Unix userid conventions

[Karl Kleinpaste]

Posting-Front-End: GNU Emacs 18.37.1 of Wed Feb 25 1987 on cbstr1 (usg-unix-v)


zellich at ALMSA-1.arpa writes:

   No sweat on e-mail - you just set up useful aliases for each user
   the same way we do now; nothing says a user's login id and mail id
   have to be the same...

True enough.  I have been using a modification to smail (first in 2.1;
added to 2.3 yesterday) which does fullname delivery of mail.  Mail
from me now says I am Karl.Kleinpaste at cbstr1.att.com, in both the
From: and From_ lines.  Works great.  Has a nice heuristic for
variations on a fullname, e.g., for a gecos field in /etc/passwd of
"First M. Last (Nickname)," it'll deliver to First.M.Last, F.Last,
Last, Nickname.Last, or N.Last, all equivalent.  Now there is
effectively no relationship between my login name and my mail address;
it could change to "zzrwvjs" tomorrow and no one would know by my mail
address.

Now I need to convince the netnews software to use the same mechanism,
so that outbound news doesn't advertise me by login name, either.

PS- How many people are aware that the current development version of
smail is up to version 2.5?  I got mail via floyd yesterday, and its
Received: line said "smail 2.5" in it.  Rather volatile software...
-- 
Karl