Re: Exim's handling of Bcc lines (was Re: [BUG] mutt 1.2.5 sends mail with Bcc: header)

On Mon, 26 Jul 2004, Phil Pennock wrote:

> Having software second-guess intentions is a recipe for trouble.  The
> software which can best determine intent/necessity should do so.  If the
> MUA knows that somebody is not supposed to see a line, the MUA is in the
> best place to enforce it.

For the record, I happen to have noticed this comment, which was sent by
Keith Moore to the ietf-822 mailing list. Keith has been involved in the
development of email standards for many years. He wrote:

OP:   > No, MUAs often send raw message text to an executable transport agent
OP:   > (e.g. sendmail) which examines the message header to determine
OP:   > recipients.

KM:   in that case, sendmail is performing part of the MUA's function.
KM:   nothing says that the entire MUA has to be implemented in a single
KM:   program.

In other words, he supports my statement that when Exim is constructing
the envelope from the header lines (the -t option), it is performing an
MUA function, a point that Derek was disputing earlier.

(I'm only just back. It will be some time before I get round to writing
a document to get this issue more widely discussed.)

Regards,
Philip

-- 
Philip Hazel            University of Cambridge Computing Service,
ph10@xxxxxxxxxxxxx      Cambridge, England. Phone: +44 1223 334714.