Errors-to: owner-drums@CS.UTK.EDU
Date: Tue, 15 Aug 1995 18:42:04 +0200 (MET DST)
From: Jacob Palme <jpalme@dsv.su.se>
To: ietf-drums <drums@CS.UTK.EDU>
Subject: Re: "Reply-To" 
In-Reply-To: <10390.808461508@munnari.OZ.AU>
Message-Id: <Pine.SUN.3.91.950815182119.7288G-100000@ester>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII

On the discussion of the definijtion of the "Reply-To" heading field,
I suggested having two different heading fields, one for where
personal replies should be sent and one for where group
replies should be sent.

On Tue, 15 Aug 1995, Robert Elz replied:

> I believe that the coprrect approach to this problem is to
> set out a meaning for the field, and then leave it to the
> implementors to make the correct choices (a good mailer should
> have more than two choices anyway).
> 
> Some time ago (years ago), when faced with the same problem,
> I asked Dave Crocker (as the obvious authority) I believe, who
> gave an answer to this problem which has satisfied me ever since.
> 
> I'm sure he will correct me if I misrepresent him (or if by
> some chance it wasn't Dave at all) - the gist of this was that
> Reply-To is the sender's way of telling the recipient who the
> sender believes replies should be sent to.   The sender can
> add as many addresses there as needed to this field, and
> that way can indicate their preference for replies to any
> set of recipients they choose.
> 
This is exactly what I want to avoid, because it is not precise
enough. The problem is that there are different kinds of replies,
which should go to different recipients. So, in general, the
sender of a message cannot specify one single address to which
all replies should go.

You might object that in that case the person who writes
the reply should simply modify the recipient list. This objection
is valid in theory, but not in practice, because people who
write replies seldom go to the trouble of modifying the
recipient list. Some of them do not even know that they can
do this. Because of this, many e-mail systems have either
two different commands for replies, one called something
like "personal reply" and the other called something like
"reply all" or "group reply", or, alternatively, they force
the person who writes the reply to answer a question on
whether the reply should go to only the author or to all
who read the replied-to message.

The problem which many mail system designers have is how to
modify the action of this if the replied-to message had
a "Reply-To" heading fields. Should they modify the
"personal reply" command or the "reply all" command or
both?

In general, the sender of a message cannot give a recommendation
about where replies should go unless the sender knows the kind
of the reply. Thus, to just say that this field
"is the sender's way of telling the recipient who the
sender believes replies should be sent to" as you write, is
simply too vague!

It is OK with me if the new RFC822 just defines what "Reply-To"
means, and does not say anything about how mailers should handle
this field, but then the definition must be much more precise.

I would prefer to split "Reply-To" into two different heading
fields, one for the kind of replies which normally only goes
to one person or "agent" and one for the disucssion kind of
replies which normally goes to the group which is discussing
the issue.

An example:

Suppose that someone writes a message advertising a new
job. This message can cause two kinds of replies:
- Replies by applicants, which should go to the person
  handling the new job applicants
- Discussions about the new job, which might be suitable
  to send to the whole group

No single "Reply-To" heading field can handle both these
cases of replies to the *same* message!

>     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",
> 
> I would support this even less.   I'm afraid I absolutely
> cannot support the re-use of usenet header names for purposes
> that are not identical to their use in usenet.  Followup-To
> in usenet contains newsgroup names, which are nothing like
> e-mail addresses (local-part@fqdn), and hence would not be
> a suitable choice.

In that case, invent a new heading field. But do not make one
field ambiguous, as with "Reply-To" today.

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