'From ' lines (was Re: [Nmh-workers] 128 byte field name limit in NAMESZ breaks scan(1))

[Joel Reicher]

> The mh-mail(5) manpage is pretty clear about what the format of files
> in an nmh mail directory ought to be. These 'From ' lines simply aren't
> valid within it.
> 
> If the code writing 'From ' lines is part of nmh we should fix it;
> if it's third-party then we should probably identify and document
> how to configure that code to write valid nmh files.
> 
> >> Perhaps, as the bug report from 2005 stated, that would break mail
> >> filtering that actually looks at the "From " line. Why strip it
> >> out...it's data about the mail delivery process, and may have some
> >> value to some other process (spam filtering? mail statistics? random
> >> number generation?).
> 
> If you want the information you should write it in as an X-Envelope-From:
> header or similar.

Isn't the 'From ' line, apart from being a message separator in mbox format,
just the out-of-band sender? This is usually put in a "Return-Path:"
header.

Cheers,

        - Joel