Re: Bug#457318: ITP: qmail -- a secure, reliable, efficient, simple message transfer agent

[lsorense@csclub.uwaterloo.ca (Lennart Sorensen)]

On Thu, Jan 10, 2008 at 12:12:31PM -0500, Shawn McMahon wrote:
> You're failing to consider the magnitude of failure.  Accidentally
> sending a public reply in private, the failure mode of proper list
> management without violating the sender's right to set his Reply-To: how
> he chooses, is never catastrophic.  Accidentally sending a private reply
> in public, the failure mode of the Reply-To munging you're advocating,
> on occasion is catastrophic.

Well I prefer not to write anything in an email I wouldn't want made
public.  I am sure there are people who would think otherwise. :)

> Yes, using computers is HARD.  There are so many things to remember.
> Like RFC 2822, which says you should leave other peoples' Reply-To the
> way they set it.  If your mailer can't support the standards adequately
> enough to enable you to use it efficiently, perhaps you should submit a
> bug report, write a patch, or switch to a modern, standards-compliant
> mailer.

I think I was thinking of the Follow-Up-To or something like that.

> RFC 2822 link and excerpt provided in case your browser causes you
> similar problems using Google:
> 
> http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2822.html
> 
> When the "Reply-To:" field is present, it
> indicates the mailbox(es) to which the author of the message suggests
> that replies be sent.  In the absence of the "Reply-To:" field,
> replies SHOULD by default be sent to the mailbox(es) specified in the
> "From:" field unless otherwise specified by the person composing the
> reply.
> 
> 
> Reply-To is the AUTHOR'S field to do with as he pleases, not the list
> manager's.  Whether you intend your reply for the list or the author is
> up to you, but don't insist useful information be removed from all
> emails in defiance of standards because you have a crappy mailer and/or
> can't be bothered to learn how to use it.
> 
> From your message headers I see your mailer handles list replies
> properly; if some of your mailing lists are screwing the pooch, file
> bug reports with the list managers.  "l" should reply to list even on
> the ones where you're doing "r" or "g", unless they're set up wrong.

Mutt handles it fine, but I still have to remember whether to hit L for
list reply or g for group reply depending on the list I am reading.  And
of course for none mailing list traffic I am not sure hitting L does
anything, in which case I have to hit 'r' for reply instead.  group
reply always works in all cases, except it causes a duplicate for the
person whose message I reply to, which causes a small number of people
to get grumpy.  Personally I find the duplicate way way more useful
since I often delete stuff unread from a mailing list folder, which
means I might miss replies to stuff I wrote, so having a copy that ended
up in my main inbox means I won't miss it.  I suspect this (and the fact
many people don't subscribe) is why lkml insists on CCing everyone
involved.

--
Len Sorensen