Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!att!dptg!rutgers!ukma!husc6!ogccse!schaefer
From: schaefer@ogccse.ogc.edu (Barton E. Schaefer)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.mush
Subject: Re: Patch for ">From:" name parsing in mbox-saved news articles
Message-ID: <4146@ogccse.ogc.edu>
Date: 9 Aug 89 18:08:16 GMT
References: <14529@bfmny0.UUCP> <8585@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu>
Reply-To: schaefer@ogccse.UUCP (Barton E. Schaefer)
Organization: Oregon Graduate Center, Beaverton, OR
Lines: 60

In article <8585@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu> lacey@tcgould.tn.cornell.edu (John Lacey) writes:
} In article <14529@bfmny0.UUCP> Tom Neff writes:
} } I set my hdrs_format to show the "%n" field (the author's name) but this
} } doesn't work too well with some saved news articles which came with a
} } named "From:" field but not a "Reply-To:"  field.  For example
 [Tom describes a problem with the following RN-mbox.saver-ism]
} } 	>From: ctp@goldrec.MUSIC.COM (Colonel Tom Parker)
} } 
} } Here Mush 6.5.6 (and other versions) will use the bang-path in its
} } headers display, instead of the readable English name I'd prefer [...]
} } 
} } I have been able to work around this successfully with the following
} } patch, which adds a check for ">From:" along with the other fields Mush
} } already checks for.  It appears to be safe for all Mush versions
} 
} I recently posted a message here with the exact same problem.  A much easier
} fix (and more elegant to boot) is to fix the program that saves messages
} to mail boxes (in my case, as an rn user, this is mbox.saver).

Although I agree that mbox.saver needs some repair work, there is a much
easier solution to this problem, a solution that involves source code
changes neither to mush nor to rn.

All you have to do is

	set reply_to_hdr = "reply-to from return-path >from from_"

This is approximately equivalent to the source-code change in Tom's patch.
(He ordered the list a bit differently.)  MMDF users can of course omit
the "from_", because they have no "From " pseudo-header.

In case you're curious, the reason the above works is that mush uses the
reply_to_hdr headers as a last resort if it can't find names/addresses
in the expected places.  So you could presumably add such things as
"in-real-life" and other irregular headers to your reply_to_hdr.  Just
be sure that (1) they are listed AFTER the usual headers to be replied
through; and (2) they are listed BEFORE "from_" (if "from_" is present,
it should always be last).

Adding fields to reply_to_hdr is not foolproof.  Mush considers the
address more important than the name, and wants very much to be sure that
the name and the address refer to the same person, so if it finds an
address without a name in one of the headers listed, it won't keep
searching for a name in the others. [%]  But setting reply_to_hdr works
as often as Tom's patch does.

Given that mush can do this, I'm afraid we'll have to turn down Tom's
request that his patch be "officially" included. :-)  Sorry, Tom. :-(
____________

% There are two exceptions.  If mush got the address out of from_ or
  return-path, which should never have a name, then it will check a
  couple of other headers to try to get a name.  Sometimes it does this
  incorrectly, especially for forwarded messages.  The SunView version,
  presently in beta-testing, improves this behavior quite a bit.
-- 
Bart Schaefer           "And if you believe that, you'll believe anything."
                                                            -- DangerMouse
CSNET / Internet                schaefer@cse.ogc.edu
UUCP                            ...{sequent,tektronix,verdix}!ogccse!schaefer