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there's plenty to hate about outlook: its virus propensity; its complete
bloated being; its bugs that microsoft admits exists but won't fix
"until the next version".
but what's really pissing me off today is its piss poor SMTP client
implementation.
once a month marketing sends out a newsletter to a hundred or so
recipients [1]. eventually I'll set up a mailman list [2], but until
then they're sent with via Bccs. this would be fine if the client were
sane. but it's outlook, so it's not.
if there's a bad address in the list [4] postfix dutifully returns a 501
error, which outlook doesn't deal well with. it aborts sending the
email, flashes a vague message to the user, and leaves the message in
its outbox, only to fail the next time around... in the same way.
which means I end up having to look through my logs to find the failing
address and tell the user about it. the user then gets to search
through their address book, since outlook shows names and not addresses
in the Bcc field.
even eudora handles this correctly by allowing the bad address to fail,
keeping the message on its outbound queue, but marking the rest of the
recipients as delivered, allowing you to fix the failed address [5].
I'd love to move this user from outlook. but until I discover a way to
migrate outlook's large address book to another less-hateful client,
they're stuck with it. which leaves providing another (internal-only)
mail server which blindly accepts all recipients as the only feasable
solution.
bah. hate. not seething, just a slow smoldering burn of hate...
[1] completely opt-in, mind you.
[2] dependent on getting machines renumbered and our ISP changed [3]
[3] yeah, I'm working on it. however, there's still a problem with
integrating the recipients from the user's outlook address book
with a mailman list. hate hate hate.
[4] non-RFC 821 characters, basically.
[5] even eudora has its hateful side. but that's another rant.
--
Aaron J. Grier | "Not your ordinary poofy goof." | agrier@xxxxxxxxx.xxx
"someday the industry will have throbbing frontal lobes and will be able
to write provably correct software. also, I want a pony." -- Zach Brown
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