Re: [Nmh-workers] RFC 5322 group support

[Robert Elz]

    Date:        Mon, 02 Dec 2013 21:04:47 -0500
    From:        Ken Hornstein <address@hidden>
    Message-ID:  <address@hidden>

  | Now the RFCs are a bit vague on what this means.

Not really, the syntax and semantics have always been quite clear.

  | RFC 5322, Section 3.4 says in part:

  | Ok, fine.  I've never seen a MUA actually treat those as a single unit,

I'm not sure what you think that means?

  | and I don't even know what that would mean from a MUA's perspective.

OK ... it doesn't mean much, it is just intended to give a way to name a
list of recipients - think of it as the standard equivalent of MH's aliases.
Any single message is treated as a unit, when  you consider the message.
The addresses can be anywhere, so clearly it was never intended that the
"unit" be delivered at the same time to all, or anything like that.

  | But the paragraph goes on to say:

You quoted the same text.

  | This is probably what people are familiar with, e.g.:
  | To: undisclosed recipients:;

I've seen it used both ways.   That is, with the addresses included in the
header, and without.

  | The way nmh deals with this is to handle the second case.

Yes, I use groups a lot.   This way they're useful for cases where I
want to send to a bunch of people, but not expose the addresses to the
recipients - but still give them some indication who the set of recipients
are (the group name).

  | - Any of the greybeards here want to expand on the original thinking behind
  |   group addresses?

Ask Dave Crocker...

  | - Should we leave the current behavior?

Yes, certainly.

kre