[Mailman-Developers] Reply-To: handling

J C Lawrence claw@2wire.com
Fri, 19 Oct 2001 12:34:05 -0700


I've been reading RFC 2822 on the subject of Reply-To and noticed
that the content of Reply-To is a list.  ie you can have more than
one address listed under a Reply-To:

  reply-to = "Reply-To:" address-list CRLF
  address-list = (address *("," address)) / obs-addr-list
  address = mailbox / group
  mailbox = name-addr / addr-spec
  name-addr = [display-name] angle-addr
  angle-addr = [CFWS] "<" addr-spec ">" [CFWS] / obs-angle-addr
  group = display-name ":" [mailbox-list / CFWS] ";" [CFWS]
  display-name = phrase
  mailbox-list = (mailbox *("," mailbox)) / obs-mbox-list

eg:

  Reply-To: list@foo.conm, list@bar.com, claw@kanga.nu

This would seem to potentially remove one of the complaints on
Reply-To: lists -- that they nix/kill crossposting, and lose the
actual semantic value of the original Reply-To header.  

Ergo, if a given list is configured to do reply-To munging and it
receives a message with Reply-To set, then it makes sense to _ADD_
the list's address to the Reply-To: header if present, rather than
replacing it.

-- 
J C Lawrence
---------(*)                Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas.
claw@kanga.nu               He lived as a devil, eh?
http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/  Evil is a name of a foeman, as I live.