# INTRODUCTION # # This file documents methods of sending mail from one network to another. # [...] # HOW TO USE THIS GUIDE # # This document is meant to be both human-readable and machine-parseable. I # have an experimental Perl script that performs queries on this document - # send me e-mail if you would like a copy. # # If you just want to browse the guide manually for information, this is what # you need to know. The guide is organized as a list of entries. Each entry # tells you how to get from one network to another. Here is what a typical # entry might look like: # # #F mynet # #T yournet # #R youraddress # #C contactaddress # #I send to 'youraddress@thegateway' # # This means that to send mail _f_rom a network called 'mynet' _t_o a # _r_ecipient address 'youraddress' on a network called 'yournet', you # should follow the _i_nstructions shown and address your mail to # 'youraddress@thegateway'. (The quotes are not part of the address # you should use, and if you see \' between the double quotes, you # should type just ' when addressing your mail.) If you have trouble # sending mail, you can try sending mail to 'contactaddress' for help. # # Network names are listed together with a brief description of each network, # before the main entires. The main entries themselves are sorted # alphabetically, first by source network and then by destination network. # Network connections that can be generated transitively (A->B and B->C give # A->B->C) are generally omitted. If you need further information on the # format, read the following section. # # HOW TO PARSE THIS GUIDE # # The format of this guide is designed to be a reasonable compromise between # the automatically parsable and the humanly legible. # # As distributed, the guide consists of a sequence of lines of up to eighty # octets in the range [32,126] representing characters in the ASCII encoding, # with each line terminated by a newline (decimal 10) character. # # Valid lines are either empty or begin with a '#'. Invalid lines should # be rejected as being part of an encapsulation such as a mail header. # # The portion of a non-empty, valid line following the '#' consists of a tag # and data. The tag is the longest leading string of characters that does not # contain a space, the data is the portion of the line after the first space # if any. Leading spaces in the data are ignored, except on continuation lines # (see below). # # Lines tagged with a '-' are continuation lines. If more than eighty # characters need to be placed in one logical record, the characters should # be placed in several lines, with all lines after the first tagged with a '-'. # A (possibly singleton) set of lines will be referred to as a record. A # record's tag is the tag of its first line. # # Records with empty tags (such as these) are comments for human eyes only # and should in general be silently ignored by an automatic parser. # # Records are grouped into blocks, delimited by empty lines. Empty blocks, # or blocks which contain nothing but comments, should be ignored. # # The first block of the file consists of 'V'-tagged records which give # version information for the file. The format of this information is # subject to change, and should not be automatically parsed. In this # edition, the first block is at the very beginning of the file. # # The second block of the file consists of 'N'-tagged records which declare # identifiers to be used in referring to networks in the rest of the file. # Each such record is divided into ';'-separated fields. The fields are # currently: identifier, full name, organization, category (academic, bbs, # commercial, in-house, non-profit, none or ?). Leading and trailing spaces # in fields should be ignored. In fact, without further ado, here's the # second block.____________________
Vera Heinau, Burkhard Kirste, 1993/06/10