Errors-to: owner-drums@CS.UTK.EDU
To: Mark Crispin <MRC@Panda.COM>
Cc: drums@CS.UTK.EDU
Subject: Re: summing up: the meaning of the reply-to header 
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 14 Sep 1995 17:28:50 MST."
             <MailManager.811124930.2030.mrc@Ikkoku-Kan.Panda.COM> 
Date: Fri, 15 Sep 1995 12:50:59 +1000
Message-Id: <17592.811133459@munnari.OZ.AU>
From: Robert Elz <kre@munnari.oz.au>

    Date:        Thu, 14 Sep 1995 17:28:50 -0700 (PDT)
    From:        Mark Crispin <MRC@Panda.COM>
    Message-ID:  <MailManager.811124930.2030.mrc@Ikkoku-Kan.Panda.COM>

    Put another way; it does not matter whether you say "Reply-To specifies where
    replies to the message should go, as opposed to replies to just the author",
    since the dichotomy is meaningless.  Say instead, "replies go to the reply
    address, which *defaults* to the author" and "the decision of whether or not
    replies go to the To/cc addresses is up to the user."

You're looking at this backwards, what is relevant here is
not what the recipient does with the message, what is relevant,
and all that can be relevant, is to indicate what the sender
means when she puts in the Reply-To header.

The problem currently is that Reply-To is ambiguous, it might
mean almost anything, no-one knows, which makes it close to
useless (ok, perhaps that is a little overboard) - the idea is
to make it clear to the sender just what they are saying when
they insert that header.

Think of it this way, if I give $1 to one of those panhandlers
who litter US city streets (and other countries), and say
"use this to buy some food", then the recipient is expected
to have a fair idea what my intention is.  This doesn't
necessarily constrain the uses to which the $1 is put, but at
least the intention is understood, if the recipient wishes to
aceed to my desires he can do so.

On the other hand, if I speak Swahili instead of English, the
chances are that the recipient has no idea what I mean, and
consequently ahs no basis for deciding just what I intended, and
consequently does whatever he wants with no guidance at all.

The latter is an approximation to our current state with
Reply-To.

    Date: Fri, 15 Sep 1995 04:06:13 +0200 (MET DST)
    From: Jacob Palme <jpalme@dsv.su.se>
    Message-Id: <Pine.SUN.3.91.950915034922.24926H-100000@ester.dsv.su.se>

    I would assume the opposite. Because a more precise definition
    of "Reply-To" will either keep the ambiguity, or cause one
    interpretation to lose, there is a large risk that there
    will be no eventual conformance to the standard.

    With two new headers, in the other case, both groups will
    be able to do what they wa,t so the probability of eventual
    conformance will be larger, not less.

I think you have this backwards .. by tightening the
definition of Reply-To, things cannot get worse.   If the new
definition is simply ignored, we're just where we are now,
and have suffered nothing at all.  On the other hand, if
implementations, and users, gradually start to accept the
new definition, things will get better.

On the other hand, with new headers, things instantly get
worse, as initially almost no-one understands the new headers,
and all they cause is confusion.   There would need to be all
kinds of bizarre rules to quantify just what happens when all 3
headers are present and contain different values, etc.
Further, unless universally adopted (fat chance) things can
never get much better than we now have, and we just have to
carry around more excess header baggage all the time.

kre