Re: Reply-to mangling

Alex Holden wrote:

> Before this turns into a flame war,

  Too late?

> I've listened to both sides (both  the people who replied to the list 
> and those who contacted me  privately), and the "Yes" vote 
> significantly outnumbers the "No" vote

  As I presumed in what I wrote.

>   so I've decided to turn reply-to mangling on.

  So I see.  Thank you - it makes things /*so*/ much easier.

> Personally I still  think it's an ugly workaround for something that 
> ought to be an email  client feature, but I do recognise that I'm in 
> the minority in  feeling that way.

  Not in feeling /that/ way, had those who "invented" - or perpetuated - 
or perpetrated e-mail, whether protocols or clients, realised the 
ascendancy of mail lists, then they would have incorporated functions 
which discerned "Reply to List" (default) from "Reply direct to original 
sender", and everyone including myself would be happy.  But they simply 
didn't, and we work with what we have.

  Where you may be in the minority, is rather in feeling that your sense 
of symmetry and elegance (which as a sometime coder, I share), applied 
to front-end behaviour, should in any way transcend the necessity for 
utility of the software to its primary audience.  Now Ian chooses in his 
subsequent post, to refer to this audience as "the computer-ignorant", 
but really, it means anyone who wishes to use a system in comfort, and 
have it behave in a (plausibly) predictable fashion, so when I am 
sitting, supposedly relaxing, following a discussion on a mail list 
forum, this includes me.

  Sure, "Voting by counting responses" may not be as pragmatic as 
letting only "experts" impose their will, but most people (don't trust 
"experts" and) prefer to run a country that way as it seems overall, 
safer.  "Clueless people" nevertheless like to have a say in things.

> Actually I have seen that happen on technical lists.

  No doubt.  I don't say it doesn't.  I might have even done it myself 
on PICLIST (in the distant past).  If I do it, perhaps I deserve to be 
embarrassed.  Perhaps I should be more careful, but I don't make that a 
reason to make things more difficult for myself /and/ most everyone else.

  I might have published this earlier, not because I thought it better 
to count to ten, but because - Evolution is doing something strange at 
home.  Thunderbird 1.0.2(Win) however seems to work pretty well overall 
(though I have to run the spelling checker again and again until it 
finds all the blunders!).
--
  Cheers,
    Paul B.