Please bear in mind that the average user isn't going to have the
slightest clue how to choose from among all these reply functions.
(And consider the various potential types of "reply" when an MUA allows
a user to select multiple messages at once and then choose a "reply"
command.) If an MUA must provide lots of reply types, it should at
least check to see which kinds of reply yield identical results for the
message(s) in question, and only offer one of any set of N types of
replies that are functionally equivalent. But I'd advocate a much
simpler default interface for non-geek users.
Most users don't have a very complex mental model about this stuff.
Back on the Andrew project, in the days when our users were dodging
dinosaurs, we managed to rationalize our way to three different reply
commands:
Reply to Sender
Reply to All
Reply to Both
Users were understandably confused as to what the latter meant, and it
only seemed to make sense to us at the time because we were totally
geeky about what these commands meant.
At this point, I hypothesize that two kinds of reply -- roughly "the
sender" and "everyone" -- is about as sophisticated a distinction as it
is reasonable to inflict on the average user. It should, however, be
possible to define standard semantics for those two kinds of reply. --
Nathaniel
On Sep 6, 2004, at 6:22 AM, Alan Barrett wrote:
On Tue, 31 Aug 2004, Bruce Lilly wrote:
I know of at least two MUAs that provide three reply options:
Kmail 1.7 Ximian Evolution 1.4.6
---------------------------------------------
Reply to Author Reply to Sender
Reply to All Reply to All
Reply to Mailing List Reply to List
I especially do not want a "Reply to sender" function that is
incorrectly labeled "Reply to author", or vice versa.
I want at least five reply options:
"Reply" (uses Reply-To header, falls back to From header)
"Reply to author" (uses From header)
"Reply to sender" (used Sender header, falls back to From header)
"Reply to all" (uses all possible addresses, lets me edit the
list)
"Followup" (somehow figures out how to send to mailing list)
--apb (Alan Barrett)