Subject: Empty header messages

From: David Rientjes <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 3 Sep 2000 23:55:37 -0700 (Pacific Daylight Time)

Hi...

I recommend removing the empty-header-messages parameter and forcing
composed email messages to contain a correctly formatted "To" field.  As
it stands right now, users may leave the "To" field empty and include
other fields (i.e. "Cc", "Bcc", "Fcc") to send to users.

I am recommending this because of the following text in RFC822 which seems
to have been ignored:

     A.3.  COMPLETE HEADERS

     A.3.1.  Minimum required

        Note that the "Bcc" field may be empty, while the "To" field
        is required to have at least one address.

There are no benefits to leaving a "To" field empty and using other fields
such as "Cc" and "Bcc"; the only use they've had recently have been in
spam emails where intelligent users have filtered email that has not been
sent to their own email address or other configurable addresses.  Using
only the "Cc" field defeats the purpose and intent of it (since it is
intended to be a carbon-copy of an email sent to other recipients).

A patch has been written by myself for this change.  Comments are
welcomed.

-- David Rientjes

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From: Scott Leibrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 4 Sep 2000 00:27:16 -0700 (PDT)

I'm no expert on RFC822 (as I know some of the Pine developers are), but
the way I read it, the To: field is not required.  All that is required is
one destination field, as shown here:

     fields      =    dates                      ; Creation time,
                      source                     ;  author id & one
                    1*destination                ;  address required
                     *optional-field             ;  others optional

where a destination field is defined as one of:

     destination =  "To"          ":" 1#address  ; Primary
                 /  "Resent-To"   ":" 1#address
                 /  "cc"          ":" 1#address  ; Secondary
                 /  "Resent-cc"   ":" 1#address
                 /  "bcc"         ":"  #address  ; Blind carbon
                 /  "Resent-bcc"  ":"  #address

The appendix example you cite only says that the To: field must contain
one or more addresses if it's present.  Pine does comply with this, as it
leaves out the To: field unless it has an address (or LCC/BCC
pseudo-address) in it.

-- 
Scott Leibrand
[email-masked]            (Yes, that is a valid address.)
http://students.washington.edu/leibrand
http://www.nwlink.com/~leibrand
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