Re: Reply to header

[Hendrik Mangels]

Brian Mathis (2004-11-02, 13:44):
> >http://www.unicom.com/pw/reply-to-harmful.html
>
> Yes yes, that site is very popular.  It absolves anyone from making a 
> real argument for or against Reply-To.  None of the arguments presented 
> there are incredibly strong, and certainly none are strong enough to 
> uphold the blanket statement "No one should EVER use Reply-To".

Ok, let me tell you about mutt's nice features for handling
mailing lists. First of all, you can specify which addresses
belong to mailing lists, and which mailing lists you are
subscribed to (Yes, there is a difference). Now you can use the
list-reply function, this helps to avoid duplicates. Furthermore
mutt generates a "Mail-Followup-To"-header for your outgoing
messages, depending on your respective subscriptions.

For example I am subscribed to "screen-users", a mail looks like
the following:
,----
| From: Hendrik Mangels <address@hidden>
| Reply-To: Hendrik Mangels <address@hidden>
| Mail-Followup-To: address@hidden
| To: address@hidden
`----
If someone wants to answer to the list, the third header is
used, otherwise the "Reply-To"-header is used.

If I am not "subscribed" to "screen-users", the header looks
like the following:
,----
| From: Hendrik Mangels <address@hidden>
| Reply-To: Hendrik Mangels <address@hidden>
| Mail-Followup-To: address@hidden, Hendrik Mangels <mangels...>
| To: address@hidden
`----
Thus a "followup" will go to the list and to my address. It's a
bit more complicated, but I think you can see the advantages.

This convention works very good on several mailing lists, but I
must admit, that a lot of MUAs do not support the
"Mail-Followup-To"-header :-(

Well, all mail clients suck. Mutt just sucks less ;-)

Hendrik