In <412D3E4B(_dot_)8050205(_at_)cs(_dot_)utk(_dot_)edu> Keith Moore
<moore(_at_)cs(_dot_)utk(_dot_)edu> writes:
here's something new to argue about :)
I'm curious to know what people think of this idea.
There is an alternative, and possibly better, way to solve this problem.
Leave the To: and Cc: headers alone, with their present meanings, and let
them be included in all messages as at present.
Now invent ONE new header
no-reply-to = "No-Reply-To" noreplylist CRLF
noreplylist = ( "To" / "Cc" / "From" / "Reply-To" / "List-Post" /
"Bcc" / ... / address) [ "," noreplylist ]
which essentially says, "when replying to this message, kindly do not
reply to any of the people listed". So you can exclude the whole of the
"To:" list, the whole of the "Cc:" list, the whole of the "From:" list
(plus any others that might be allowed) and you can alternatively, or
additionally, exclude any explicitly listed <addresses>.
This will admittedly behave worse on legacy implemenations, but I think it
will otherwise be more easily implemented (for example, 'sendmail -t'
would not need any change), and it does provide a means to exclude the
From-address (which would be particularly useful in mailing lists).
Looking around at other solutions to this problem, there is a fairly
widely used Mail-Copies-To header used in Netnews, but that is limited to
encouraging/discouraging email replies to the poster during followups to
News. It might work quite well for mailing lists as well, but there is no
obvious extension of it to cover these new cases.
Also, while you are about it, can we include some mechanism for "reply to
list" in mailing lists? Perhaps some conbination of Reply-To and
No_Reply-To would do it.
--
Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------
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