Mailer config [was Bind v. TinyDNS]

[Leonard den Ottolander]

Hello Mark,

(I hope you don't mind me sending this back to the list.)

(Funny that you top posted in reply to this mail.)

> The Reply-To: address is supposed to be used for personal responses.

I don't know what the difference is between a personal response and an on 
list response (technically speaking that is), but many lists I am 
subscribed to do explicitely set their reply-to address to point back to 
the list, so replies are automatically send to the list instead of off 
list.

Most personal mails I receive do not have the reply-to header set, because 
they expect me to reply to their from address. You still can use reply-to 
in personal mails if you don't want people to reply to your from address. 
However, the current Fedora list setup will probably ruin that setting if 
you send a mail with a set reply-to address to the list (unless it rewrites 
it to the from address).

> Since I don't intend a personal response, I do not respond to Reply-To:.

My mailer replies to the from field unless the reply-to field is set.

As said, many mailing lists are set up to let you reply to the list  via 
the reply-to field. A small list:

Reply-To: fedora-list at redhat.com
Reply-To: redhat-list at redhat.com
Reply-To: speedtouch at ml.free.fr
Reply-To: xfree86 at xfree86.org
not comp-protocols-dns-bind at isc.org (the only list using Mail-Followup-To)
not questions at freebsd.org
not misc at openbsd.org
not bug-ncurses at gnu.org

Looks like the question whether a reply-to setup is a good thing is 
undecided (clearly a BSD/Linux split) (I personally think it is a 
convenient setup for a mailing list, always replying to the list, but 
having the from field preserved), but although Mail-Followup-To might have 
originally be intended to be used for mailing list setups it's use is not 
widely spread. So much for the standards...

> Jeff is not correct. The exact detail he is not correct on, though, is the
> *accepted* means of responding to a post. In fact, there is *no* consistent
> process defined. Mail-Followup-To: was created as a means of solving this
> problem.

Think I answered this above. Very nice that Mail-Followup-To was created 
for this purpose in 1976, but fact of the matter is it is not widely used, 
neither on Linux nor BSD, so best thing to do is to go with the flow, which 
is to conform to the mail list's configuration. In case of the Red Hat 
lists this is to reply to the reply-to. (Don't mean to be belittling here.)

Anyway it saves header fields:

To:             		Ab <a at b.org>
Copies to:      		fedora-list at redhat.com

To: fedora-list at redhat.com

> So few people are aware that Reply-To: is abused, and that Mail-Followup-To:
> exist, that even people have used the Internet for years don't understand
> the point.

Lost battle.

> Cheers,
> mark

Bye,
Leonard.

--
mount -t life -o ro /dev/dna /genetic/research