ietf-822
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Re: Understanding response protocols

2004-09-28 12:07:33

Keith Moore <moore(_at_)cs(_dot_)utk(_dot_)edu> writes:

The notion that a recipient's MUA should change its behavior according
to the whim of some other author was broken with Reply-To and it's still
broken with MFT.  In all cases the user agent's goal is to serve its
user.  To do that well it needs to provide _consistent_ behavior, not
behavior that changes from one message to the next.

I'm not sure I understand what you're saying here.  The author of the
message that is being replied to is always going to have control over
where replies go absent manual editing of the destination fields, since
that author has complete control over all of the headers from which reply
destinations can be drawn.  Therefore, the MUA's reply behavior is
*always* going to depend on the whim of the author of the original
message, since that's where the data comes from.

Using MFT is just as consistent as not using MFT.  Always using From as
the reply address is just as consistent as using Reply-To if present,
otherwise From.  One of these things is more *complex* than the other, but
that's not the same thing as consistency.

-- 
Russ Allbery (rra(_at_)stanford(_dot_)edu)             
<http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>