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Annotation of 43BSD/usr.lib/sendmail/doc/abstract, revision 1.1

1.1     ! root        1: Here it is, on the fly.....
        !             2: 
        !             3:        SENDMAIL -- An Internetwork Mail Router
        !             4: 
        !             5: Routing mail through a heterogenous internet presents many new
        !             6: problems.  Among the worst of these is that of address mapping.
        !             7: Historically, this has been handled on an ad hoc basis.  However,
        !             8: this approach has become unmanageable as internets grow.
        !             9: 
        !            10: Sendmail acts a unified "post office" to which all mail can be
        !            11: submitted.  Address interpretation is controlled by a production
        !            12: system, which can parse both domain-based addressing and old-style
        !            13: ad hoc addresses.  Mail is then dispatched to an outgoing mailer.
        !            14: This system can expand trivially.  The production system is powerful
        !            15: enough to rewrite addresses in the message header to conform to the
        !            16: standards of a number of common target networks, including old
        !            17: (NCP/RFC733) Arpanet, new (TCP/RFC822) Arpanet, UUCP, and Phonenet.
        !            18: Sendmail is not intended to perform user interface functions or
        !            19: final delivery.  Sendmail also implements an SMTP server, message
        !            20: queueing, and aliasing.
        !            21: 
        !            22: This is approach is unique in that it allows external compatibility
        !            23: with the old practices, and tries to make the mail system conform to
        !            24: the user instead of the other way around.  Although sendmail is not
        !            25: intended to circumvent new standards, it is intended to make the
        !            26: transition less painful.  Sendmail does require certain base-level
        !            27: standards on target mailers such as the basic semantics of certain
        !            28: headers and the surface syntax of messages.  New mailers can be added
        !            29: trivially; for example, a Purduenet channel was brought up in twenty
        !            30: minutes.

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