Re: Understanding response protocols

> The user just hits the one and only reply button,
> which brings up a compose window and hides all the hurly burly of the
> remaining 99 messages in his Inbox. Now the Compose window says:
>    "would you like to reply just to the original author,
>     or to the list,
>     or to what the original author/list-maintainer suggested,
>     or to everybodt mentioned,
>     or fill it all in by hand".
something like that.  What I currently imagine is that the Compose 
window fills in the recipient list by default with To: {From} and CC: 
{To}, {cc}, but the CC field is "grayed out" meaning they are inactive. 
 The user can click in some obvious place (maybe a check box to the 
left of the field name) to make them active, thus changing "reply to 
author" to "reply to all".  The user could also type in addresses, or 
click any of the addresses to toggle whether they are active.
If there's an MFT or Reply-To field in the subject message, the same 
default set of recipients is used as if the field were not present, but 
a note is displayed (say black on a yellow background) at the top of 
the compose window to the effect that the author requested redirection 
of replies, and a new To:  field is added (grayed out) containing the 
recipients from MFT or Reply-To.  clicking on that To field activates 
the addresses in that field and deactivates the addresses in the 
"default" To or CC field.
To accommodate authors who routinely set MFT to point to "everything 
but From", there would be an option to silently accept MFT done that 
way from particular authors, or from any author.  This would get rid of 
the warning note and pre-activate the alternate To field, and 
de-activate the normal To and CC fields.  But I don't think MFT should 
be silently accepted by default.
> > Note that a similar problem exists for reply body text.  We find it
> > quite useful for an MUA to be able to include the  subject message 
> > text
> > in a reply, but quite tedious to edit out the irrelevant portions.
> Sure, so then the Compose window might say:
>    "Would you like the original message included as a quotation,
>     and with what delimiter (e.g. '>'),
>     and would you like it reformatted".
> and so on.
well, that seems pretty clunky and inflexible.  what I currently want 
is for the compose window to include the text of the original message 
in gray, meaning that while I can see it, it is inactive and will not 
appear in the reply when I send it.  I'd have the option of activating 
all of it, or just parts of it, to include that text in the message.  
I'd also have the option of hiding all of it, or parts of it.  but I 
could still insert "new" active text anywhere in the compose window.  I 
think this would make it easy to see the message that I'm replying to 
while I'm replying to it without having to manage a separate window 
(one for the old message, one for the new) and without having to 
explicitly delete the old text.  and I think it would let me respond to 
messages point by point without explicitly quoting so much text.