From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!uwvax!solomon
Newsgroups: net.news
Title: mailers and To: fields
Article-I.D.: uwvax.437
Posted: Sat Jun 19 09:13:47 1982
Received: Sun Jun 20 01:15:18 1982

Some mailers (most notably /bin/mail) do not automatically include
a To: field in mail sent.  If the "r" command in B netnews
uses such a mailer, your response will not indicate who it was intended
for.  Such information is extremely valuable, especially if the
letter goes astray (as it so often does).  I suggest that readnews
go to extra pains to insure a To: field such as (1) use a mailer
that supplies it, such as /usr/ucb/mail, (2) supply the necessary
option to make the mailer supply it (such as mail -t ...), or
(3) add its own To: line (may be hard, since the header lines are
separated from the body by a blank line, usually supplied by the mailer.
To be of maximum use (especially in ARPA-land), the To: line must
be part of the header).

BTW, readnews should follow the same convention for its own headers:
The header is separated from the body by a blank line.  This convention
would prevent that bug we've been seeing where the first line of
a joke is stripped off because it starts "Q: How many ..."