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

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Mark Lillibridge writes:

 >     Yes, Rmail cannot prevent/fix damage that has already been incurred
 > due to broken mail distribution agents.  Hopefully, in the future we can
 > get those broken mail distribution agents fixed so they use mboxrd and
 > do not cause damage.

That's not good enough.  You also have to fix all of the ancient mbox
files that people have lying around.  Not going to happen.

 >     You would like Rmail to additionally damage the message again in the
 > hopes that the two damages cancel out?  You asked Rmail to send the
 > message:

No, I would like an MUA to ignore From-stuffing entirely (ie, treat
">" as just a character when it appears in the message body, no matter
what the context) when copying to and from mbox files.

It might be nice if the MUA would beautify the *display* of mail being
read (but not composed!) by suppressing one ">" when followed by
"From" in a context where it seems that there is an extra ">".  I've
got better things to do that try to write such code, though.

In composition, the user can "fix" it if they think those are the
appropriate semantics.  Why not let them?

 > Note that the ">" before the From is not part of the message per
 > the mbox format rules; sending it would be corrupting the message.

There is no standard for "mbox formatting rules", just a wide variety
of practices that are very similar but not identical.[1]  If the MDA does
From-stuffing, the ">" might be part of the format, or it might be
part of the message -- it depends on what came in over the wire, and
you don't have normally access to that.  If the MDA doesn't do From-
stuffing, it's part of the message.  Both are correct, according to
their own designs.  You don't have to like those designs, but the MDAs
are conforming to the specs they were written to.

"When faced with ambiguity, refuse to guess."

Why-yes-I'm-unambiguously-a-Tim-Peters-fan-ly y'rs,

Footnotes: 
[1]  http://www.jwz.org/doc/content-length.html.  Sadly enough,
nothing has much changed since then, except the proliferation of sites
that don't use the mbox format.  Nevertheless, there are still plenty
of sites that do, especially those based on free OSes where Emacs is
likely to be the platform of choice for at least some users.  And they
have some *very* old mbox files....