Date   : Fri, 23 Feb 2007 00:27:43 +0000
From   : jgh@... (Jonathan Graham Harston)
Subject: Mailing list headers

>Message-ID: <45DAF8F0.7050701@...>
 
Andrew Benham <adsb@...> wrote:
> On your email client, you would hit the "reply to sender"
> button to send a reply to just me, and the "reply to all
> recipients" button to send a reply to everyone.
 
Hold on... people keep mentioning "reply to sender" and "reply to
all recipients" buttons. I only have "reply" which prepares a
message to the reply-to address if present, or the from address if
reply-to="", starting "{poster in from header} wrote:"
 
What is the "reply to /all/ recipients" supposed to do? The
email client receives "From: fred", "Reply-to: jim". What does
reply to /all/ do? Reply to /both/ the from and the reply-to?
Wouldn't that be reply to /both/? Where does the /all/ come from,
and how on earth does the email client know who else the /server/
has sent copies of the message to?
 
> If the list was configured with a "Reply-To:" header with
> the list's address, then you would use "reply to sender"
> to reply to all recipients, and "reply to all recipients"
 
No.... I would use "reply" to reply to where the message came
from, ie the list, and I would use "reply to author (only)" to
reply to the person who originally sent the message to the list.
 
Programatically, "reply" sends to [[if (reply-to="") {from} else
{reply-to}]] and "reply to author" sends to {from}.
 
> You no longer have a button to just reply to the originator
> of the message, so you've lost useful functionality.
 
"reply to author"...?
 
> And if you put the list's address in a "Reply-To:" header,
> what do you do if the original message had its own "Reply-To:"
> header ?  Discard that 'Reply-To', so now you really can't
 
Yes. After all, it's a post to a list, not a post to a person. If
it so wishes, the /server/ can track /posters/' reply-to address
as the address that that poster should be send posts to, but that
sort of information is better managed as part of the subscriber
information.
 
>     http://www.unicom.com/pw/reply-to-harmful.html
 
That talks about reply-to munging consider harmful. I agree.
Munging the reply-to so that it does not point back to the list is
harmful.
 
-- 
J.G.Harston - jgh@...                - mdfs.net/User/JGH
Sheffield Boundary Review at http://mdfs.net/User/JGH/Docs/Politics/ParlReview