On Sun, Mar 05, 2006 at 11:06:46AM +0000, MJ Ray wrote: > Neither? So you still didn't bother with the reference? > > The problems are cited: maybe you don't agree they are problems.
I read them, and they seem to say "it's not an annointed standard" (not relevant) and "it's a header, put it in the body instead" (which is naming a poor alternative, not naming a problem with MFT). > A major argument for MFT seems to be that people should > brainlessly follow it rather than consider where they send > their replies. No mail headers should be trusted that much > and no-one should get sniffy when headers are deliberately > overridden. That's silly. MFT should be followed as much as other headers, no more. Obviously, if you set a Reply-To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, I'm not going to honor it, either. > The reasonable default behaviour is to send list replies to the > List-Post address, off-list replies to Reply-To||From and group > replies to all original recipients. This behavior fails to handle cross-posting, forcing people to use group-reply and then manually tweak the recipients. For those of us who pay attention, it forces us to spend undue time adjusting recipients when such details should be handled by the mailer. It encourages people to use group-reply all the time, copying everyone. MFT fixes this cleanly: list-reply fills in correct recipients; in the typical case, I only need to glance over the result to verify it. (I think I already gave that as an example, but maybe I elided it.) > > and it's your job > > to hint my mailer if you want it to treat you atypically, such as if you > > want CC's on followups to Debian lists. > > It should not be my job to work around bugs in your mailer. Please don't offer replies which are so terse as to not convey a clear meaning. You seem to be implying that to *not* send you a copy on a list followup is a bug in my mailer. However, I'm pretty sure that's not your belief, so I have no idea what you were actually trying to say. > No, expecting people to use broken software that implements > non-standard mail headers is unreasonable. In any case, explicit > requests are another common way, so your "only" was false. Nobody is "expected" to use software that supports the header. If you don't, you're still expected to follow list policy and you'll have to continue doing it in other ways, but you're no worse off for the presence of the header. > Thank you for agreeing that MFT does nothing to help solve one of > the most common problems on debian lists. I guess we'll just differ > on the desirability of supporting a non-standard header in the > listserver or hiding cc requests in headers. The fact that MFT does not solve an unrelated problem (user error in specifying who should receive copies of replies) is irrelevant. I agree, as well, that MFT does not solve world hunger. As far as I can see, you've not named any problems that would be caused by list software automatically creating MFT headers indicating the list's policy. I could hypothesize some, but they're along similar lines as list software that sets "Reply-To" automatically: it may override explicit uses of it. I'm not sure if that'd be a problem. But, I can think of no problems along the lines you're talking about. -- Glenn Maynard -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
