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Date:         Wed, 12 Aug 92 21:17:30 GMT
From:         Ned Freed <NED@SIGURD.INNOSOFT.COM>
Subject:      RE: two minor points
X-To:         D.Nash@utexas.edu, IPMDF@YMIR
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.pmdf-l

> I'm inclined to agree with Scott on the matter of multipart bounce-o-grams.
> Until we get MIME-compliant user agents, receiving multipart messages can be
> annoying and/or confusing.

You already have MIME-compliant user agents. PMDF-MR is fully MIME compliant
and it makes any Message Router user agent into a MIME user agent. In other
words, ALL-IN-1 MAIL (MailWorks) and to a lesser extent ALL-IN-1 IOS are MIME
compliant.

I realize that some sites would rather eat soap than run Message Router, and I
can sympathize strongly with this, but it _is_ an option...

PMDF-FAX is also MIME-compliant, although this means nothing when it comes
to returned messages.

We are working on both a replacement for VMS MAIL that's MIME compliant as well
as interfaces from VMS MAIL mailboxes to remote MIME-compliant user agents.

> I don't think it is particularly fair to tell
> people to just get used to it because that's the way it is.

As I pointed out in my earlier message, the use of MIME for return messages is
a recommended practice now. This means that regardless of what PMDF does you
are going to start seeing these things in huge numbers in the very near future.
And nothing in PMDF can change this.

The reason you're posting to us is twofold -- we got there first, and we're
more likely to listen to this sort of issue than most vendors. But I predict
that six months from now the actions PMDF takes in these situations will be
entirely irrelevant.

> However, I can
> also understand Innosoft's position of wanting to get a MIME-compliant MTA
> deployed as soon as possible.  If the much-heralded Innosoft MIME user agent
> had shipped with PMDF V4.1 then I wouldn't have a problem with any of this.
> But as the situation currently stands, it doesn't seem to make much sense to
> send MIME messages if there aren't any MIME user agents to deal with them,
> and there aren't any such agents for VMS (are there?).

The issue is simple -- we had to support MIME-formatted return messages, both
because it is the only thing that makes sense in the Message Router world and
because it will eventually become required behavior. The needs for this is
therefore ineluctable.

We didn't have the resources to do much else in our initial release. Now, we
can at this point continue to devote the resources to development of a
MIME-compliant UA or we can divert these resources into a cheap hack with a
useful life expectancy of about a year (at most). Which direction would you
choose? Would you rather get a MIME-compliant UA or the ability to generate
non-MIME return messages (a capability which, I might add, would have to be
REMOVED COMPLETELY at some future date).

I don't mean to imply that you have the ability to change this decision. You
don't -- we made the choice some time ago and I don't see the need to
reconsider this decision at this time.

> Since V4.1 didn't
> ship with the MIME user agent, I would like to have seen a setting which
> would disable the use of MIME in bounce-o-grams (and maybe elsewhere).  This
> would allow sites to ease into MIME as the user agents become available,
> rather than forcing them to deal with MIME messages (and the "junk" they
> contain), without a good user agent.  But I guess it's too late to retrofit
> this into V4.1, and hopefully the Innosoft user agent will be available
> before V4.2 comes out.

The code to generate return messages is decentralized in PMDF. As such it
appears in several dozen modules. We centralized it some in V4.1 and we've
since done a bit more for the next release. But the fact remains that
vagarities of return messages make it impossible to centralize this completely,
and as such it makes changing this a very major task which could not possibly
be undertaken without a full release.

The user agent, on the other hand, can be deployed as a single image plus a few
extra files. It does not have to wait for the next release.

> There, I'm glad I got that off my chest.  And lest anyone get confused and
> think otherwise, let me say that I have nothing but good things to say about
> Innosoft.  This whole MIME fracas is *minor* compared to the good stuff that
> Innosoft has done for us.  Between their active participation in the IETF to
> advance the state of the e-mail art and their contribution of real, working
> code to implement that art, they have made significant contributions to the
> Internet in general and to us poor VMS folks in particular.  It's nice to
> see that Unix isn't always at the vanguard of progress.  Great work, guys!

Development of V4.1 was done on the assumption that the user agent would
probably ship with it. Various choices were made which, had we considered
nonexistence of the UA at this time, might have been done differently. The
bottom line is that s**t happens.

And thanks for the kind words.

                                Ned
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU