Olin Lathrop wrote in "Re: [EE] Three stage amplifier":

> Gerhard Fiedler wrote:
>> Later on it defines the Message-ID header. Olin's message identifier
>> <009601c6a81b$228fa360$0300a8c0@main> may not be standard-conform, even
>> though it seems to be pretty close.

> I'm just using Outlook Express, and it does whatever it does.  "Main" is
> the local name of the machine I was on within the embedinc.com local
> network. I'm not sure whether there is any information on that machine
> for OE or anything else to figure out the external IP address is
> assigned to the embedinc.com domain.

Probably not, at least not if your network is not a public domain (which it
doesn't seem to be and which very few are these days), and I'm not aware of
any configuration for OE about how to generate (or not generate) message
IDs. 

Since in general it is not possible to know the public domain from inside a
protected network, and many don't even run such a network and use other
means to get a unique FQDN (you can register a FQDN for free on some sites,
for the use in message IDs; these usually are supplied in the form of
subdomains like myregisteredname.nicefqdnsupplyinghost.com), some mailers
have a configuration for setting the FQDN it should use for creating
message IDs (and no, this is not a suggestion for you to switch mailers :).
Since the message ID is more important on the usenet, this feature is
probably more common in newsreaders than in pure mailers.


> And no, I don't want 15 replies suggesting how I should be using this and
> that mailer, some non-MS operating system, or whatever.  I've got things
> to get on with, and worrying about the standards conformance of my
> mailer when it doesn't effect me isn't anywhere on the list.

Yes, yes... :)  You don't need to get all defensive already up front. This
was just a comment on the various message IDs around the point that broke
threading for some subject-dependent algorithms. For general education, so
to speak. Who knows, it may help someone some time when it may be important
to know that OE (probably one of the most common mailers and newsreaders)
possibly does not create unique message IDs.

It also could be that someone knows how to set that with OE... even more
educating then.


BTW, in my previous message I assumed that the message ID was generated by
an embedinc.com mail server. If it is generated by OE on the "main"
machine, the better thing to do would be of course to append something like
main.embedinc.com (instead of just embedinc.com) -- or something similarly
unique; you don't have to use an existing machine name, just a unique name.
(And I'm just using this example (of embedinc.com) because it's already
there, not to harp on Olin.)

I'm doing this because I think that the more the existing standards (which
have a lot of thought put into them, mostly) are observed in general, the
easier, more comfortable and more user-friendly mailing and mail handling
becomes. This won't happen overnight, of course, but discussing the
relevant issues every now and then helps -- IMO.

Anyway, thanks for reading,
Gerhard

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