[ih] Eric Allman giving a public talk on the history of email

[Dave Crocker]

On 10/4/2021 1:12 PM, Miles Fidelman via Internet-history wrote:
>>
> One wonders if Eric will mention MMDF. :-)

Given that the description is fulling about sendmail history, I doubt 
it. (I know you meant humor, but still...)

Whatever year he created the external configuration capability for 
sendmail (1980?) I was similarly motivated to consider this for MMDF. 
One concerns was whether reading an external file would happen quickly 
enough and another was what the config file should look like.

Eric showed me his newly-minted capability and it clearly loaded quickly 
enough.  And then there was the config language he had defined.  I had 
two strong reactions.  One was that it was really quite impressive.  The 
other was that it was really quite complex.

It decided things for my own system:  I'd leave the complexity to 
programmers, inside the MMDF code, and keep the config file in a more 
mundane and simple keyword/attribute value style.

d/

-- 
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net