[Mailman-Developers] Advanced Reply-To-Munging

[Sven Anderson]

Hi Stephen,

Stephen J. Turnbull, 15.03.2007 17:19:
>  > That's why my proposal replaces the From by an author-set Reply-To
>  > whenever it is used.
> 
> Which is again a non-conforming use of the originator headers.  From
> is *not* Reply-To, it identifies the author of the message.  So you've
> broken Reply-To, it no longers tells where the author wants replies
> sent as it's supposed to.  Now you break From, too!  Like this:
> 
> Suppose that because I'm traveling, I set my reply-to to
> careof at somewhere.net.  Then my headers will look like:
> 
> From: stephen at xemacs.org
> Sender: steve at uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp
> Reply-To: careof at somewhere.net
> 
> but what you'll see is
> 
> From: careof at somewhere.net
> Sender: mailman-users-bounces at python.org
> Reply-To: mailman-users at python.org
> 
> That's *wrong*, it confuses both my faithful audience, and the
> killfiles of those who never want to hear from me again.  Furthermore,
> it identifies me as being "at" an address that is evidently temporary.

Just a short pre-answer to that point, because you got it wrong:

Of course it's wrong. I don't propose that. Sorry, my quoted sentence
above was not clear enough, please stick to the proposal I made.

Assuming you chose the option "reply to list" (option 2) according to my
proposal, the headers would look like:

From: stephen at xemacs.org
Sender: steve at uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp
Reply-To: mailman-users at python.org
Cc: careof at somewhere.net (added to existing Cc:, but only if
careof at somewhere.net is not a member of mailman-users at python.org)

I don't see how this additional Cc: can be more dangerous, than what
Mailman is doing right now. The opposite is true, it fixes the
reply-to-all function, because the answer would also go to
careof at somewhere.net, what you explicitly requested by your Reply-To.

All my proposal is about, is bringing the reply-to-munging closer to the
RFC _and_ usability than it is now.

Reply-to-munging _is_ heavily used in existing Mailman installations. Why
not fix it then?


Regards,

Sven

-- 
http://sven.anderson.de    "Believe those who are seeking the truth.
tel:    +49-551-9969285     Doubt those who find it."
mobile: +49-179-4939223                                 (André Gide)