Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!utcs!scott
From: scott@utcs.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.mail.headers
Subject: Re: I hate smail
Message-ID: <1987Jan8.120027.23351@utcs.uucp>
Date: Thu, 8-Jan-87 12:00:27 EST
Article-I.D.: utcs.1987Jan8.120027.23351
Posted: Thu Jan  8 12:00:27 1987
Date-Received: Thu, 8-Jan-87 19:27:05 EST
References: <14227@amdcad.UUCP> <32@auspyr.UUCP> <14237@amdcad.UUCP>
Reply-To: scott@utoronto.bitnet (Scott Campbell)
Organization: Organization? Who's organized?
Lines: 51
Checksum: 42146

In article <14237@amdcad.UUCP> phil@amdcad.UUCP (Phil Ngai) writes:
>The other problem is when rerouting is forced on users. Then bad data
>in the map knocks you out. Back when I was routing manually with the
>aid of uupath, I could do things like say "ah, it wants to go through
>ihnp4 but we know better" and avoid bad sites. Now it does whatever it
>pleases.

I think a mailer should be able to find sites using whatever information
it has but more importantly it should be able to let me do it manually.
All this domainizing is great but if I want to send it my own way I should
be able to bypass the internal routing tables. Intermediate machines
in the path should look at the mail and say "Hmm.. he routed this himself
I better leave it alone." If I route it incorrectly, instead if rerouting it
when it comes to a dead end, it should bounce so that I know that the path
I chose was bad and I can find a new one.

>What I liked to do a lot of was to take an address like
>fred@site.dec.com and ship it off to decwrl to handle with
>decwrl!fred@site.dec.com.  Now smail says "ah, @ takes precendence".
>How am I supposed to dump addresses on a smarter site like decwrl now?

Try  fred%site.dec.com@decwrl

>No doubt this article reveals a profound ignorance on the operation of
>smail. I don't want to learn it. I didn't have to learn all this stuff
>before and my mail worked. I am not especially lazy or unknowledgable
>about computers and this is how I feel about smail. How do you suppose
>all the other users feel about this mail situation?

The front end mail system should make routing completely invisible to those
who want it that way so they can say fred@site.dec.com and assume it will
get there (within the limits of your site knowing where site x is) but if
joe smart-user wants to be able to explicitly do his routing that should be
possible to (but not nessessary).

Personally, I still like to route my mail myself because it seems that even
short routes are changing daily.

Well, it looks like my soap box has a crack in it so I'll step down now :-)
		    scott

-- 
				"I feel fine..."

...{utzoo, decvax, ihnp4, cbosgd, utcsri, mnetor}!utcs!scott
scott%utcs.toronto.edu@csnet-relay.arpa
scott@utoronto.bitnet
scott@utcs.utoronto.bitnet

Disclaimer: The above is not actually the opinion of anyone at all but
	especially not the administration or staff of this institution.