Date:	Sat, 13 May 1995 18:12:33 +0900
From:	Stephen Turnbull <turnbull AT shako DOT sk DOT tsukuba DOT ac DOT jp>
To:	djgpp AT sun DOT soe DOT clarkson DOT edu
Subject:	Header re-writing

   From: RDC <rdc AT freenet DOT vancouver DOT bc DOT ca>
   On Tue, 9 May 1995, Philip Taylor wrote:

   > each message claims to come from the originator rather than from the list.
   > Would it be acceptable to the majority of readers of/contributors to

   Yes !

I was hoping *not* to have to say anything in public, but obviously
somebody needs to.

It is *not* legal to rewrite the headers in the fashion suggested.
According to RFC822, the Reply-To: header is for the use of the
*sender*, to redirect replies in case she is using a different
account, is moving, is having mail problems, or any of a thousand
other possibilities.

If the Reply-To header is munged in the fashion you want, it is
impossible for the sender to receive automatically-generated replies
except via the list, because the From header is ignored by unbroken
software in that case.  Of course you can start a new thread by
mailing directly, but it won't have the In-reply-to header which is
useful for threaded mail-reading.  Or you can edit the list's address
to the original poster's address, but this is making the right thing
to do (Gospel according to Hull-Richter) hard to do, the wrong thing
to do easy.  Yuck.

I have no sympathy for people who produce gems such as this:

    Subject: Re: Header re-writing
    To: Philip Taylor <CHAA006 AT alpha1 DOT rhbnc DOT ac DOT uk>
    Cc: djgpp AT sun DOT soe DOT clarkson DOT edu, CHAA006 AT alpha1 DOT rhbnc DOT ac DOT uk

I guess poor Philip wanted 3 copies (list plus two personal) in the
opinion of the sender of that message?  Maybe  he deserves it for
starting the thread ;-)

Learn to use the software you have, don't suggest breaking the
mechanisms that have been worked out to make it possible for unbroken
software to do exactly what you want efficiently with minimal typing
input.

-- 
Stephen Turnbull  /  Yaseppochi-gumi  /  <turnbull AT shako DOT sk DOT tsukuba DOT ac DOT jp>
http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp/      anon FTP: turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp
Check out Kansai-WWW, too ------------> http://pclsp2.kuicr.kyoto-u.ac.jp/

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