I'd rather avoid having a definition of Mail-Copies-To in email that
differed from the definition used in usenet.
I can imagine two ways to solve the problem:
(a) Reply-To with some magic address that is valid syntax but a no-op.
maybe this:
Reply-To: nobody :;
(b) a new No-Replies-To-Author field
offhand, I'd prefer (a) on the assumption that it is more likely to do
the right thing with existing MUAs. it also avoids having one field
change the meaning of another field.
Keith
My conceptual view of things: NoReply replace _all_ functionality in
MFT/MRT, with better behavior with legacy clients, EXCEPT for the
feature of avoiding copies to the originator. To implement the final
feature, it appears impossible to avoid the same bad legacy behavior
that MFT/MRT have. The conclusion is that NoReply, plus an
author-copies avoiding fix, solve the same problem as MFT/MRT, but
with better legacy behavior on average.
Gnus support an author-copies avoiding solution, by obeying the
`Mail-Copies-To: nobody' news header even for e-mail. See
<http://www.newsreaders.com/misc/mail-copies-to.html>.
It might be complicated to specify Mail-Copies-To for e-mail, in a way
that make sense for all combination of news/e-mail and handover from
news to mail and vice versa. But it may be possible. Perhaps by
adopting, for e-mail use, only the "nobody" subset of MCT.
It is easier to criticize something concrete. So consider if NR
included the text below. How would this interact with other e-mail
headers, and with the full MCT header used in news?
2.3. The Mail-Copies-To field
The Mail-Copies-To header indicates whether or not the originator
(i.e., the From: mailbox) wishes to receive replies to the e-mail.
The content syntax makes use of syntax defined in [RFC 2822].
mail-copies-to = "Mail-Copies-To:" "nobody" CRLF
A minimum of 0 and a maximum of 1 of each of these fields is
permitted in a message header.
The keyword "nobody" indicates that the sender do not wish to be
included in any follow ups to the message.
2.3.1. Composition of Replies to messages containing Mail-Copies-To: nobody
The automatic actions of a followup agent, when a "Mail-Copies-To:"
header is present with the "nobody" value, are as follows. The
followup agent MUST NOT, by default, add the mailbox in From: to
the recipient list. A MUA SHOULD provide a means for a user to
override the default address list used in a reply.
Thanks,
Simon