Subject: headers

From: Jon Lewis <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Apr 1995 01:11:24 -0400 (EDT)

I wasn't sure where else to ask this...so here goes...
I'm presently playing around with CGI perl scripts to send mail from a 
WWW form.  To help the messages get where I want them to go, is it okay 
to make up new header tags, such as X-Subject and X-To, or is this likely 
to cause trouble down the road?  Sendmail doesn't seem to mind them, and 
by default, pine just doesn't display them unless I view full 
headers...which is fine for what I'm doing.

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From: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 20 Apr 1995 11:25:19 +0100 (BST)

On Thu, 20 Apr 1995, Jon Lewis wrote:

Jon,

What you are doing is OK as it conforms to RFC822 syntax.  RFC822 states 
that both a mail transfer agent and a mail user agent should ignore any 
line starting with X- unless they are specifically designed to handle them.

Stuart

> headers...which is fine for what I'm doing.

----
Stuart Tares			Email : [email-masked]
Senior Network Analyst		Voice : +44 181 742 4060
DHL Systems Ltd, CSG Europe & Africa Region

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From: "J. Daniel Smith" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Apr 95 09:07:45 -0400

[email-masked] ([email-masked]) writes on 20 April 1995 at 11:25:19 +0100
>> [...]

Keep in mind a couple of things:
   * most versions of sendmail change the case of headers; if you
     add X-FOO-BAR:, sendmail will change this to X-Foo-Bar:.  Not a
     problem for procmail/formail, but nice to know for other processing.

   * some non-sendmail (RFC822) mail gateways will strip unknown
     headers and do all kinds of other crazy things.  For things I've
     done recently, I've put the X- headers in the body of the message; a
     quick run through sed still lets you use formail/procmail.

   Dan
--------------------- message is author's opinion only --------------------
J. Daniel Smith <[email-masked]>               http://www.bristol.com/~dan
Bristol Technology Inc.	                    +1 203 438 6969, 438-5013 (FAX)
Ridgefield, Connecticut (USA)                       {info,[email-masked]
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From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 21 Apr 1995 10:35:56 +0100 (BST)

On Thu, 20 Apr 1995, J. Daniel Smith wrote:

[snip]

>      problem for procmail/formail, but nice to know for other processing.

This is only true of IDA sendmail - all other versions of sendmail should 
be passed through as is. In addtion, the MTA/MUA should not care if what 
the case is - this is from RFC822:

	When matching any other syntactic unit, case is to be ignored. 
	For example, the field-names "From", "FROM", "from", and even
	 "FroM" are semantically equal and should all be treated 
	identically. 

>      quick run through sed still lets you use formail/procmail.

Agreed that non RFC822 mail gateways can do anything thay want with 
headers (and bodies) as those gateways are proprietary.  

It is not true to say that it is just non-sendmail gateways.  There are 
other MTAs such as MMDF, smail etc which conform to RFC822.  Sendmail 
should not be seen as the only RFC822 compliant MTA out there - it may be 
the most widely used though :-)

>    Dan

[snip]

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