Errors-to: owner-drums@CS.UTK.EDU
To: Keith Moore <moore@CS.UTK.EDU>
cc: Eric Thomas <ERIC@SEARN.SUNET.SE>, drums@CS.UTK.EDU
Subject: Re: Getting back on track (a.k.a. Reply-To:)
Mime-Version: 1.0
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Date: Thu, 24 Aug 1995 09:15:30 -0700
From: michael.derrico@software.com (Michael D'Errico)
Message-ID: <19950824161531.AAA7692@rome.software.com>


Sorry for perpetuating this thread, but I just got an idea about how to solve 
the Reply-To problem, although it is not in the scope of DRUMS.  It seems to 
me that the problem with Reply-To and mailing lists is that MUAs don't have a 
good concept of what a mailing list is.  If they provided:

          Reply to Sender
         *Reply to List*
          Reply to All

then the ambiguity of who the sender is (is it the list or the author?) goes 
away.  Of course there is the problem of correctly identifying which messages 
are from mailing lists (so that the Reply-to-List button is enabled).  I 
don't know of any active WG tackling mailing list behavior, but if there was 
a way to flag a message as being from a list, perhaps with a new header 
instead of looking for owner-* or *-request return-paths, then this could be 
gradually implemented and "Reply-to: the-list" headers would eventually go 
away.

Mike