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Re: [Fwd: I-D ACTION:draft-moore-mail-nr-fields-00.txt]

2004-09-04 16:43:07

Russ Allbery wrote:
Bruce Lilly <blilly(_at_)erols(_dot_)com> writes:


Assuming that there is such a thing as a "list preference" for replies
to the list, that can be easily achieved by haying the list expander
insert a Reply-To field pointing to the list mailbox if and only if
there is no (author-provided) Reply-To field in the message.


It sounds like you're making the assumption that there are two types of
reply (individual and to-all), and Reply-To should be used to send them to
the appropriate location with the only difference being whether people in
the To and Cc headers are included.

No, the assumption I'm making is that the message author(s) know(s)
where he wants plain replies (as opposed to reply-to-all) to go and
is capable of setting Reply-To accordingly.  Now it happens to be
the case that most MUAs have two types of reply functions corresponding
to the two cases.  A few have a third which uses some preconfigured
mailbox (or address, or mailbox-list or address-list  or mailto URI).
Some may well have other capabilities in addition.

The use that you're making of Reply-To works fine for  individual e-mail,
but when used in the list context, it breaks private reply.

No. regardless of how Reply-To is set, anyone can easily copy-and-paste
an address, or call it up from an address book, etc.  Nothing "breaks".
Now it might be ever so slightly more work to send to an author who
has explicitly set Reply-To to point elsewhere -- presumably because
he doesn't want personal responses -- than if Reply-To isn't set; but
why *shouldn't* that be the case given that authors preference for not
receiving personal responses?

You could, of course, argue that private reply should be implemented by
ignoring the Reply-To header, and in fact one MUA has already made that
choice

I wouldn't argue that per se, but I see nothing wrong with a *properly*
*implemented* "reply-to-author" function that uses From rather than
Reply-To (since From is where author information is located) in addition
to the usual reply functions.  Indeed the desirability of such capability
is mentioned in at least one of the references recently mentioned here
if I recall correctly.


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