Re: RFC1536 on Common DNS Implementation Errors

[Charles B Cranston <zben@ni.umd.edu>]

> I understand your grievance, but the alternatives were all
> worse.  1536 stopped just short of banning partially qualified
> names altogether.

Which I maintained as early as 1984 SHOULD be banned entirely.
Unqualified names (those containing no periods) can be qualified
into the "local domain" (presuming that can be defined).  But
partially qualified names are a quagmire.  If the entire name is
too ungainly to type in, the mail program should either provide
some shortcut alias for the entire user@host or some extension
syntax THAT IS NOT VISIBLE WHEN THE FINAL MESSAGE IS PRODUCED.
I.E. this cannot be implemented in "sendmail" but has to be done
in all the mail user agents (how I hate that dichotomy).

All else is "doing it on the cheap" and leads to madness...