Re: Status for faces patch #14.

John Mackin (john@syd.dit.csiro.au)
Wed, 27 Mar 91 14:56:22 +1000

From: richb@Aus.Sun.COM (Rich Burridge)
Date: Mon, 25 Mar 1991 11:03:43 +1000

- From John B. Melby <melby@daffy.yk.fujitsu.co.jp>
If one creates a directory "edu" in the faces directory, it does
not have any effect on a domain address in which EDU is capitalized.
It seems to me that "faces" should not pay any attention to the
case of a domain name (since case is only supposed to be significant
in the user name).

From John Mackin <john@syd.dit.csiro.au>
The comparison when looking up the domain in the faces
directory appears to be case-sensitive. This is wrong per
RFC822, domain-parts are case-insensitive. Both the directory
name and the host name from the mail item should be downcased
before comparison.

From Peter Gray <pdg@draci.cs.uow.oz.au>
When comparing the domain of the mail with the machine.tab entries
strcasecmp should be used since mail addresses are case invarient.

From u502sou@mpirbn.mpifr-bonn.mpg.de (Ignatios Souvatzis)
As far as I remember, RFC822 states that 'domains' and 'mailboxes'
ignore case. I frequently get mail with domain or subdomain names
uppercase or capitalized. 'gethostname' on the DECstations of the
university's radio astronomy institute returns upper case names
(probably set up this way to get it compatible to DECnet
conventions, they talk DECnet to the VAXes...). [Patch included].

Now, call me a sentimental old fool, (sorry, no Alexei Sayle sketches.
Start again.) Call me a guy who believes RFC822 matters, but I can't
let this pass. Enough people are confused about this already; let's
not propagate misinformation on this subject in the faces user
community. Mr. Melby and I have it right above; Mr. Gray gets
distressingly ambiguous, and Mr. Souvatzis is absolutely wrong.
Please, everyone, refer to RFC822, section 3.4.7, `Case Independence'.
I won't quote it at length here. The point, in simple language
and without using token names from the 822 grammar, is that
everything on the right side of the `@' matches in either case,
_but everything on the left of the `@' matches in exact case_,
with the exception of the reserved, special name "postmaster"
which must match in either case. (I am oversimplifying here
by ignoring source routing; if I may use token names, <domain>s
do indeed match in either case, but <mailbox>es include
<local-part>s, which do _not_.)

Please, people. RFC822 is all that stands between us and...
and... (he shudders, and makes an odd Qabalistic sign in the
air...) (dare I?) (YES!) X.400!!!!! Let's get it _right_.

John.