On 11/03/2011, at 15:07 , Chris Murphy wrote:

> Wow that's really f'd logic.

Quoting RFC 2822:
> The originator fields indicate the mailbox(es) of the source of the message.  
> 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.  The "Sender:" field specifies the mailbox of the agent responsible 
> for the actual transmission of the message.  For example, if a secretary were 
> to send a message for another person, the mailbox of the secretary would 
> appear in the "Sender:" field and the mailbox of the actual author would 
> appear in the "From:" field.  If the originator of the message can be 
> indicated by a single mailbox and the author and transmitter are identical, 
> the "Sender:" field SHOULD NOT be used.  Otherwise, both fields SHOULD appear.

Quoting relevant mail headers:

> From:         Chris Murphy <[email protected]>
> To:   [email protected], objectwerks inc <[email protected]>
> Cc:   Mac OS X Admin Admin <[email protected]>
> Return-Path:  <[email protected]>
> List-Post:    <mailto:[email protected]>
> Sender:       [email protected]

The "author" is clearly Chris, the "agent responsible for the actual 
transmission" is clearly the mailing list.

I see no reason why a mailing list exploder would ever be considered an 
"author".  A cron script which generates an email as part of its routine 
reporting is an "author".  A network monitoring service that generates an email 
as part of ongoing monitoring is an "author".  The mailing list exploder might 
be considered an "agent", in the sense of being a third party who interfe… 
sorry, participates in the distribution process.  Thus according to the RFC, 
Mailman nominates itself* (or rather, the pseudonym it uses when distributing 
messages to list recipients) as the sender: i.e., Mailman has the same role as 
the secretary in the defining example of the use of the "Sender" header.

My interpretation of this RFC is that if I was to hand-write a message and my 
computer was to transcribe my scrawl to an email, I would be represented in the 
"From" field while my computer would by rights nominate itself in the "Sender" 
header.

But it still stands that Apple Mail will respond "as expected by the author" 
when the Reply-To field is set. Where I am still confused is what would be the 
expected behaviour when the responder's mail client respects both the Reply-To 
and List-Post headers.  That discussion is most certainly off-topic for this 
list (as if 'expected behaviour of a mailing list exploder' isn't already off 
topic enough ;)

Alex
* don't anthropomorphise objects. They hate it when you do that.

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