RS> In fact netmail in QWK is even more of a monster kludge than
RS> it is in PKT. There is nowhere to put the destination at all.
RS> Your To: style is just ONE approach thats used in QWKs. And
RS> even that is fucked too. Classic kludge.

CR> It's even worse than that, because we now use the same kludge
CR> in a "proper" fido netmail area to send a message to an internet
CR> address via UUCP.

Yep, no argument there, both systems are riddled with warts now
as they attempt to respond to the changes in how things are done.

Its also a classic where Bobs fixed header approach just plain
wont work very well for very long even on something as simple
as a To: field.

You have a similar problem with gating too, the implicit assumption
in the PKT format is that you specify the destination, you need to
know nothing about routing, the system is supposed to handle that
transparently. If you do actually need to control the routing to some
extent, like specify a gate, you are stuffed. The only think you can
do is kludge around that. The ^A kludge lines work quite well in that
situation, you can just define a new one where the gate can be specified.

CR> I recently had to help someone out after his sysop completely
CR> flubbed it, and this was a bbs with a slip line, ie the internet
CR> gateway was local and the sysop should have known better.

Yeah, thats actually one real worry about the whole system at
present, not just with those more complex configs either. There
are more and more people getting involved that just dont have the
knowledge for complex systems and the current system has almost no
safety nets at all. Thats bound to fang people severely over time.
And they are characterised by atrocious docs too.

CR> I had to think back to my days of qwk messaging, but I finally
CR> figured that he needed _two_ kludges, one to get netmail through
CR> the qwk tosser to UUCP, and one to get the internet mail tosser
CR> to address it correctly to the internet address.  His first two
CR> lines looked like this:

CR>      To: 3:xxx/xxx
CR>      To: aname{at}whatever.com.au

CR> It worked, but I have to wonder how reliable it is.

Hard to say. It works now because of the auto translation of To: to
From: in the first one. Bound to be fragile tho.

CR> Despite the fact that we are always told to leave a blank
CR> line after the "To: 3:..." it didn't work when he did.

Thats logical, the second one ends up too far down from the top to be
treated as a To: field presumably.

--- PQWK202