On Friday 6 September 96, at 22 h 52, the keyboard of
dattier(_at_)wwa(_dot_)com
(David W. Tamkin) wrote:
Alan Stebbens posted the formail -r[t] rank bar graph from version 3.11pre4.
It might be easier to follow as a top-to-bottom listing (and again, Tom
Zeltwanger appears to be using one of the older versions where From_ was
mistakenly overpromoted). These are the rankings in version 3.11pre4:
Always use 'formail -rt' and never 'formail -r'. Because such precedence
(Sender over From) is an important violation of RFC 822. There is one
canonical order, described in the RFC and nothing else should be used,
like fuzzy ranking or, worse, reordering. This is a serious problem with
formail.
The proper order is:
Reply-To
else
From
else
Sender
else
<error>
I quote the RFC:
4.4.4. AUTOMATIC USE OF FROM / SENDER / REPLY-TO
For systems which automatically generate address lists for
replies to messages, the following recommendations are made:
o The "Sender" field mailbox should be sent notices of
any problems in transport or delivery of the original
messages. If there is no "Sender" field, then the
"From" field mailbox should be used.
o The "Sender" field mailbox should NEVER be used
automatically, in a recipient's reply message.
o If the "Reply-To" field exists, then the reply should
go to the addresses indicated in that field and not to
the address(es) indicated in the "From" field.
o If there is a "From" field, but no "Reply-To" field,
the reply should be sent to the address(es) indicated
in the "From" field.
Sometimes, a recipient may actually wish to communicate with
the person that initiated the message transfer. In such
cases, it is reasonable to use the "Sender" address.
This recommendation is intended only for automated use of
originator-fields and is not intended to suggest that replies
may not also be sent to other recipients of messages. It is
up to the respective mail-handling programs to decide what
additional facilities will be provided.
Examples are provided in Appendix A.
Stephane Bortzmeyer Institut Pasteur
bortzmeyer(_at_)pasteur(_dot_)fr Service d'Informatique Scientifique
Paris, France
+33 1 40 61 34 62
http://web.cnam.fr/personnes/bortzmeyer/home_page.dom