To: IETF DRUMS WG <drums@cs.utk.edu>
Subject: Re: Comments on the current "Reply-To:" in draft 4 
In-Reply-To: Pete Resnick's message of "Tue, 24 Mar 1998 10:22:44 -0600."
References: "R. Kelley Cook"'s message of "Tue, 24 Mar 1998 10:30:10 -0500." <199803241530.PAA129432@out5.ibm.net>  <v04010d12b13d8ddc94ae@resnick2.qualcomm.com> 
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Date: Wed, 25 Mar 1998 03:37:56 +1100
Message-Id: <662.890757476@munnari.OZ.AU>
From: Robert Elz <kre@munnari.OZ.AU>

    Date:        Tue, 24 Mar 1998 10:22:44 -0600
    From:        Pete Resnick <presnick@qualcomm.com>
    Message-ID:  <v04010d12b13d8ddc94ae@resnick2.qualcomm.com>

  | No, it doesn't. It can't. We've established that empirically over the past
  | months haven't we? Whatever else we do, we can't make the semantics of
  | Reply-To be "reply to this address and no others" because the vast majority
  | of MUAs out there do not believe those semantics. Right?

No.  That the majority of MUAs act that way - yes - that we can't define it
that way - no - doing it does no harm, right now there is no (generally 
working) way to express that very commonly desired request, after we define
it (and no matter which way we were to decide to provide that mechanism)
there will still be no practical way for quite some time, as no matter which
method we pick, MUAs are not going to magically start supporting this currently
unsupported semantic (other than the few which do already).

Provided we don't forego this as an option for the author to request, 
eventually MUAs will start supporting it - whatever it is - and it will
start to be effective.   Nothing we can do can avoid that delay.

The advantage of Reply-To over a new header, is that in practice, most mailers
do have a way of replying to just the addresses in the Reply-To header, and
many at least allow the user to set the header.   Almost no mailers currently
send replies to an as yet undefined new header, which means the bootstrap
problem to get a new header operational is considerably longer.   That Reply-To
can be effective for this purpose is evidenced by the fact that many mailing
lists set the header to achieve exactly the kind of effect desired.

kre