Re: mail-followup-to / mail-copies-to

On Fri, 27 May 2005, Bruce Lilly wrote:

> Kmail and Evolution provide options for directing responses "To 
> List", in addition to other places (e.g. "To Sender", "To Author"), 
> not a "context".

It's "the context in which the user wishes to reply". Tortured 
terminology maybe.

> I don't know -- maybe quirky developers (ones who like medium gray
> text on a dark gray background).

Damn their souls. :)

Next question: Why do quite a few MUAs provide a "list reply" 
function?

>> Because the most likely reason for it being set are:
>>
>> - The author's preferred 'receive' mailbox is not their From
>>    (ie to indicate preference for their personal mailbox)
>
> Makes no sense -- for replies "to author" the From field mailbox can
> (and should) be set accordingly.

Ok.

> Umm, look at this message for example (and note past messages as 
> well). That specific case (along with a couple of others) is 
> specifically mentioned in RFC 724, which has been around for close 
> to three decades, and its successors.

I've only ever once seen anyone set "Reply-To: <list>", and they 
eventually got burned by the risk mentioned below. I've never seen 
anyone set Reply-To to both their own mailbox and the list mailbox 
(until you replied to me, and I tried it with one or two of my 
mails).

> No, it's a problem with your proposal; Reply-To: 
> [email protected] works fine to specify responses to the 
> (including) list (possibly in addition to other mailboxes).  That 
> removes any ambiguity about which list responses are supposed to be 
> sent to.

No it doesn't work fine.

It absolutely is not fine to set Reply-To == list mailbox because of 
the *definite* risk of MUAs sending 'private' mails to the Reply-To. 
(I've seen it happen countless few times both on lists which munged 
Reply-To and with someone who set it themselves.).

If Reply-To is supposed to the answer, then at a minimum there should 
be a sanctioned clarification of how implementations should deal with 
it.

However, even if such a clarification document were released, you 
still *wont* see much uptake in use of Reply-To to solve the problem 
I (and a minority like me) have because it wont alleviate the risk 
until /all/ implementations behave better.

Are you saying that the problems around use of Reply-To and lists 
with deployed bad implementations we apparently are not to consider? 
"Reply-To /should/ be the answer, therefore it is the answer - real 
world be damned"?

A new header, with restricted and unambigious scope, to solve only a 
very specific problem around replying to list emails (something 
common enough that MUA implementors feel is worthwhile enough to add 
an extra button to their UI for - even Apple, who dont like UI 
clutter) is out of the question, because a header which is widely 
misinterpreted /should/ work, if only everyone fixed their software? 
:)

Or have I missed some key point in the discussion?

regards,
-- 
Paul Jakma	[email protected]	[email protected]	Key ID: 64A2FF6A
Fortune:
You!  What PLANET is this!
 		-- McCoy, "The City on the Edge of Forever", stardate 3134.0