On Thu, 4 Mar 2010, swede wrote: > It doesn't matter to me as Gmail already replies to the list. How so? My experience is like that of others on this list who use Gmail. It does "Reply," which goes to the sender only, and "Reply to All" which goes to every recipient, including the list. The desired behavior is to have an option for "Reply to List" (exclusively to the list) but that does not exist in Gmail. By the way, in case anyone is interested, I encouraged the Alpine developers to get Alpine to do a little more with List-Post than it currently does. See below. Mike -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 3 Mar 2010 13:05:20 -0600 (CST) From: Mike Miller To: Alpine Info List Subject: using "List-Post" See the message below, shortened slightly to focus on the part of interest. My question is about "List-Post, defined in RFC2369." Does Alpine recognize List-Post headers? I'm thinking it doesn't recognize them and can't be configured to do so, but I'm not sure. Mike ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Wed, 3 Mar 2010 03:24:01 -0600 From: Dave Sherohman To: tclug-list at mn-linux.org Subject: Re: [tclug-list] Reply-to on this list On Tue, Mar 02, 2010 at 01:03:32PM -0600, Yaron wrote: > On Tue, 2 Mar 2010, Carl Wilhelm Soderstrom wrote: > >> I also have root access to the mailing list server, so if I wanted to >> be autocratic about it I could just make the change unilaterally. >> However, I think that would be rather irresponsible. > > Well, so far we've got quite a few people saying they'd like the change, > a couple of people saying they don't need the change, and zero people > saying they're against it. I've been holding my tongue thus far, as I'm no longer local to the LUG, but, since you've said that there's nobody against it... I'm against it. The canonical list of arguments against lists setting Reply-To would be Chip Rosenthal's ""Reply-To" Munging Considered Harmful"[1], but that's pretty ancient these days. Google's first hit on it is a copy dated 2002, but Simon Hill's response, "Reply-To Munging Considered Useful"[2], dates to at least 2000, so it's clearly older than that. At some later point, Neale Pickett published ""Reply-To" Munging Still Considered Harmful. Really."[3], in which he points out that, per RFC2822, Reply-To is specifically to be used to indicate where the message's author wants replies directed. He then goes on to argue that, since the list management software is not the author of the message, it is a direct violation of the RFC for list software to set Reply-To. (It should use List-Post instead, as defined in RFC2369. Unfortunately, well over a decade later, clients which properly recognize List-Post headers remain thin on the ground.) [1] http://www.unicom.com/pw/reply-to-harmful.html [2] http://www.metasystema.net/essays/reply-to.mhtml [3] http://woozle.org/~neale/papers/reply-to-still-harmful.html -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 4 Mar 2010 11:04:14 -0600 (CST) From: Mike Miller To: Alpine Info List Subject: Re: [Alpine-info] using "List-Post" On Thu, 4 Mar 2010, Geoff Shang wrote: > On Wed, 3 Mar 2010, Eduardo Chappa wrote: > >> Please notice that this header is informational. There is no reason why >> any client should do anything with this information, except offer the >> user the information and give a link to the user to use that >> information. It really has nothing to do with reply-to. > > Maybe not, though would it not be reasonable to offer a "list" option in > the reply screen when replying to a message with such a header anyway? Exactly. If I hit "reply", and there is no "Reply-To," this is what happens: Reply to all recipients? (Y/N/Cancel) If no -- it replies only to sender. If yes -- it replies to all recipients. "Reply to list" is not an option. When Reply-To is present, and it has the address of the list, this is what happens: Use "Reply-To:" address instead of "From:" address? (Y/N/Cancel) If yes -- it repllies exclusively to the list. If no -- it reverts to Reply to all recipients? (Y/N/Cancel) If no -- it replies only to sender. If yes -- it replies to all recipients. This means that Alpine provides better functionality for lists when the "Reply-To: <list address>" is present in the header. For lists that don't do Reply-To munging, it would be great if Alpine saw "List-Post" in the header and did this (same as above except for first line): Reply to list address instead of "From:" address? (Y/N/Cancel) If yes -- it repllies exclusively to the list. If no -- it reverts to Reply to all recipients? (Y/N/Cancel) If no -- it replies only to sender. If yes -- it replies to all recipients. Wouldn't that be great? Seriously, I think that is exactly what we need. It mustn't be hard to program because all the code is in there, but it needs to be shuffled around the right way. Mike