PINE & Zmailer

[Kamil Kukura <kamk@ccsun.tuke.sk>]

I found my lost message from Oct 94 so it's a bit older.

Using PINE as mail user agent we had some problems with mail received by 
Zmailer. Pine started complain about incorrect fold lines in the header 
of a message. Here comes some communication between my friend and one of 
the author of Pine:



Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1993 00:24:54 -0700 (PDT)
From: Mark Crispin <MRC@CAC.Washington.EDU>
To: "Barry Bouwsma, mere clown" <barryb@vszbr.cz>
Subject: re: Pine bug with fan mail

     Thanks for the example.

     The To: line with the address:

renegade cyclist and hacker Barry Bouwsma <barryb%CCSUN.TUKE.CS@earn.
	cvut.cz>

is invalid according to RFC 822 section 3.1.4, page 8.  In part, it reads as
follows: ``... there must be NO linear-white-space betweed <word>s that are
separated by period (".") or at-sign ("@")...''

     The line continuation is, itself, valid.  The problem is that
continuation translates into linear-white-space; that is, it forms a resulting
address of:

renegade cyclist and hacker Barry Bouwsma <barryb%CCSUN.TUKE.CS@earn. cvut.cz>

     Note the space after ``earn.''.  The truly sad part of this story is that
if it weren't for certain *other* brain-damaged mailers, Pine might have been
able to parse this correctly...  ;-(


    Okay, now that you have seen that, here is what resulted in a test
where I sent myself mail with a long name.  Here is how Pine wants to
see it (which is correct):

>From barryb@vszbr.cz Fri Oct 15 18:33:30 1993
Date: Fri, 15 Oct 1993 18:23:22 +0100
From: "Dude with an even longer name, to be crashing mailers"
     <barryb@vszbr.cz>
To: barryb@ccsun.tuke.cs
Cc: Barry Bouwsma <barryb@vszbr.cz>
Subject: Parse check

(This is where Pine split the long From: line into two parts.)
But here is how the zmailer on ccsun.tuke.sk rewrites the headers:
(Full headers shown here)

>From barryb@vszbr.cz Fri Oct 15 18:35:14 1993
Received: from vsz.vszbr.cz ([193.84.4.33]) by ccsun.tuke.cs with SMTP id <64631>; Fri, 15 Oct 1993 18:24:12 +0100
Date:	Fri, 15 Oct 1993 18:23:22 +0100
From:	"Dude with an even longer name, to be crashing mailers" <barryb@vszbr.
	cz>
Subject: Parse check


    Note that the address line is split at the wrong point.  That is why Pine
complains.  This is something that zmailer does, which is in violation of
RFC822.



-----
that's all. If this problem was discussed before then sorry for bothering.


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