Date: Wed, 24 May 2000 00:10:51 +0000 (GMT) From: Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com> To: keichii@bsdconspiracy.net Cc: freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: FreeBSD Manual Set Message-ID: <200005240010.RAA02687@usr05.primenet.com> In-Reply-To: <20000522201819.B56718@peorth.iteration.net> from "Michael C. Wu" at May 22, 2000 08:18:19 PM
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> I do not understand why we cannot have a friendly yet professional > sounding "auto-reply" message. For the average user, it is much > easier for them to understand the above mail than reading the > Sendmail bounce message. Professional sounding is all good, but > not at the price of clearity and easy-of-use. In this case, > can you write a message that is more concise, clear, and yet > still friendly to the average OE/Eudora/Outlook/Messenger-email-user? The sendmail bounces are RFC 1894 MIME DSNs. Using these has the advantages that users who do not do something foolish, like running a stupid mail client, can have the DSN interpreted for them by their mail client. This interpretation can include, but is not limited to, the mail client presenting the information in the locale specific language that the user prefers, without having to do something scruddy to the mail servers, like translating status messages into German because the mail server is located in Germany, even though the sender is sending an English message to an English speaking German (or vice versa). This is also the rationale for RFC2369 mailing list commands via "mailto:" URLs for help/unsubscribe/subscribe/post/owner/archive embedded in specially named headers that can be interpreted, and localized, by sufficiently clueful mail clients. Consider that a non-English speaker who was an Internet user would have some experience decoding RFC 1894 DSNs, but would have no clue whatsoever about how to decode the "friendly" postfix message. I hate programs that pretend to be converstational, particularly when they only speak English. P E R H A P S I F W E A L L T Y P E D L O U D L Y A N D S L O W L Y E N O U G H , W E W O U L D A L L B E A B L E T O U N D E R S T A N D E N G L I S H T E X T . . . Localization is _why_ we chose to implement a protocol, rather than some silly ass text message. MTAs could at least have the courtesy to conform to standards, which are there for a reason. Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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