From: bill@Celestial.COM (Bill Campbell)
Subject: Re: MMDF list-processor
Organization: Celestial Software, Mercer Island, WA
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1993 17:38:06 GMT

In <1993Jan28.011019.17547@golem.waterloo.on.ca> davidf@golem.waterloo.on.ca (David J. Fiander) writes:

:According to jonr@bigsky.dillon.mt.us (Jon Robinson):
:>I've set up some lists using MMDF under SCO UNIX 3.2.2.  All works
:>fine except that when the list redistributes the message to the other
:>people in the list, and the people then respond, the message goes to
:>the individual who originally sent the message rather that being sent
:>to the list.  Basically, I'm looking for a way to have the message
:>headers automatically include the line
:>Reply-To: listname@bigsky.dillon.mt.us

:This is actually more of a mail-reader problem than a
:list-processor problem.  When a user sends a message to the
:mailing list, the headers look like

:	From: Joe Bob <joe@widget.com>
:	To: The Frizbee User Community <frizbee@gateway.org>

:and this is exactly what they look like when a reader of the
:list gets his copy.  Mailx (and most other readers) have two
:ways to reply to a message: the "individual" reply, and the
:"group" reply.  If somebody replies to a message using the
:individual reply, then the response will only go to the
:originator of the message (ie. Joe Bob).  If she uses the group
:reply, then the message will be "to" the originator, and "cc"ed
:to the mailing list address.

There are really three cases one has to consider here:
	1.	The reader wants to [R]eply to the original sender of the
		message which should go to the From: or Reply-To: in the
		header.

	2.	The reader wants to post a response back to the entire
		mailing list.  IMHO this should be a bit more difficult
		than a simple reply if only to make people think before
		posting :-).  We handle this locally by putting an alias
		in like sco-list-post that points back to the list.

	3.	A mailer daemon needs to send Error messages.  In this
		case the message should return to the postmaster at the
		site exploding the mailing list, NOT THE ORIGINAL poster
		or the mailing list administrator if you're exploding a
		larger list distribution.  These people shouldn't have to
		worry about your local distribution problems.
		
		We use Chip Salzenberg's deliver program to handle local
		mailing list forwarding.  These two lines:
			cat $HEADER $BODY |
				/usr/lib/mail/deliver -r "sco-list-owner" camco1!wa-sco-list
		forward to our local distribution of the sco-list and the
		-r option changes the 'From<space>' header (first line of
		the header) to the alias sco-list-owner on camco1.  All
		local delivery is handled with deliver via the .forward
		file.  My .forward has one line:
			"|/usr/lib/mail/deliver bill"

:In mailx the "r" command defaults to the individual reply, and
:the "R" command defaults to the group reply; MH defaults to
:group reply, use "-nocc all" for an individual reply; Elm uses
:the "r" command for individual replies and the "g" command for
:group replies (I think).

How does scomail handle this?

:Changing the headers in the way you have proposed is generally
:considered anti-social.  One reason is that mailx doesn't
:understand reply-to headers, so it wouldn't work for those
:users, and another is that it becomes impossible to reply to
:just the originator of the message on systems that do honour
:the reply-to header.

Does anyone really use mailx?

Bill
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