Reply-To: field again !!! (was Re: [WBEL-devel] patchs for missing rpms)

[peter green]

* donavan nelson <donavan@whiteboxlinux.net> [031218 22:05]:
> Here is the header from the message I replied to Jimmy with:
> 
> I've hidden the private host and user information. as well as his domain to
> prevent spam bots. from getting him.  I'm sure jimmy would confirm this.
> 
> There are three instances of where his internal name (abc@fred.wilma.org)
> appear in the headers.  I'm not certain which message from Jimmy you are
> looking at.

Between your mail client/config, Jimmy's mail client/config, and/or the list
server, something is wrong. Let's look at those three headers:

> From abc@fred.wilma.org  Thu Dec 18 14:32:21 2003

This is not, strictly speaking, a header as much as an mbox "feature" that
records the envelope sender. Your mail client should not care about the
envelope sender; that's for automated systems to direct bounces.

> Return-Path: <abc@fred.wilma.org>

Return-Path == envelope sender. See comments above.

> From: Jimmy Kaplowitz <jimmy@kaplowitz.org>
[...]
> Sender: Jimmy Kaplowitz <abc@fred.wilma.org>

I include the From: header along with the Sender: header for a reason. I'm
not sure who put that Sender: field in there (whether Jimmy's MUA, MTA, or
Mailman), but they were wrong to do so, in my interpretation of RFC2822.

  If the originator of the message can be indicated by a single mailbox and
  the author and transmitter are identical, the "Sender:" field SHOULD NOT
  be used.

Now, while your mail client might (*might*; I've never heard of any other
client doing this) be right in this case, something else is definitely not.

As for the "reply-to-list" feature, it is available in all modern mail
clients. You mentioned being able to get quick bug resolution with your mail
client's authors; while this might not be a bug, they are certainly behind
the times if they don't support reply-to-list, and would probably be more
than happy to implement this feature.

But please don't punish the rest of us with a munged Reply-To:.

/pg
-- 
Peter Green : Agathon Group : pcg@agathongroup.com
-------------------------------------------------------------
gayety is an inward sun which shines through all the changes
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