dovecot - May 2006 - Thunderbird 1.5 and messages with no Date: header

hi,

some of my Thunderbird users have a minor but annoying problem with
messages that have no Date: header.

these clients use BODY[HEADER.FIELDS (Date)] as the date for
messages. when a message has no Date: header, they display the
date as 01/01/1970 10:00:00 because Dovecot returns empty string.

would it be possible for Dovecot to return INTERNALDATE instead, for
messages that contain no Date: header? I know this is not
*technically* correct, but it's a reasonable best-guess, and better
than returning nothing. perhaps as a client-workaround?

I vaguely recalled a previous message about this, but I couldn't find
it today.

grant.

grant beattie wrote:
> some of my Thunderbird users have a minor but annoying problem with
> messages that have no Date: header.
> 
> these clients use BODY[HEADER.FIELDS (Date)] as the date for
> messages. when a message has no Date: header, they display the
> date as 01/01/1970 10:00:00 because Dovecot returns empty string.
> 
> would it be possible for Dovecot to return INTERNALDATE instead, for
> messages that contain no Date: header? I know this is not
> *technically* correct, but it's a reasonable best-guess, and better
> than returning nothing. perhaps as a client-workaround?
Isn't it better to fix the MUA in question? Returning another value than
the one present in the header structure would break RFC 3501, IMHO.

Anyway, the Date header should be fixed/added by MTA (haven't read
RFC2822 but the ENVELOPE desription in 3501 seems to confirm my
interpretation).

Anyway #2, assuming that the message hasn't arrived via SMTP (as the MTA
would fix/add the Date header unless it's broken) and probably also not
via COPY or APPEND, I'm not sure how would INTERNALDATE help you - if
I'm reading the specification correctly, the behaviour is
implementation-defined in other cases :)

So in short, is there a report in Thunderbird's bug tracker?

Cheers,
-jkt

-- 
cd /local/pub && more beer > /dev/mouth
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 258 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL:
<http://dovecot.org/pipermail/dovecot/attachments/20060519/d91c5a9f/attachment.bin>

grant beattie wrote:
> these clients use BODY[HEADER.FIELDS (Date)] as the date for
> messages. when a message has no Date: header, they display the
> date as 01/01/1970 10:00:00 because Dovecot returns empty string.
IMNSHO, the appropriate fix is to refuse these messages in the initial 
SMTP transaction.  RFC-2822, section 3.6 clearly states:
>    The only required header fields are the origination date field and
>    the originator address field(s).  All other header fields are
>    syntactically optional.  More information is contained in the table
>    following this definition.
> 
Any message without a DATE: and FROM: header is malformed and should be 
refused.  When I turned this on, the only legitimate messages that were 
bounced were from a stupid print-to-email feature on our HP 
printer/copiers.  I routed those through an MTA that added a DATE: 
header and all was fine.

YMMV

John

-- 
John Peacock
Director of Information Research and Technology
Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group
4501 Forbes Boulevard
Suite H
Lanham, MD  20706
301-459-3366 x.5010
fax 301-429-5748