Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site brl-tgr.ARPA Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!bonnie!akgua!whuxlm!harpo!decvax!genrad!panda!talcott!harvard!seismo!brl-tgr!tgr!Jacob_Palme_QZ%QZCOM.MAILNET@MIT-MULTICS.ARPA From: Jacob_Palme_QZ%QZCOM.MAILNET@MIT-MULTICS.ARPA Newsgroups: net.mail.headers Subject: Re: Subject: Ambiguity with the REPLY-TO field Message-ID: <11583@brl-tgr.ARPA> Date: Mon, 15-Jul-85 12:20:49 EDT Article-I.D.: brl-tgr.11583 Posted: Mon Jul 15 12:20:49 1985 Date-Received: Wed, 17-Jul-85 21:12:22 EDT Sender: news@brl-tgr.ARPA Lines: 54 > FROM: Rich Wales> My understanding of the semantics of the REPLY-TO field is that, if it > is present, it is to be used as a substitute for the FROM field when > composing replies to the message. A message system which has two reply commands, called "personal reply" and "group reply", would for a message without any REPLY-TO field use the "FROM" field when the "personal reply" is used, and would perhaps combine the "FROM", "TO", "CC" and "SENDER" fields when the "group reply" command is used. Thus if, as you say, the "REPLY-TO" field is to be used as a replacement for the "FROM" field, this seems to indicate that maybe the "REPLY-TO" field is mostly to be used for "personal reply" commands. However, the text in RFC822, which says that "REPLY-TO" can be used when you want answers to be sent to a group, seems to indicate that the "REPLY-TO" field is to be used also for "group reply" uses. > FROM: Rich Wales > I am not 100% sure I understood your description of the criteria used by > COM in deciding whether to include the sender in the REPLY-TO field. An example: Suppose we have a mailing list called III@JJJ with three members: - AAA@BBB - CCC@DDD - EEE@FFF Suppose a message written by GGG@HHH, who is not a member of the list, is sent to this mailing list. Then I would make the following REPLY-TO clause: REPLY-TO: III@JJJ, GGG@HHH This would ensure that GGG@HHH would get the replies, even though GGG@HHH is not a member of the list. If however, AAA@BBB sends a message to the list, I would create the following REPLY-TO clause: REPLY-TO: III@JJJ AAA@BBB would *not* be included in the REPLY-TO clause, since AAA@BBB is a member of the mailing list, and will receive the message via the list. If in this case AAA@BBB was included in the REPLY-TO clause, AAA@BBB might get two copies of the replies, one directly and one via the list (an intelligent system might be able to merge the two copies before displaying them to the user, but still the two copies would increase transmission cost and would confuse COM, since COM would not know whether to regard it as a personal message or a mailing list message - COM allows users to give different priority to incoming messages belonging to different mailing lists.