Re: problem with FROMNAME

[Earl Hood <earl@earlhood.com>]

On January 5, 2003 at 11:04, Bruno Demeilliez wrote:

> I'have a problem with $FROMNAME$. 
> If y read documentation about $FROMNAME$, it return :
> "The human name of the person in the From: field of the message. If no human 
> name is found, the local-part specified in the mail address is used."
> 
> But in some case, $FROMNAME$ return mail address...
> 
> It seem arrived when from header is like this :
> From: "toto@titi.com" <toto@titi.com>

This is a problem with sender of the message.  The actual address
is denoted by the <toto@titi.com>.  The string "toto@titi.com" is
just a string, and ignored for mail addressing purposes, but
typically denotes the "human name" of the sender.

The concept of the "human name of the person" is non-standard.
In other words, Internet mail standards do not provide an explicit
method for denoting the human name of the sender.

However, there are common stylistic conventions:

  1) Human Name <address@example.com>
  2) "Human Name" <address@example.com>
  3) address@example.com (Human Name)

1) and 2) are very similiar.  If the human name contains special
characters, like '.', then quotes must be used.  For example, if
a person's name is John Q. Public:

  1) John Q. Public <address@example.com>	(ILLEGAL)
  2) "John Q. Public" <address@example.com>	(CORRECT)

Then 1) is illegal and 2) is correct.

Method 3) is using a comment to denote the name.  This method
is technically safer since comments (things within ()'s) are
ignored by MTAs.

The actual text of the "human name" is completely up to the sender,
and many people use nicknames instead of their real name.  In sum,
it is completely arbitrary.

By design, MHonArc does nothing special with the $FROMNAME$, under
the assumption that the name string is something within the control
of the sender.  Unfortunately, I have seen a few cases where
the sender does not have control (like in corporate environments).

As of now, the only thing you can do is avoid using $FROMNAME$
or modify mhonarc code directly.  An alternative is to
use $FROMADDRNAME$.

--ewh

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