Subject: Re: PINE-INFO digest 393

From: Mike Miller <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1998 11:08:08 -0500 (CDT)

Thanks for this excellent bit of information (in your appended message).
One question: When you wrote the following...

> A useful trick to know, if you don't want to put a real e-mail address in
> the "To:" field, is to put in a string (usually a descriptive name of the
> list or just something like "Various recipients") with the magic sequence
> 	:;
> at its end.  For example:
> 	Bcc:  Various recipients:;

...did you really mean to put this in the Bcc: field?  Or should it go in
the To: field?

Thanks much!

Mike

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

> Date: Sun, 26 Jul 1998 10:16:51 +0100
> From: Mike Brudenell <[email-masked]>
> To: Shawn Jeffries <[email-masked]>
> Cc: Pine Discussion Forum <[email-masked]>
> Subject: Re: Help - address display in header fields (fwd)
> Message-ID: <[email-masked]>
> MIME-Version: 1.0
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
> 
> Hi!
> 
> --On Fri, Jul 24, 1998 4:40 pm -0400 Shawn Jeffries <[email-masked]>
> wrote:
> 
> > If you got mail lists 50 people long, you'd try to find a fix.
> > 
> >     Shawn Jeffries
> >     [email-masked]
> 
> May I take the liberty of ignoring the majority of "highly informative"
> responses in this thread and instead suggest another possible (better?)
> solution...
> 
> If you are receiving messages with very long recipient lists then, rather
> than have each and every recipient either silently suffering or trying to
> figure out a workaround, the better solution might be to get the problem
> fixed "at source"?
> 
> You might like to contact the people responsible for sending out the
> messages and ask they start lisiting the recipients using the "Bcc:" header
> rather than the "To:" or "Cc:" headers.
> 
> As you probably know "To:" is for listing the prime recipients of the
> message, with carbon-copies (eg, for "information only" purposes) being
> listsed in the "Cc:" header.
> 
> The often overlooked "Bcc:" (Blind Carbon Copy) can be used to list
> recipients *but* with the addition that the entire recipient list is removed
> from the delivered copyof the message.  This means that you wouldn't get to
> see the list of 50+ recipients in your message at all!  (It also has the
> added advantage of preventing the dreaded "reply-to-all" problem, where
> people reply to the every recipient rather than just the original poster.)
> 
> Note that if you do use "Bcc:" you should ensure that there is at least one
> valid address given in the "To:" header too; otherwise some brain-dead mail
> delivery agents throw a wobbly and insert each and every supposedly
> concealed "Bcc:" recipient in a series of "Apparently-to:" headers (which
> rather defeats the object! :-)
> 
> A useful trick to know, if you don't want to put a real e-mail address in
> the "To:" field, is to put in a string (usually a descriptive name of the
> list or just something like "Various recipients") with the magic sequence
> 	:;
> at its end.  For example:
> 	Bcc:  Various recipients:;
> 
> Most mail delivery software will recognise this as being a valid address but
> which doesn't need anything delivering to it.  (I think it's called
> something like "group syntax" ... I forget.)
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Mike B-)
> --
> The Computing Service, University of York, Heslington, York, Yo10 5DD, UK
> Tel:+44-1904-433811   Fax:+44-1904-433740    http://www.york.ac.uk/~pmb1/
> *******  Unsolicited commercial/bulk e-mail is NOT welcome here!  *******

---

From: Mike Brudenell <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1998 09:45:37 +0100

AAAARRGGHHHHHH!!!

> ...did you really mean to put this in the Bcc: field?  Or should it go in

Yup, it shouls indeed go in the "To:" field: the whole point is to have a
valid address there to appease the brain-dead mail delivery agents and their
"Apparntly-to:" headers.

Sigh.

OK... So let me throw in one other gem that people often don't find out
about.  Whilst the "To:/Cc:/Bcc:" header information should apply to
virtually any mail client this one is, as far as I am aware, specific to
Pine.

Along with "Bcc:" Pine also has an "Lcc:" header field.  This is
purpose-designed for use with Distribution Lists you set up in your Address
Book.  To send a message "safely" to a Distribution List you can simply use
the "Lcc:" field (see below) instead of faffing on with "Bcc:" and setting
up a valid-but-empty address in "To:" using the magic "Some string:;"
notation.

Instead you just type the Distribution List's nickname into the "Lcc:"
field.  When the message is sent the members of the Distribution List will
be listed as recipients of the message in a "Bcc:" header.  However the
sneaky thing is that Pine will automatically use the full (descriptive) name
of the Distribution List to construct the magic ":;" line for the "To:"
header.

So if you set up a Distribution List in your Pine Address Book along these
lines:

	Nickname:	netcontacts
	Full name:	Network Maintenance People
	Members:	[email-masked], [email-masked], ...

you can then just type "netcontacts" into the "Lcc:" field and have Pine do
all the rest.

If you are REALLY cunning, of course, you'll have set up an "Fcc:" folder
for the Distribution List in your Address Book.  Then any message you send
out to "netcontacts" will be set to have a copy of your message filed into
the nomianted folder instead of the generic default (usually "sent-mail"). 
[This also applies to Individual entries, not just Distribution Lists]

NOTE:  Because the full name is used in the "To:" field when a message is
sent out the recipient(s) get to see it.  This means you should not put
anything too rude in there (unless you don't mind them seeing it!) ... save
such remarks for the entry's "Comments" field! ;-)  [Again, this applies to
both Distribution List and Individual entries in your Address Book.]

Cheers,

Mike B-)