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.