Re: Possible minor bug in tmda-ofmipd

Stephen,

> I'm not sure this is a bug, depending on what aspect of the behaviour
> you're seeing you believe is a bug!

I agree. However, in this specific discovery, it was my girlfriend  
that complained that something was wrong with the mail. She thought  
the mail server had problems. When I had a look at the problem, I also  
didn't think of problems caused by the email message itself.

So, based on this limited anecdotal evidence, I think it's safe to say  
that if it's a tmda-ofmipd feature, then at least tmda-ofmipd's  
behavior is somewhat lacking.

> In either case, the message can't be sent, and an error is returned to
> the mail client, which you're seeing.

Yes. So the question is basically: should tmda-ofmipd validate the  
message, or should the mail server validate it? (I'll provid my answer  
to this question right after the next quotation of your text.)

> Of course, if the bug you're reporting is the lack of detail in the
> error message sent back to Thunderbird, then yes, we could probably
> include more information somehow.

I think this would be necessary if tmda-ofmipd were to validate the email.

I'd recommend against that, however. The generalization of your  
statement that tmda-ofmipd should perform validation is that  
tmda-ofmipd should perform validation on more than just this  
particular kind of problems.

However, I think that's a slippery slope, because you'd soon find that  
tmda-ofmipd should contain a variety of error message (which users  
would soon want to customize) for a variety of validation problems.

This could of course be considered as a feature, but to me such a  
feature would be mostly unnecessary, because mail server software  
around the world already includes such support in a mature and tested  
form.

Yes, the user wouldn't receive immediate feedback, but I'm not sure  
this convenience warrants the feature costs in terms of development  
time and support on tmda-ofmipd.

--Ole