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!linus!philabs!cmcl2!seismo!brl-tgr!tgr!wales@UCLA-LOCUS.ARPA From: wales@UCLA-LOCUS.ARPA (Rich Wales) Newsgroups: net.mail.headers Subject: Re: Subject: Ambiguity with the REPLY-TO field Message-ID: <11545@brl-tgr.ARPA> Date: Fri, 12-Jul-85 20:38:12 EDT Article-I.D.: brl-tgr.11545 Posted: Fri Jul 12 20:38:12 1985 Date-Received: Tue, 16-Jul-85 04:00:30 EDT Sender: news@brl-tgr.ARPA Lines: 26 Jacob -- I believe that the three "typical uses" of REPLY-TO spelled out in RFC822 (Section 4.4.3, page 22) are intended as three different motiva- tions for using the feature -- NOT three different possible semantics. 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. That is, if a REPLY-TO field exists in a header, an automatic "reply" operation should ignore the FROM field completely, under all circumstances, and use the REPLY-TO data instead. If the sender of the message needs to use a REPLY-TO field, but also wants to be one of the recipients of any reply, he must include his own address in the REPLY-TO field along with the addresses of the other intended recipients. 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, so I am not sure whether COM uses REPLY-TO correctly or not. If you would like to try again to explain what COM does with REPLY-TO, I will gladly try to help you figure out whether its use of REPLY-TO follows the RFC822 semantics, and if it doesn't, whether there is some alternative approach that would do what you want. -- Rich