Errors-to: owner-drums@CS.UTK.EDU
Date: Thu, 27 Jul 1995 11:13:35 +0200 (MET DST)
From: Jacob Palme <jpalme@dsv.su.se>
To: ietf-drums <drums@CS.UTK.EDU>
Subject: "Reply-To"
Message-Id: <Pine.SUN.3.91.950727110617.10022E-100000@ester>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

RFC 822 writes the following about the Reply-To field:

     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.

This has caused a lot of problems for implementors. The cause of the
problem is that most mailers have two commands, or two variants of
the same command, for writing a reply to a message. The two common
variants are:

       Reply personal: Send a reply only to the author(s) of the replied-
                       to message.

       Reply all: Send a reply to everyone in the dicussion group(s)
                  who received the previous message.

(In addition to this, mailers usually allow the writer of a reply
to customize the list of recipients for the reply.)

The problem with the text in RFC 822 is that it does not make it
clear whether the content of the "Reply-to" field is to be used
in the first or the second variant of the replying command as
described above.

To eliminate this problem, my suggestion is that the text in RFC 822
is changed, to clearly indicate that "Reply-To" is *only* meant to
be used as a replacement for the names in the "From" field.

If there is a need to indicate in the heading of a message a replacement
for all the recipients of a message, this could be handled by a new
heading field. One possible name for such a new heading field might
be "Followup-To", since that heading field is already used for this
purpose in Usenet News, and since most newsreaders actually already
handles an e-mail address in the "Followup-To" heading field as an
instruction to reroute group replies to this address.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jacob Palme <jpalme@dsv.su.se> (Stockholm University and KTH)
for more info see URL: http://www.dsv.su.se/~jpalme