr 1997, David L Miller wrote:
> I think you can do what you want using the Fcc field in the
> addressbook. 

Actually, no.  Even if I set up 'dummy' addresses for people it won't work
when I try to save the message.  This also fails for some cases when
replying since you may want to reply to where the person emailed from even
if that username isn't their 'primary' one.

> Why?  What could you do with a scripted Pine that wouldn't be just as
> easy with a perl/ksh/awk script?  The only thing I have found that I
> really need better Pine scripting for is testing Pine itself ;-)

Send to an alias, automatically save in the proper folder, etc.  If I made
those functions from pine into some sort of library that could be linked
from pine, that'd be nice.

A classic example of this is when trying to have a CGI email a bunch of
people.  I /will/ remember to change the pine alias for an individual when
their email address changes, but I may well forget to change the email
addresses in all their CGI scripts.  If I could use pine from a script
(which would pick up on aliases) then it wouldn't be a problem.  I'd
change it in one place and all would be well.

</chris>

"He is one of the best teachers I have had... He is well-organized,
 presents good lectures, and creates interest in the subject.  I
 hope my comments don't hurt his chances of getting tenure."

---

From: Nancy McGough <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 14 Apr 1997 14:33:45 GMT

On Wed, 9 Apr 1997, David L Miller wrote:
> There is a script called sendit.sh in the contrib/utils directory of
> the current Pine distribution.  Using it as a starting point, you
> could write a script to post-process a message in pretty much any way
> you want.  Just configure sendmail-path to point to your script....

Will sendit.sh work with PC Pine for Windows 95 too?  

Thanks!
Nancy

--                                                                  /
   .-.                                                             /  
  /   \           .-.                                 .-.         /
 /     \         /   \       .-.     _     .-.       /   \       /
/Nancy McGough--Infinite Ink/---\---/-\---/---\http://www.ii.com/ 
         \     /       \   /     `-'   `-'     \   /       \   /
          \   /         `-'                     `-'         `-'
           `-'

---

From: [email-masked] (Sven Guckes)
Date: 14 Apr 1997 17:30:00 GMT

[email-masked] (Nancy McGough):
>  Sender: who really sent the message
>  From: who you want the message to APPEAR to be from
>  Reply-To: who responses should be sent to
> 
> It seems to me that any good mail client will support all three of
> these headers and that the Sender header should not be editable
> (to prevent forgery with this mail client) but both the From and
> Reply-To headers should be EASILY editable ON THE FLY.

mutt.  header editing.  http://www.math.fu-berlin.de/~guckes/mutt/
I think you would love it, Nancy.  Then again, there is no PC version.

Sven

---

From: [email-masked] (Chris Koenigsberg)
Date: Fri, 18 Apr 1997 20:32:38 GMT

Another important issue is one which the *&$%%$#@@!$% spammers have
unfortunately tarnished.

I move around a lot and over the years since 1976 I have had a number
of different computer accounts that I sent mail & news etc. out from.

A couple of years ago I got sick of always having to try and let
everyone know when my email address was going to change, and I signed
up with "pobox.com" for their portable email forwarding service.

Now I always want you to see "[email-masked]" in whatever headers that
your mail program is going to use to reply to me. Any other address in
any other header may be valid at the moment but not in a few years; or
i may be unreachable behind a firewall; or it may be on a hostname
which we've just decommissioned; or it may be, as someone mentioned
here, related to an IMAP mailbox, and not useful as a reply address.

Even if a piece of mail from me sits around in an archive for years, I
still want you to be able to reply to me. There are messages from me
back in the 1980's, archived at Web sites, and people have
occasionally written to me at those old addresses. Fortunately they're
still alive & forwarding to me now. But what about the next ten years?

So I want to make sure that I can say "Reply-To: [email-masked]" on
everything I post or mail, regardless of where it is actually coming
from. And it literally could be coming from any one of hundreds of
different systems where I could legitimately be mailing from, across a
number of different organizations and networks, across the USA.

