Replying to Sender or (gasp) Return-path

Thread View: comp.mail.headers

1 messages

[T] Back to Threads [V] Tree View [G] Group Articles

1 total messages Started by David Vinayak Wallace Tue, 18 Nov 1986 05:30

#300

Author: David Vinayak Wallace
Date: Tue, 18 Nov 1986 05:30

22 lines
1650 bytes

    Date: Mon, 17 Nov 86 19:48:06 -0800
    From: Marshall Rose <mrose at nrtc-gremlin.arpa>

    there is a difference between working correctly and working.  Working
    correctly is to ignore sender and return-path.  However this is not
    often working...there is neither perfection nor diligence in the
    Internet.  It is better to know that you can fall back on sender
    and/or return path in case you have to (when working on a poorly
    constructed message), than to just say "you can't reply to that".

There's a difference between DWIM and incorrectness.  Your mail handler
may reasonably complain "I can't reply to that" and ask the human for
help; it can't reasonably figure out which of From, Sender or Return-Path
might interest the user (for instance, if I want to send a message to
someone who will fix it up I might send a message to the Return-Path,
whereas in a legitimate reply I might be able to construct a valid
destination address).

For purposes of replying there isn't much difference between Return-Path,
Sender, and Subject.  They all have inappropriate semantics.  The machine
shouldn't fake out naive users by using random information.

Thread Navigation

This is a paginated view of messages in the thread with full content displayed inline.

Messages are displayed in chronological order, with the original post highlighted in green.

Use pagination controls to navigate through all messages in large threads.

Back to All Threads