Date: Wed, 9 Sep 2020 17:12:56 +0100
From: "Geoff Clare via austin-group-l at The Open Group"
<austin-group-l@opengroup.org>
Message-ID: <20200909161256.GA15692@localhost>
| There's your problem right there. You are using an email client that
| is not fit for purpose.
While it might (well, does) have problems, this is not one of them.
| The Reply-To header is used to indicate where the author prefers to
| have replies sent *instead of the address in the From header*.
>From where do you obtain that idea?
What RFC5322 says on this is:
The originator fields also provide the information required when
replying to a message. When the "Reply-To:" field is present, it
indicates the address(es) to which the author of the message suggests
that replies be sent. In the absence of the "Reply-To:" field,
replies SHOULD by default be sent to the mailbox(es) specified in the
"From:" field unless otherwise specified by the person composing the
reply.
Read again: "it indicates the address(es) to which the author of the
message suggests that replies be sent."
Do you see anything there which mentions anything about "instead of
the address in the From header"? (It would say field, not header,
an e-mail message has one header (and an optional body), the header
is composed of several fields, the From: To: Cc: ... are fields,
not "headers" though that incorrect terminology is frequently used
- I do it myself, much too often, unfortunately).
Nor does it say anywhere anything about adding more addresses from
other fields to what the author of the message to which we're replying
suggested - though of course, since the message I am sending (the reply)
is my message, I can direct it anywhere I like - I don't need to include
any addresses that appeared anywhere in the header of the original
message - and when all that contains is noreply@whatever in the From
field, and my addr in the To field, that's often the necessary thing
to do.
I'll admit that the "Reply-To is a replacement for From" is a very
widely held misconception - but it is wrong, and severly reduces the
functionality of e-mail.
The rest of your message uses that error as its underlying assumption,
so needs no further comment. It is simply wrong.
Note: there is nothing wrong with an e-mail client providing various
different reply functions, that pick different sets of addresses for
you to use, instead of the default - but the "normal" reply in the
presence of a Reply-To field, that is when you're not deliberately
deciding to ignore the suggestion from the author of the original
message when given, should always be to reply to, and only to,
the addresses in the Reply-To field.
If you don't act that way, then how is someone to send a message to
you, and visibly (as in explicitly, no bcc type stuff) send a copy
to their boss, so she knows that the sender is dealing with the
issue as directed, but request replies not be sent to (and so bother)
her? On the other hand, your reply should include the sender's
colleague (also cc'd in the message) who is working with the sender
on solving your problem.
With your (limited) client, your choices are Reply (just to the
sender, omitting the colleague) or Reply-All, wich will go to
everyone, including the boss. If you simply did what the Reply-to
field asked, you'd be sending to the (in this case) 2 addresses
that would be listed there, and no others. Much more complicated
scenarios are possible - and in all of them, by default, using the
properly constructed Reply-To as the target list for the reply makes
things work, doing anything else usually fails.
kre
