Re: [nmh-workers] nmh 1.7.1: both bcc and dcc broken for mts sendmail/pipe

[Ken Hornstein]

>i've just raised bug https://savannah.nongnu.org/bugs/?55700
>and i'm working on a fix for this for debian.

Can I just say, up front, that this just another example of why sendmail/pipe
is a TERRIBLE idea?  There was a reason it was shoved into the undocumented
"spost" program in MH.  But, fine .... I just had to get that off my chest.
Moving on.

>1. with sendmail/pipe the headers of what we pass to the mta must make
>sense for message routing, but the warning-encrusted modified draft
>baked for bccfil doesn't work because it has no to: and no bcc: headers,
>so the mta rejects that as unroutable. the original message that post
>also submits to the mta is left with bcc intact (and
>thus the mta does deliver it to the blind recipients), which duplicates
>the (currently nonfunctional) warning-encrusted message.

Alright, I guess that is a bug that has been around for ... 7 years?  That's
when spost was merged with post.

>so, in order to make bcc: be both blind and warning-encrusted as per
>the documentation we'd have to modify the original draft and nuke
>its bcc: header, and add a bcc: header to the bccfil draft.
>
>the patch that i've already attached to the bug report doesn't go that far,
>it makes bcc with sendmail/pipe work like dcc elsewhere. (it also doesn't
>contain any documentation updates.)
>
>my question: is that good enough? or should we aim for bcc working exactly
>the same regardless of mts?

Many electrons have been spilled about Bcc, Dcc, and nmh's use of
them.  I kind of feel that nmh's Bcc is kind of dumb, but that behavior
has been around for approximately forever so I think changing that is
not a good idea.  And it strikes me as a bad idea to have Bcc behave
differently depending on the MTS you are using.  So I think when
stripping Bcc out of the original draft and putting it IN the Bcc draft
makes the most sense.  I don't even think this is hard, because we already
do that for other MTSes (well, other than post is kind of a mess, but I
think the pieces are there).

>2. the docs say dcc isn't supported for sendmail/pipe, which is ok.
>however, that fact is not overly visibly documented, which is slightly bad.

Well ... where should this be documented better?  I am all for improving
our documentation, it's just there is a lot of it and it could use some
organizational improvements.  Really, if you have some suggestions I would
be glad to make them; I don't want to shove this on you, especially if
you are contributing a bug fix.

>my question: wouldn't it be best if dcc in the sendmail/pipe case was
>handled by simply replacing the header with bcc: and letting the mta do
>its job? or should post with sendmail/pipe reject messages with dcc?

I firmly believe that post should reject the message immediately and nothing
should be sent.

--Ken