[Mimedefang] Email 101

[David F. Skoll]

D. Stussy wrote:

[A number of comments]

Thanks for your comments.  I'll incorporate some of them.

> 4.1.2: MX - Simply call the order value "preference."  No one calls it "cost."

Yeah, I know.  But IMO, "cost" conveys the idea that the higher the number,
the less-preferred the MX host.  "preference" is confusing.

> 4.2:  Isn't "host" depreciated?  Use "dig" instead.

I don't believe host is deprecated, and I prefer its output format
to that of dig, especially for the tutorial.

> Page 9 example: You should not use local parts that have special
> meanings.  Replace "devnull" with something else.

What makes you think "devnull" has a special meaning? :-)

> 5.3: Actually, there are FIVE classes of reply codes.  You left out
> the 1xx level.

1xx is not used in base SMTP.  I'm also not aware of any ESMTP extensions
that use 1xx reply codes, but I'd be interested in hearing if there are any.

> 6.1.2 - Received header.
> You should NOT include examples of syntactically invalid received headers.

Those are (slightly edited) examples of Received: headers that I really
did receive.  The goal here is to teach novices how to interpret
real-world headers.  It isn't to impress upon them the RFC-compliant
syntax of theoretical Received: headers.

Regards,

David.