Errors-to: owner-drums@CS.UTK.EDU
Date: Fri, 29 Sep 1995 17:08:36 +0100 (MET)
From: Jacob Palme <jpalme@dsv.su.se>
To: ietf-drums <drums@CS.UTK.EDU>
Subject: User's choice of whom to send replies to
Message-Id: <Pine.SUN.3.91.950929165201.1528A-100000@ester.dsv.su.se>
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Keith Moore writes:

> So while I don't want us to define too much UA behavior in 822bis, I'm
> sympathetic to the idea that UAs should encourage recipients to make
> an explicit decision about which of several addresses to send a reply
> to, when replying to a message with multiple recipients.  (With so
> many styles of user interface, exactly how the UA should encourage
> them is difficult to specify, but maybe we could supply some
> examples.)

The problem is that users want things to be simple, they do not want
to be forced to make an explcit decision on which are the correct
recipients of a reply.

The way we have chosen to implement it is that when writing a
reply, there is a radio button with choices:
(*) Group reply
(.) Personal reply
(.) Message             ; not a reply at all
(.) Contribution        ; to a conference, not a reply

When the user pushes the "send" button, the user is shown
a list of the recipients of the message with default button
"OK" and alternative button for modifying the list of recipients.

This is a compromise between forcing the user to select
recipients and making it easy for the user to send replies.
It is not ideal, but there is no ideal solution to this
user interface design issue.

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