[Python-Dev] Re: ML replies (was: CVS: python/dist/src/PCbuild readme.txt,1.5,1.6)

[Barry A. Warsaw]

[Please remove python-dev from followups, I'm sure most of those folks
don't care about this... -BAW]

MM-Devers: on python-dev there's been some discussion about the
Reply-to: munging that you can select on Mailman lists.  Say you've
got a python-checkins list that receives CVS log messages
automatically.  But you don't want discussions about the changes on
python-checkins, you want them on python-dev.

How can Mailman set up the headers on outgoing messages to get this
behavior?  It can't.  So it fakes it by setting Reply-to: to the
address of the discussion list.  We now join our conversation already
in progress...

>>>>> "GS" == Greg Stein <gstein@lyra.org> writes:

    GS> What about the Mail-Followup-To header? That can be helpful
    GS> for some newsreaders (e.g. Mutt). Dunno how many observe it.

It looks like VM/Emacs doesn't (which is what I use), but I'm sure
that'd be easy to add.  I would be most interested to know what
Outlook and NS do with it.

However Mail-Followup-To: isn't in any RFC that I can find, not even
2076.  It can be found in a discussion by Dan Bernstein[1], but that
document specifically says that list managers should /not/ set it
because this defeats the intended purpose.  I agree - given Dan's
recommendation.

So there is clearly no header that will support the functionality we
want.  And all this crud has been debated ad-nauseum in several
working groups, MUA forums, etc. with no agreement.  I almost hesitate
even bringing it up here.  Few of the discussions that I've read (in a
morning's worth of archive surfing) even mention the situation we're
trying to address.

One potential solution for Mailman might be to lie about the To:
address.  So in the above scenario, the message would have a To: field
set to python-dev even though the message would actually be sent to
the python-checkins membership.  An elaboration on that would be to
set Resent-To: to python-checkins.  But those are all hacks, nearly as
disgusting as what Mailman currently does.

-Barry

[1] http://cr.yp.to/proto/replyto.html