Re: Raw messages.

[Brian Stafford <brian stafford office-logic com>]

Berend De Schouwer wrote:

 > Hi,
 >
 > I've been looking at getting Balsa to display some of the envelope,
 > either by adding a "View->Envelope Headers" option, or by displaying
 > the raw message.  I'd like to add this to better track bounced mail
 > and spam.

Hi folks,

I've been following this discussion with some confusion but now the
penny has dropped.  Having been involved with MTA development, the
term "envelope" was confusing me since it refers to the sender and
recipient information exchanged between MTAs in the SMTP protocol.
Since the envelope is discarded when the message is delivered I couldn't
see how a MUA such as Balsa could possibly view the envelope.

Other MUAs such as Netscape simply have a "View All Headers" option
I believe this is the correct terminology.  This seems to be the
only effect of Mutt's 'h' command (which is described as
"display message with full headers").

I would request that we therefore stop referring to headers such as
Received: as part of the message envelope, they are not.  Sometimes
parts of the envelope are added to the message headers by the MTA which
delivers a message, notably the Return-Path: header.
(Received: is a trace header added to the message, not the envelope,
by an MTA which relays or delivers the message.  It is to allow analysis
of the path taken by a message in transit.)


 > Envelope headers is available in Mutt, by pressing 'h', which

Full headers, not Envelope headers.

I hope this is of some clarification if anybody else has been confused on

this one.

Regards

Brian





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Brian Stafford, OfficeLogic International Ltd.
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