PE>> Anyone who can prove that a user can enter some text, and it
PE>> gets from A to B unmangled.

ml> for our discussions on this mail system, i'll accept these
ml> definitions for now >

ml> BTW: does mangling also include "fixing by other utils" ???  

Fixing implies broken.  I am not concerned what software does with a
message that doesn't comply with the spec.  Well, I suppose I am concerned
- that they don't send ME out of spec mail!

ml> ie: those that 
ml> alter all dashes seperation lines so that the first three are something 
ml> else? 

On passthrough messages?  ABSOLUTELY.  On messages that you are creating?
No more than I am about you using software that puts "fred loves
mary" at the bottom of your messages.

ml> what about those that alter the date format from what the sending 
ml> system put in the message to another format while tossing the message to 
ml> downlink systems?  ie:  opusseadog conversion

Ah, a validvalid conversion instead of invalid->valid?  Ok,
it's a good question.  First of all, that isn't user-text.  So if the
question is, "does technically correct mean being able to pass the
time a message was written through to the user intact", then no, I
don't think a timestamp is a fundamental requirement of a messaging system
(the post office doesn't give you a time the message was put into the
letterbox either).  However, it is certainly a nice thing to have.  If the
user wants to make sure that the timestamp that they wrote the message
(which may not be the time they uploaded it via text to the BBS), then they
are required to put it in their user-text portion.  They can put the
timestamp in whatever format they want too, that they want the recipient to
receive.  You do the same thing when you write letters.

I consider that a lossless translation of Seadog->Opus is not a problem
with the secondary issue of date-transportation.  I consider the lossy
Opus->Seadog to be technically incorrect.  I consider Seadog->RFC,
then
RFC->Opus, to be OK too.  BFN.  Paul.
@EOT:

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