I'd like to change the "From:" header too if possible, and even the
RFC 821 envelope sender (MAIL FROM field), all to my portable
[email-masked] moniker. I may be using Pine on timesharing host A.B.C
today, but it's only one of a zillion places I may be mailing &
posting from and I want those archived messages to only show the
permanent address for me, so they're not garbage in another ten
years!!! And of course as a long time sysadmin and Postmaster, I set
up Pine myself on systems and disabled "allow-changing-From-line" too,
even though I want it on for myself!!! (am I a hypocrite? :-)

(of course as a side consequence, I want to kill, kill, smash, stomp,
stomp, the author of the decision which made Microsoft Mail SMTP
Gateways ignore Reply-To: and From: headers, and only show the
envelope sender (RFC 821 MAIL FROM field) to the user of the MS-Mail
Postoffice mailbox. At least they've fixed this with Microsoft
Exchange Server's Internet Mail Service!!! Thank you!!!! And VAX/VMS
3rd party Smtp products used to do the same thing, cc:Mail and
Quickmail gateways too, etc. Kill, smash, stomp them all!)

Now back to the @(*^*^%!)(*%^#& spammers.

I have a legitimate reason for wanting to put something into the
replyable headers you see in mail from me, something which has no
syntactical or semantic connection to any of the actual accounts,
hosts, etc. that I actually use for my mailing & news posting.

But those @$#@!_)&&^%$%&^$ spammers are pushing things to where it'll
be harder and harder to do this, because they're abusing it.

Recommendations will be enforced soon, by outgoing anti-spam filters
on ISP firewalls, where PPP dialups may no longer be able to send out
MAIL FROM an address that doesn't relate to the network they're
on. I'll have to get some kind of special permission, register
specially somehow, in order to keep being "[email-masked]" no matter
what ISP PPP I happen to be using today. (i.e. somehow I'll have to
register an association, between my pobox.com permanent moniker and
whatever authentication I use for this particular ISP, and they'll
have to store it and check my mail against it on their firewall's
outgoing mail queues, to make sure I'm not a &*%%#@*^&^$^Y spammer).

Some of you might know what a fanatical anti-spam vigilante I am, so
here I know that my own needs conflict with the need for controlling
those I^&^$&^%*&^ spammers. 

Chris Koenigsberg, [email-masked], <http://www.pobox.com/~ckk>

---

From: David L Miller <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 16 Apr 1997 13:50:02 -0700

On Mon, 14 Apr 1997, Nancy McGough wrote:

> To me there are three (often distinct) things that need to be
> conveyed in a message: 
> 
...
> these headers and that the Sender header should not be editable (to
> prevent forgery with this mail client) but both the From and
> Reply-To headers should be EASILY editable ON THE FLY.  With over
> 1000 domain names being registered daily and the new top level
> domains coming soon, more and more people are getting their own
> domain names and want to be able to EASILY play different roles
> (webmaster, sales, etc.) from their mail client.  My question is: 
> 
>  Why does PC Pine make it so hard to change the From line on 
>  the fly?  I honestly do not understand this, given that the
>  Sender line tells who the real sender is.

I agree completely that the definitions you give above are the way it
_should_ work.  Unfortunately there are several problems to consider:

1.  Making the Sender: header non-editable implies that the client
needs some way to authenticate that header.  PC-Pine gets that
information from the IMAP credentials used to open the INBOX.  In some
cases the address generated from the IMAP login does not correspond
directly to a deliverable e-mail address.  [Chris Newman was
circulating a proposal to define a new header with authentication
information, but I don't know what its status is.]

2.  Many clients do not display the Sender: or X-Sender: header by
default.  Thus, simply changing the From: header on-the-fly makes it
possible to fool a naieve user into believing a forged e-mail. 

3.  If I remember correctly, when custom header support was first
added to Pine, the From: header was editable.  Overwhelming demand
from mail administrators made us change the default to disable editing
the From: header, largely because of (2).

4.  Some commonly used mailing list management software makes
assumptions about these headers that conflict with our assumptions.
That was a driving force in making Pine default to use X-Sender:
instead of Sender:.  From recent reports, that software is even
looking at X-Sender: now :-(

With the changing face of e-mail usage and products, it is possible
that we could be persuaded to change Pine's defaults.  But, the above
problems do need to be addressed by any changes we make...

-- 
David L. Miller <[email-masked]> | The difference between fiction and
Software Engineer, Pine Development Team | reality? Fiction has to make
Box 354841, University of Washington     | sense. -- Tom Clancy
4545 15th Ave NE, Seattle WA 98105, USA  |
Phone: (206)685-6240  FAX: (206)685-4045 |