[Dovecot] Reply-To header [was: Re: quota warning]

[Magnus Holmgren]

On Saturday 17 February 2007 00:13, Mark E. Mallett wrote:
> On Sat, Feb 17, 2007 at 12:33:40AM +0200, Timo Sirainen wrote:
> > On Fri, 2007-02-16 at 15:16 -0600, Richard Laager wrote:
> > > I see you've added a Reply-To header later. The canonical response in
> > > this case is for someone to reference:
> > > http://www.unicom.com/pw/reply-to-harmful.html
>
> A canonical response to that is
>
>    http://www.metasystema.net/essays/reply-to.mhtml

My mind was not changed, sorry. First, RFC 822 is obsolete, and RFC 2822 does 
not contain the quoted paragraph. Instead it says that '[w]hen 
the "Reply-To:" field is present, it indicates the mailbox(es) to which the 
author of the message suggests that replies be sent.' - the author, not the 
mailing list software. There are other fields for that. 

The rest of the arguments assume that lack of a "reply to list" or "follow up" 
command is the natural order of things. Sadly, almost no mailers do provide 
such a command, but munging Reply-To doesn't exactly increase pressure on 
vendors to implement it.

I guess this is a fight between ideal and reality, i.e. between agreeing on a 
direction and going there and staying where we are because no single 
individual has an incentive to take the leap. This is where the market fails.

Interestingly, Kmail seems to have some "anti-munging" feature - when the 
Reply-To address equals the List-Post address, I guess, the reply to author 
command ignores the Reply-To field. This doesn't work on some other mailing 
lists I'm on, which don't have List-* header fields.

-- 
Magnus Holmgren        holmgren at lysator.liu.se
                       (No Cc of list mail needed, thanks)

  "Exim is better at being younger, whereas sendmail is better for 
   Scrabble (50 point bonus for clearing your rack)" -- Dave Evans
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