Re: [Nmh-workers] RFC 5322 group support

[Robert Elz]

    Date:        Tue, 03 Dec 2013 10:16:41 -0500
    From:        Ken Hornstein <address@hidden>
    Message-ID:  <address@hidden>

  | Yeah, that's the weird part, at least to me ... how did the authors of
  | RFC 822 envision that would be used?

It is actually much older than that, groups appear to have originated
in rfc724, which was a pre-cursor of rfc733, which was the e-mail spec
before 822 eventually replaced it..

But Dave Crocker was an author even back that far (but not as far back
as rfc680 which preceded it - and in which groups didn't exist), so it
would be entirely reasonable to ask him - he generally answers e-mail.
Try dhc at dcrocker.net (in approximately rfc680 address syntax...)

  | I don't doubt you've seen it used both ways, but I have to ask: how
  | many decades ago did you see a group list that included the addresses
  | in the header?

Not sure, but you're right, it as probably been a while.

  | Nowadays I've solely seen the group functionality used for
  | blind distribution lists.

I use it to send e-mail to stunts in my classes (without their addresses
being sent to each other - if they want to exchange e-mail addresses, they
can do that for themselves).

  | But this behavior is (as far as I can tell)
  | neither endorsed nor prohibited by the RFCs; it's a grey area.

Not grey so much as optional - you're allowed to do it whichever way
you want, and ideally, the MUA would support both.

kre