Nathaniel Borenstein writes:
Most users don't have a very complex mental model about this stuff.
And experts are supposed to be an exception?
Sometimes I want my response visible to everyone who read the original
message. In standard USENET terminology, that's a ``followup,'' although
I'd call it ``respond'' in an MUA.
Sometimes I want my response visible only to the sender of the original
message. In standard USENET terminology, that's a ``reply,'' although
I'd call it ``respond only to sender'' in an MUA.
Those two cases cover almost every response I send. Yes, there are some
occasions where I want to do something more complicated, but those
occasions are rare enough that I don't mind handling them manually.
Of course, the followup address list and the reply address list are
based on information provided by the sender. (I can't expect to send my
message to the original Bcc addresses, for example!) This information is
provided through a protocol. Do the protocol details really matter? Yes,
they do:
* The sender has to be able to specify a followup address list that
doesn't include the reply address list.
Now you're making a leap. You are presuming not only that this functionality
needs to be implemented in the recipient's MUA, you are also presuming the
form of data structure that the sender "has" to be able to specify to the
recipient's MUA.
If you phrased this a different way, e.g.
* The sender would like to be able to arrange that he does not
receive duplicates of messages that are sent to multiple addresses,
even if the sender is reachable through more than one of those
addresses.
... then you'd be closer to something that there's general agreement on.
The protocol we're moving to---``reply to Mail-Reply-To||Reply-To||From;
follow up to Mail-Followup-To||(To+Cc+(Mail-Reply-To||Reply-To||From))''
---solves all of these problems.
What's this "we" stuff, white man?
Keith