Received: from localhost by CS.UTK.EDU with SMTP (cf v2.9s-UTK) id OAA19256; Sat, 16 Sep 1995 14:44:53 -0400 X-Resent-To: drums@CS.UTK.EDU ; Sat, 16 Sep 1995 14:44:51 EDT Errors-to: owner-drums@CS.UTK.EDU Received: from munnari.oz.au by CS.UTK.EDU with SMTP (cf v2.9s-UTK) id OAA19248; Sat, 16 Sep 1995 14:44:48 -0400 Received: from mundamutti.cs.mu.OZ.AU by munnari.oz.au with SMTP (5.83--+1.3.1+0.50) id AA05627; Sun, 17 Sep 1995 04:44:30 +1000 (from kre@munnari.OZ.AU) To: Mark Crispin 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 20:07:46 MST." Date: Sun, 17 Sep 1995 04:43:58 +1000 Message-Id: <17708.811277038@munnari.OZ.AU> From: Robert Elz Date: Thu, 14 Sep 1995 20:07:46 -0700 (PDT) From: Mark Crispin Message-ID: Fascinating, but I'm not sure of the relevance. I could as easily quote Lewis Carrol (in the guise of Humpty Dumpty) about which is to be the master, but that would be no more relevant. On the rest of your message, I think I agree with everything you said, but you still don't seem to understand what is being proposed. No-one is even considering outlawing any of those 3 uses of Reply-To from 822 (well, occasionally someone expresses doubt about the mailing list part, but there is NO plan to do anything about that). The suggestion (proposal) is really very simple, that is, to state explicitly, that when a user (or even a mailing list) adds a Reply-To to a message, the addresses in that header are intended to be a complete list of the header-adder's intent as to where replies are best sent. That is it, all, the end. This allows the user to use Reply-To to 1) compensate for a regular mail box (or broken From: or whatever), by putting their addressin a Reply-To, they can also add addresses from To & Cc if they desire replies to go to those addresses as well. 2) to add addresses to receive replies 3) for mailing lists to stick in Reply-To and "force" (as much as they can control the recipients) replies to go to the list (or not to the list). No functionality is being taken away, rather some is being added, as at the minute there is no way for the sender to indicate which of the To and Cc addresses should receive replies, as no-one agrees whether Reply-To overrides those or not (or is intended to). This is the sole open question. Also, I agree with you that we simply cannot plan to deprecate Reply-to and add new headers, that is clearly outside what this group can do, and even if it weren't, would be an impossible task. Further, even if someone was to attempt this, 2 new headers wouldn't be enough, we'd need lots to attempt to do it that way (or just one new one to replace Reply-To and be what Reply-To shold have been, in which case we should call it Reply-to ...). Finally ... I fear here that the horse is out of the barn, and that attempting to close the barn door now is an exercise in futility. Thus my recommendation is to punt. Document, perhaps, but punt on trying to fix it. if we were to adopt that strategy, we may as well wind up the group now, and forget about ever doing anything. The whole point of DRUMS is to not simply punt on every issue where there has been ambiguity, but to remove that ambiguity. That will certainly have some outside world effects, and will clearly take some time to penetrate, but what this group exists for is to make exactly these choices (and no more than that). kre