[Mailman-Users] Re: [Mailman-Developers] Announcing Mailman 2.0 release candidate 2

[Barry A. Warsaw]

>>>>> "CVR" == Chuq Von Rospach <chuqui at plaidworks.com> writes:

    >> Please remember that if the original message has a Reply-To:
    >> already, Mailman will not overwrite that, even if "explicit
    >> reply-to" is set.

    CVR> I know we don't want to change this for 2.0, but IMHO, if
    CVR> we're going to coerce reply-to, Mailman SHOULD. I've seen
    CVR> other systems that rewrite an existing reply-to to
    CVR> x-reply-to, which at least keeps the context. As the official
    CVR> "let the user decide" bigot here on the list (grin), I do
    CVR> think that if you choose to coerce reply-to, it ought to be
    CVR> unilateral and consistent. Either that, or always leave it to
    CVR> the user and not coerce stuff...  I think doing it "except
    CVR> when..."  doesn't really add anything useful, but opens it to
    CVR> confusion...

    CVR> The way I see it, if a user is on a list where reply-to is
    CVR> set to the list (or some explicit value), their expectation
    CVR> is that it's going to be set. Not set unless someone else
    CVR> sets it first. So from the user expectation view, if it's
    CVR> going to be coerced, coerce it unconditionally....

But what happens to users who set reply-to because their from just
isn't correct?  That can happen for a lot of reasons (from stupid
isp's to too-busy-to-fix-it sysadmins, etc.).  Most people can't hack
their from header, which is arguably where such last-ditch fixes
should go.

Phil saw this behavior in 2.0b6 because there was a logic bug that
caused reply-to to always get inserted.  Fixing that reverted to the
current behavior.  For reference, the attached patch should do what
you're advocating (untested).  It won't go into 2.0, but I'm open to
changing this for 2.1, maybe as a per-list option.

-Barry

-------------------- snip snip --------------------
Index: CookHeaders.py
===================================================================
RCS file: /cvsroot/mailman/mailman/Mailman/Handlers/CookHeaders.py,v
retrieving revision 1.17
diff -u -r1.17 CookHeaders.py
--- CookHeaders.py	2000/10/27 18:55:21	1.17
+++ CookHeaders.py	2000/11/14 05:59:40
@@ -80,7 +80,7 @@
     # or if there is already a reply-to set.  If the user has set
     # one we assume they have a good reason for it, and we don't
     # second guess them.
-    if not fasttrack and not msg.get('reply-to'):
+    if not fasttrack:
         # Set Reply-To: header to point back to this list
         if mlist.reply_goes_to_list == 1:
             msg['Reply-To'] = mlist.GetListEmail()