Date   : Wed, 21 Feb 2007 20:17:11 +0000
From   : lists+bbc-micro@... (Adam D. Barratt)
Subject: Mailing list headers (was: BBC Master 128 problem)

On Wed, 2007-02-21 at 13:46 -0600, Jules Richardson wrote:
> Andrew Benham wrote:
> > so, assuming one knows how to use ones email client, one can use
> > "Reply to all" rather than "Reply to sender" to send the email
> > reply to the list.
[...]
> [2] Sending a message with no "to:" field and just a "cc:" seems to work, but 
> I'm surprised it doesn't fall foul of the relevant RFC and so is in no way 
> guaranteed.

RFC[2]822 states that all of the "destination" headers are optional.
It's entirely possible to get a compliant MUA to generate a message
which upon receipt contains none of To:, Cc: and Bcc: (for instance, a
message with only Bcced recipients where the MUA has opted not to
disclose Bcced recipients in the headers).

> Evolution used to do something differently somehow - it's been a couple of 
> years since I've used it, but I recall it had a magic "reply to list" option 
> as well as the usual reply / reply-to. That *used* to work with this list and 
> do the intended thing, but stopped (for reasons unknown) at some point prior 
> to my switching email clients.

It works fine with this list now ;-) (I hit ctrl+L in order to generate
this message).

In this case, it's using the RFC2919-defined List-* headers, which I
believe Andrew's already mentioned.

Adam