On 4/11/2014 8:33 AM, Steve Atkins wrote:
It's not just search. It's also mail filtering, grouping by author and other
similar things - everything that's based on the From: field specifying the
author of the message, that is the mailbox of the person or system responsible
for the writing of the message[1].
With respect to replying, mailing lists started overloading the original
use of Reply-To, many years ago, to solve a serious usage issue.
Consequently, any new use of Reply-to needs to juggle both the original
definition of it as well as the pragmatics of the mailing list version
of using it.[*]
While my previous response referred only to replying, the issue is
larger, as Steve is highlighting.
The basic problem with modifying the From: field is that it changes its
basic semantics. From the latest version of the specification, RFC 5322:
The "From:" field specifies the author(s) of the message,
that is, the mailbox(es) of the person(s) or system(s) responsible
for the writing of the message.
Note the 'that is' clause. <mailbox> can be either <name-addr> or
<addr-spec>. This effectively means that the optional <display-name> is
irrelevant to the semantics of defining the <author>.
In other words, the /address/ in the From: field identifies the author.
Change that string and you have changed who is being claimed to be the
author.
Anything that is trying to identify the author will get a different result.
By any reasonable measure, that is a gargantuan paradigm change to email.
d/
[*] A few years ago, I was amused and humbled to be talking with a
serious email technical expert who said he hadn't heard of RFC 822.
Time really has passed; new generations have arrived... But getting a
lecture on Reply-to prompts me to encourage folk to take a look at RFC
733, where the construct was invented. I generally view
From/Sender/Reply-to as the major innovation of that document.
--
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net
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