Re: lynx-dev Re: Administrivia: List "reply" address

[Mike Castle]

On Mon, May 08, 2000 at 11:39:31PM -0700, Doug Kaufman wrote:
> On Mon, 8 May 2000, Mike Castle wrote:
> > "We don't need to follow standards.  We're smatter than everyone else, and
> > really know what's good for them.  So we'll do what we want, standards be
> > damned!"
> 
> For those of us unaware, where are such standards? Mail from a list
> certainly seems different than mail from an individual. It seems
> natural that replies go to the list which sent the mail. Do you have
> a reference to confirm that reply-to for lists should be set to the
> individual rather than to the list? 

>From RFC 822:

     4.4.  ORIGINATOR FIELDS

          The standard allows only a subset of the combinations possi-
     ble  with the From, Sender, Reply-To, Resent-From, Resent-Sender,
     and Resent-Reply-To fields.  The limitation is intentional.

[snip]

     4.4.2.  SENDER / RESENT-SENDER

        This field contains the authenticated identity  of  the  AGENT
        (person,  system  or  process)  that sends the message.  It is
        intended for use when the sender is not the author of the mes-
        sage,  or  to  indicate  who among a group of authors actually
        sent the message.  If the contents of the "Sender" field would
        be  completely  redundant  with  the  "From"  field,  then the
        "Sender" field need not be present and its use is  discouraged
        (though  still legal).  In particular, the "Sender" field MUST
        be present if it is NOT the same as the "From" Field.

[snip]

     4.4.3.  REPLY-TO / RESENT-REPLY-TO

        This field provides a general  mechanism  for  indicating  any
        mailbox(es)  to which responses are to be sent.  Three typical
        uses for this feature can  be  distinguished.   In  the  first
        case,  the  author(s) may not have regular machine-based mail-
        boxes and therefore wish(es) to indicate an alternate  machine
        address.   In  the  second case, an author may wish additional
        persons to be made aware of, or responsible for,  replies.   A
        somewhat  different  use  may be of some help to "text message
        teleconferencing" groups equipped with automatic  distribution
        services:   include the address of that service in the "Reply-
        To" field of all messages  submitted  to  the  teleconference;
        then  participants  can  "reply"  to conference submissions to
        guarantee the correct distribution of any submission of  their
        own.


Now, if a user has a desire and/or need to use Reply-To: to request that
direct replies be sent to someplace other then what appears in From:,
lynx-dev has lost that information.  In short, just broken the standard.

Sounds like something MicroSoft would do.

mrc
-- 
       Mike Castle       Life is like a clock:  You can work constantly
  address@hidden  and be right all the time, or not work at all
www.netcom.com/~dalgoda/ and be right at least twice a day.  -- mrc
    We are all of us living in the shadow of Manhattan.  -- Watchmen

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