On Tue, 28 Sep 2004, Keith Moore wrote:
I think it would be better if no "logic" were needed. The decision of who
to reply to belongs to the person composing the reply. For the UA to make
it easy for that person to "fill in the blanks" is reasonable. For the UA
to try to emply "logic" to _decide_ (or equivalently, _guess_) where the
message should go is not reasonable.
How about calling it "suggest" rather than "decide" or "guess"?
When I do "reply-to-all" (as my fingers are now trained to do) in my
MUA, it creates To: and Cc: fields according to its current "logic".
These fields are displayed when I construct the reply. They can be seen
as a _suggestion_ that those are probably the addresses I want to use.
And they often are. However, I have the opportunity to modify them
before sending the message. Surely this is what everybody wants?
What we are arguing about is a way of making it possible for MUAs to
improve their suggestions. In particular, people want more information
about the wishes of original message's author with regard to replies to
be available to the MUA. (Reply-to: might once have been intended for
this, but it has been used in the wrong way, so we have to try again.)
My MUA has only a "reply-to-all"; there is no "reply-to-list". I
therefore have to remember to delete Dan's address whenever I reply to
one of his messages and NOT to delete Keith's address whenever I reply
to one of his. I am in danger of annoying both of them if I get it
wrong. My MUA has suggested that this message be copied to Russ because
he was involved somewhere back in the thread and his address has been
carried along in OPs' replies; I have no idea if he wants an individual
copy or not.
Clearly this does not scale.
Philip
--
Philip Hazel University of Cambridge Computing Service,
ph10(_at_)cus(_dot_)cam(_dot_)ac(_dot_)uk Cambridge, England. Phone: +44
1223 334714.