Received: from localhost by CS.UTK.EDU with SMTP (cf v2.9s-UTK) id PAA21088; Sat, 16 Sep 1995 15:11:21 -0400 X-Resent-To: drums@CS.UTK.EDU ; Sat, 16 Sep 1995 15:11:20 EDT Errors-to: owner-drums@CS.UTK.EDU Received: from munnari.oz.au by CS.UTK.EDU with SMTP (cf v2.9s-UTK) id PAA21081; Sat, 16 Sep 1995 15:11:14 -0400 Received: from mundamutti.cs.mu.OZ.AU by munnari.oz.au with SMTP (5.83--+1.3.1+0.50) id AA06595; Sun, 17 Sep 1995 05:10:39 +1000 (from kre@munnari.OZ.AU) To: Jacob Palme Cc: "Brent B. Welch" , ietf-drums Subject: Re: your mail In-Reply-To: Your message of "Sat, 16 Sep 1995 11:47:16 +0200." Date: Sun, 17 Sep 1995 05:10:08 +1000 Message-Id: <17719.811278608@munnari.OZ.AU> From: Robert Elz Date: Sat, 16 Sep 1995 11:47:16 +0200 (MET DST) From: Jacob Palme Message-ID: On Fri, 15 Sep 1995, Brent B. Welch wrote: I am not sure yet whether there is a need to distinguish between "From:" and "Personal-Reply-To". I don't believe there is. Possible cases might be when you send an inquiry, and want the replies to go to a special mailbox for collection of replies. No, that is just "Reply-To" - when you reply, send to this address please (and only this address, and that's it). [Note the "please", the recipient can send his reply to others if he chooses to ignore the sender's express desire]. But in that case, perhaps "Single-Reply-To" might be a better name for this field than "Personal-Reply-To". If you're going to go the route of inventing new headers, you will end up with a need for lots of foo-reply-to headers to express different desires. The reason "Reply-To" cannot be equivalent to "Wide-Reply-To" is (a) It is easy to misunderstand Huh? How? I can't think of anything easier, Reply-To simply means Reply-To. If 822 hadn't included all those examples where the Reply-To was being added because of wanting to change the From: line, I doubt anyone would be confused. It's this view of Reply-To as being a kind of "Really-From" which has caused this problem. Reply-to is *not* From (or Really-From). If you get a (snail mail) invitation with RSVP on it, do you ever have any doubts as to what it means? This is exactly the same thing (though missing the extra request that a reply actually be sent by some particular time). (b) Not to break the present functionality of "Reply-To" during the transition period. Nothing breaks. Nothing is different than now. You already can't count on any particular recipient doing anything particular with a Reply-To, that won't change for ages. Eventually perhaps enough people will have adopted the tighter definition so that you can use it with some confidence, but until then, we just get the status quo. Perhaps some particular individual's mailers will act differently than they did before, but that might happen if we do nothing. You can already add multiple addresses in a Reply-To, that's been allowed forever, we don't need to add any new functionality. If you are intending that the Reply-To, plus some or all of the To and Cc people get replies, then you should already be adding those To and Cc people to what you had put in the Reply-To header, otherwise some mailers won't do what you hope. Nothing will break if you do that however (or not from any mailer that is even close to correct, however Reply-To is interpreted). kre