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List:       namedroppers
Subject:    human comprehensible net format
From:       ckk () andrew ! cmu ! edu (Chris Koenigsberg)
Date:       1986-09-12 14:25:41
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(regarding Message-ID <8608081437.AA26177@cbpavo.cbosgd.att.com>)

Dear Mark (& Namedroppers), I know the guy (!) whose signature file you used
as an example of the sort of thing that evolves when there are no standards &
I showed him your message from Namedroppers for fun. Here is his reply. I
think he is reinforcing, in a less technical way, the precise points that you
are making about the confusion when humans try to write down mailing
addresses in a complicated net environment.

Chris Koenigsberg
ckk@andrew.cmu.edu
************************************************************************
Date: Fri 12 Sep 86 13:25:57-EDT
From: D. M. Rosenblum <DR01@TE.CC.CMU.EDU>

(Chris,
     Thanks for the message.  You clipped off much of the header of that post
to Namedroppers from mark@cbpavo.cbosgd.ATT.COM, so I couldn't send a
comment to him directly that I wanted to.  Would you be so kind as to forward
the following on to him, since I presume you have the full header of his
message and can figure out the network path.  Thanks. )

Dan Rosenblum

===========================Begin Message to
forward:===========================

A friend of mine who reads the Namedroppers mailing list showed me your use
of my return address as an example of the horrors of non-standardized return
address formats.  Before I say anything else, I want to make it clear that I
take no offense at your doing this.  What I want to explain about that
admittedly long and ugly return address is that I have had problems getting
replies on each of the networks listed (well, except what I have jokingly
called PaperNet and SoundNet) because of people on them who didn't know how
to reply to messages I have sent.  The numerous options given for CCnet and
BITnet are a result of the fact that, as far as I can tell, different hosts
on these networks use mailers that want the addressses in different formats;
the alternatives that I have given are not things that are all supposed to
work from the same host, but rather are a list of all the possibilities that
I have heard of being relevant, such that at least one of them should work.
I didn't really want to add this information (i.e. that the reason for all
the choices is to increase the probability of finding one that works rather
than to allow the user to choose one among several equivalent ones that is
esthetically to his/her liking) to my return address as well, because it
would have just added clutter to an already cluttered and overly long return
address (and I really can't see a decent way to shorten it without losing
information that could be of some value to someone receiving a message). 

Part of the reason, by the way, for the grotesque return address is that the
Carnegie-Mellon University Computation Center is on some of these networks in
odd or indirect ways.  For further information on this point, see the
publicly readable file PS:<DC00>NETWORK-MAIL.HLP on ARPANET node
TE.CC.CMU.EDU (I think you can get at it with ANONYMOUS FTP, but I'm not sure
-- if not and you're interested in the ugly ways one site has to use to tell
its users how to send and receive network mail, let me know and I'll mail you
a copy). 

Daniel M. Rosenblum, Ph.D. candidate, etc. (you obviously have the rest)

============================End Message to
forward.============================ -------

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