On Mon, 13 Sep 2004, Keith Moore wrote:
but Reply-To should probably be deprecated in favor of something that
specifies the *complete* recipient list rather than just a replacement
for From.
A large part of the problem is that some people think that
(a) Reply-To specifies the complete list of recipients that the author
thinks should receive replies
while other people think that
(b) Reply-To specifies a list of recipients to be used instead of the
From address when directing replies.
I'd argue that Reply-To (as specified in RFC 822 and 2822) was intended
to have meaning (a), and I'd cite the part about "teleconferences" in
RFC 822 section 4.4.3 in support of my position, but I acknowledge that
reasonable people think it has meaning (b).
Meaning (b) of the Reply-To field is so deeply entrenched that I
think it would be impossible to get the world to use Reply-To with
meaning (a). So we seem to need a new field to have meaning (a).
Mail-Followup-To seems to fit the bill.
I would not be opposed to redefining Reply-To to have meaning (b). Many
people use it that way already.
--apb (Alan Barrett)