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Paul Jakma <paul(_at_)clubi(_dot_)ie> writes:
On Thu, 2 Jun 2005, Charles Lindsey wrote:
It would be better if there were a couple of keywords so you could say
Mail-Followup-To: poster,list
and configure that for all lists you subscribe to.
To be honest, I'd rather see some kind of 'best-practice for
Reply-To' document than MFT. Reply-To, in an ideal world, should work
just as well. The only reason for MFT, it seems, is just to avoid
bogus behaviour in MTAs wrt Reply-To.
No! Reply-To is what you should use if you want to send a personal reply
to the author of, the original message (which indeed you sometimes need to
do if, for example, your reply is too complex/personal/whatever for
sending to thje complete list).
Therefore, it is evident that some further Reply-to-like header (MFT, MCT
or something new) is needed for use with the "Reply-to-List" command (or
Reply-to-All if Reply-to-list is not provided).
Such a header should be flexible enough to include/not-include the
original poster (or his nominee) in the reply, and to include/not-include
various sub-lists/super-lists/parallel-lists/no-list-at-all in the reply.
Actually, that is all beginning to look quite like the
Mail-Copies-To header sometimes used in News.
Right.
But it doesn't offer much extra though. (except that it avoids
current bad Reply-To behaviour in some MUAs). If we were to have a
new header like that i'd want it:
1. transitive (must be kept in replies)
2. additive (so people could add their own/further mailboxes to it,
if they wanted)
3. Get rid of that ambigious 'never' thing it allows
The main problem is that it currently allows only one option to be
specified: poster, nobody (aka never) and some mailbox-list.
"poster" means poster+list/newsgroup.
"nobody" means list/newsgroup only.
mailbox-list means addresses-listed+list/newsgroup.
If you want reply not to go to the list/newsgroup at all, then you have to
use Followup-to: poster (which then uses the Reply-To address).
So that isn't quite what we want.
So the question is whether it is easier to add the functionality we want
to MFT or to MCT, or whether to start over.
--
Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------
Tel: +44 161 436 6131 Fax: +44 161 436 6133 Web: http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~chl
Email: chl(_at_)clerew(_dot_)man(_dot_)ac(_dot_)uk Snail: 5 Clerewood Ave,
CHEADLE, SK8 3JU, U.K.
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