Re: Change in rmail-insert-mime-forwarded-message

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Mark Lillibridge writes:
 > 
 > "Stephen J. Turnbull" <address@hidden> writes:
 > 
 > >  Mark Lillibridge writes:
 > >  
 > >   >     Messages stored in mbox format have lines starting with >*From\
 > >   > escaped by adding an extra > at the front.  This escaping needs to be
 > >   > reversed to get the original message back.  See bug #13329 for more
 > >   > details.
 > >  
 > >  It's not particularly relevant to the problem Richard is reporting,
 > >  but that's incorrect.  mbox formats vary, but the most common ones
 > >  stuff a ">" if and only if the string "From " occurs at the beginning
 > >  of a line.  If ">From" occurs at the beginning of a line, you can't
 > >  know whether it was stuffed by the MDA or by the message author or
 > >  what.
 > 
 >     Yes, mbox formats vary; I was describing mboxrd above, which I
 > believe is the current Rmail default and does not suffer from this
 > problem.

Of course it does, if the MDA being used From-stuffs.  Rmail is not a
substitute for the system MDA or MTA.  So by the time Rmail sees the
message, it's already ambiguous.

 > See bug #6574 for why mboxo, which you describe above, corrupts
 > messages with ">From " lines.  Either way, unescaping is required
 > for forwarding or resending messages (destination system may not
 > use mbox at all).

Of course it's not "required"; this is a cosmetic issue.  A stuffed
message is inherently ambiguous, and any attempt to unstuff is going
to be heuristic.  If you unstuff this:

>From some of my correspondents, I occasionally receive mail
>containing quotes in this style.

before forwarding, some recipients will undoubtedly be unhappy with
the results because their MDA doesn't stuff.  Others won't notice
because their MDA does stuff.  Is it worth trying to accurately
identify these odd cases?