Re: Understanding response protocols

On Mon June 6 2005 09:43, Charles Lindsey wrote:
> 
> In <[email protected]> Paul Jakma <[email protected]> writes:

> >To be honest, I'd rather see some kind of 'best-practice for 
> >Reply-To' document than MFT. Reply-To, in an ideal world, should work 
> >just as well. The only reason for MFT, it seems, is just to avoid 
> >bogus behaviour in MTAs wrt Reply-To.
> 
> No! Reply-To is what you should use if you want to send a personal reply
> to the author of, the original message (which indeed you sometimes need to
> do if, for example, your reply is too complex/personal/whatever for
> sending to thje complete list).

No, the semantics of the Reply-To field is NOT "personal reply", it is
"where the author(s) suggested".  Nor is the semantics "the author"; that
would be the From field.  A response to the author(s) intentionally
disregarding the authors' suggestion would go to the mailboxes in the
original message From field, and that is precisely what several UAs
which provide separate "Reply to Author" functions do. 

> Therefore, it is evident that some further Reply-to-like header (MFT, MCT
> or something new) is needed for use with the "Reply-to-List" command

Several UAs implement a "Reply to List" function without such a header
field; evidently there is no such "need".