Re: request for help

[Brian Stafford <brian stafford uklinux net>]

On Tue, 21 August 11:24 Carlos Morgado wrote:

> > Mail headers are more for processing by the MUA rather than for human
> > consumption.  Arbitrary headers, IMO, are a Bad Thing.  At best they add
> > little if no value at all.  If present at all, they should be used in
> > moderation
> > and always start with "X-".
> > 
> pretty much what i had in mind. mutt lets your add free form headers, i was
> thinking prepending X- to everything

The problem with free form headers is that they might be damaging to certain
MUAs.  It should certainly not be possible to create free form versions
of headers which are meaningful to MUAs.  Unfortunately this includes a
few that start "X-".

A good place to start is RFC 2076 - it reviews headers, both standard and
non-standard in common use.  You will see from this that we are in header hell.
If we are going to contribute to the proliferation of headers the we need
to have a certain measure of restraint about it.

Brian