On Sat, 22 Sep 2001, Thomas Mueller wrote:

> >You machine has wong time. this caused me to miss your message because
> >it was not at the bottom of my mailbox.
> 
> A mail program should download the messages in order and not jumble
> them!  Then the date on the message doesn't mess things up.  But isn't

That's what I do.

> it usually the SMTP server, not the sender's computer, that produces
> the Date: line?  I thought 1978 was out of the range of current
> computers' recognition.

The mail client should set the Date.

This is quite clear according to RFC 2822 (which is said to be the new
standard):

   The origination date specifies the date and time at which the creator
   of the message indicated that the message was complete and ready to
   enter the mail delivery system.  For instance, this might be the time
   that a user pushes the "send" or "submit" button in an application
   program.  In any case, it is specifically not intended to convey the
   time that the message is actually transported, but rather the time at
   which the human or other creator of the message has put the message
   into its final form, ready for transport.  (For example, a portable
   computer user who is not connected to a network might queue a message
   for delivery.  The origination date is intended to contain the date
   and time that the user queued the message, not the time when the user
   connected to the network to send the message.)

RFC 2821 vaguely makes it clear:

 F.5 Dates and Years

 When dates are inserted into messages by SMTP clients or servers ...

Of course, if it is missing, most mail servers add it. (For example,
Exim's spec says: "If a message has no Date: header, Exim adds one, giving
the current date and time."

As for 1978, being out of recognition: the Date header in mail is just
plain text and the year is (should be) four characters; also the Unix
epoch / clock starts in 1970 ("TZ=UTC date -r 0") so 1978 is okay.

> found the message but not immediately.  Moral of the story is to keep
> the messages in order of arrival at the server and not to let the
> email program sort by date.

I agree; I wonder what the benefit of having the mail client sort them by
date is?

   Jeremy C. Reed
   http://www.reedmedia.net/