Xref: utzoo comp.mail.uucp:1623 comp.mail.headers:392 Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!munnari!munnari.oz!kre From: kre@munnari.oz (Robert Elz) Newsgroups: comp.mail.uucp,comp.mail.headers Subject: Re: what do _YOU_ mean by "all routing"?? Summary: Parentheses are no solution Message-ID: <2294@munnari.oz> Date: 12 Aug 88 11:15:16 GMT References: <676@bacchus.DEC.COM> <881@vsi1.UUCP> <3732@palo-alto.DEC.COM> <866@l.cc.purdue.edu> Sender: news@munnari.oz Lines: 19 In article <866@l.cc.purdue.edu>, cik@l.cc.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin) writes: > So what is the answer? An answer which has been proposed before is the use > of parentheses, or some such equivalent. That will never work .. all it could ever do is create more incompatabilities, which is what it would be nice to do away with. In any case, for the current problem it wouldn't help at all. There would be a set of sites that obey the restrictions you want the parentheses to imply (which would be much the same as the set of sites that look only at the first host in a bang path, and route to that one), and a set of sites that ignore your parentheses, look at what's inside, and "know" that they can find a better route than the one you gave. The problem that parentheses might fix (if it was rationally possible to change anything this darmatically) is the ! @ incompatability (which should be used). That's not at all relevant to the current discussion. kre