Received: from localhost by CS.UTK.EDU with SMTP (cf v2.9s-UTK) id MAA21230; Tue, 10 Oct 1995 12:54:26 -0400 Received: by CS.UTK.EDU (bulk_mailer v1.3); Tue, 10 Oct 1995 12:54:22 -0400 Received: from SEARN.SUNET.SE by CS.UTK.EDU with SMTP (cf v2.9s-UTK) id MAA21216; Tue, 10 Oct 1995 12:54:16 -0400 Message-Id: <199510101654.MAA21216@CS.UTK.EDU> Received: from SEARN.SUNET.SE by SEARN.SUNET.SE (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 8308; Tue, 10 Oct 95 17:54:07 +0100 Received: from SEARN.SUNET.SE (NJE origin ERIC@SEARN) by SEARN.SUNET.SE (LMail V1.2b/1.8b) with RFC822 id 3632; Tue, 10 Oct 1995 17:54:06 +0100 Date: Tue, 10 Oct 1995 17:43:59 +0100 From: Eric Thomas Subject: Re: What's the Sender header for? To: Harald.T.Alvestrand@uninett.no, Mark Crispin , Mark Crispin cc: Keith Moore , drums@cs.utk.edu In-Reply-To: Message of Tue, 10 Oct 1995 09:26:12 -0700 (PDT) from Mark Crispin On Tue, 10 Oct 1995 09:26:12 -0700 (PDT) Mark Crispin said: >I'm not, because I don't think this is right. This forces resenders to >go into a header and remove the Sender: header. I'm not clear on what practice you're discussing. >Eric also has the habit of sending replies to both the From: and Sender: >headers of my messages. That doesn't mean that this practice is correct. Damn, I could have sworn everyone agreed that there is no "standard" way of replying to a message and it's up to the individual user how he wants to configure his mail program. My mail program is configured based on a decision I've made once after reviewing the situation. When I get a message with both "Sender:" and "From:", but no "Reply-To:", and the two addresses are different, there are two basic alternatives: 1. The "Sender:" field was added for no particular purpose. Some gateway written by someone who didn't understand RFC822 thought it was necessary to fill in the field, or some exotic debug option was enabled by accident. The field is (mildly) unwanted, it's here for no special purpose. If I send a copy of my reply to this address, in the worst case it will be mildly unwanted, possibly leading to the discovery of the gateway's weird behaviour, and in the best case this will be the only of the two listed addresses that work, so I do that. 2. The "Sender:" field was added for a good reason. The person who sent the message has a need to have this field in the header. Well, in that case it's obviously not a good idea to ignore it. Besides, it's not my problem and I don't have time to delve into my correspondents' mail delivery problems. If I send my reply to both addresses, I'm more likely to have sent it to the right address. Eric