Date: Wed, 11 Feb 1998 17:19:30 -0500
From: Richard Coleman <coleman(_at_)math(_dot_)gatech(_dot_)edu>
Message-ID:
<199802112219(_dot_)RAA12647(_at_)math34(_dot_)math(_dot_)gatech(_dot_)edu>
| I also believe this proposal is a good way of fixing this problem. The
| problem is the existence or absence of a single header is not enough
| information. That is the reason the Reply-To header is typically
implemented
| in a way that goes against RFC-822 in certain cases.
Not that it really matters why, but I doubt this. RFC-822 on reply-to is
just almost hopeless. The reason people do what they do is more likely
because they saw someone else doing that, and imagined it was correct,
and copied - perhaps slightly varying things along the way.
| Since the Reply-To header is interpreted differently by different people,
| fixing this situation is impossible at this time. That is why the proposal
| offers two new header fields "Mail-Reply-To" and "Mail-Followup-To".
It is possible to write sensible useful semantics for a single reply-to
type header field (whatever it is called). They won't necessarily do
everything everyone wants, but sane and internally consistent and complete
they would be.
Two header fields only generates confusion. It tackles a different problem
and doesn't solve all of it. It would be OK if there truly were exactly
two different kinds of replies people might like to make, and while those two
may cover 90% of the cases, they don't cover all. That is, this solution
cannot be complete, it doesn't really solve any problem at all.
kre