[imp] local mail and mbox' From-line

[Michael M Slusarz]

Quoting Daan Mervielde <daan.mervielde at skynet.be>:

| Hi,
| 
| (First of all: my apologies if the problem I'm describing is not
| imp/horde related).
| 
| I've noticed a problem when sending local mail with imp 3.1 (I have a
| shared hosting account). The problem only occurs when sending mail to
| accounts on my domain *and* when the language upon login is Nederlands
| (=Dutch). There's no problem when I choose English (US).
| 
| The problem seems to be caused by the date part of the "From " line
| (first line of a message in mbox format). The time stamp of such lines
| is in a Dutch format, and causes confusion with the emailclients I use
| (this includes imp/horde itself). The clients don't parse such lines as
| the beginning of a new message, but they display it as plain text under
| the preceeding message in the inbox.
| 
| Here's an example (I've put in a "--" at the beginnning of each line to
| prevent confusion by emailclient; I also replaced domains with
| nonexistant ones). The first message was sent with a mailclient, the
| second is the one I sent to myself with imp/horde, and isn't properly
| recognized by the mailclients I use (note the different format of
| timestamps in the "From " lines of the 2 messages).
| 
| 
| --From someone at some_isp.be Mon Feb 10 07:02:27 2003
| --Return-path: <someone at some_isp.be>
| [...snip rest of headers + message...]
| 
| --From cpanel at xyz.org ma feb 10 07:04:15 2003
| --Return-path: <cpanel at xyz.org>
| --Envelope-to: daan at my_domain.com
| --Delivery-date: ma, 10 feb 2003 07:04:15 -0500
| --Received: from cpanel by hazel.xyz.org with local (Exim 3.36 #1)
| 	id 18iCfX-0004lG-00
| 	for daan at my_domain.com; Mon, 10 Feb 2003 07:04:15 -0500
| --Received: from 127.0.0.1 ( [127.0.0.1])
| 	as user daan at my_domain.com@localhost by www.my_domain.com with 
HTTP;
| 	Mon, 10 Feb 2003 13:04:15 +0100
| --Message-ID: <1044878655.3e47953f8b306 at www.my_domain.com>
| --Date: Mon, 10 Feb 2003 13:04:15 +0100
| --From: Daan Mervielde <daan at my_domain.com>
| --To: daan at my_domain.com
| --Subject: horde/imp test
| --MIME-Version: 1.0
| --Content-Type: text/plain
| --Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
| --User-Agent: Internet Messaging Program (IMP) 3.1
| --X-Originating-IP: 127.0.0.1
| 
| test
| 
| 
| I'm really not sure who's responsible for the "From " line, but my bet
| was imp, since the timestamp format clearly depends on the language
| chosen. I also noted that some emailclients are more forgiving than
| others. For example: Mozilla recognizes a day as 3 letters (hence the
| from line with "ma" isn't recognized as the beginning of a new message),
| whereas Mutt seems more `strict' (only recognizes English format like
| Mon, Tue etc).
| 
| I realize that the mbox format is not really standarized (as in
| rfc-like), but the implementations I've tested all have to some extent
| problems with non-english date formats.
| 
| Has anyone seen this behaviour, any comments? Or is this totally imp
| unrelated (I only experience the problem with local mail sent with
| imp/horde)?

That initial "From " line is not generated by IMP/Horde.  It is your local 
mailserver that is adding it.

IMP does not generate the "Delivery-Date" line either FWIW.

michael

______________________________________________
Michael Slusarz [slusarz at bigworm.colorado.edu]
The University of Colorado at Boulder