On Fri, 10 Dec 1999, Steve Lamb wrote: > Friday, December 10, 1999, 2:53:54 AM, Kenneth wrote: > > I think that this is a bad suggestion since there are some people (such as > > me) who use the Reply-To headers to ensure that the recipients have a valid > > reply address to reply to us. If the mailing list rewrites the Reply-To by > > putting itself in that header, then the valid reply address is lost. > > What prevents you from putting the valid address in the From: field > instead?
It is a perfectly valid address as per the mail server running on my unconnected domain. RFC822 states that it should be authenticated, but does not state who by. Read the section dealing with the Sender header. It clearly allows for the case where the person that actually sends the message is different from the author of the message. This is what is important and ISP's authenticate on this header and not on the From header (or if they are, it is unwarranted). The RFC indicates that the Sender field was also intended to be used in the case of mailing lists which redistributes email. > > Furthermore, it is an intented use of Reply-To as defined by RFC-822. Correct. But reread RFC822. This is only one of the intended uses of the Reply-To header. The use of the Reply-To header to indicate that a reply should goto another address because the From header address cannot receive a reply is another one. In fact, given such an option, setting up a mailing list to rewrite the Reply-To header is broken behaviour - unless the intent of the list admin is to put such subscribers at a disadvantage. You may personally not like such use of headers. But if you want to get the world to follow in your footsteps, write up a new RFC and get it approved as a standard. > > > Furthermore, I think that the original problem of getting two > > copies of the same mail can be solved easily by using procmail. > > Assumption is that one is using or wants to use procmail. The mail, > however, is still sent. > That is true. However, since the RFC allows the behaviour I have described above, you will have people following it. 'procmail' is a way of handling the situation. If you dont want 'procmail', find another solution or grin and bear it. Regards, Kenneth