Re: mutt/2304: reply / group reply behavior broken WRT $reply_to and $reply_self
The following reply was made to PR mutt/2304; it has been noted by GNATS.
From: Derek Martin <ddm@xxxxxxxxxx>
To: bug-any@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Cc:
Subject: Re: mutt/2304: reply / group reply behavior broken WRT $reply_to and
$reply_self
Date: Sat, 24 Jun 2006 11:36:57 -0400
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Allow me to clarify my previous response:
On Fri, Jun 23, 2006 at 05:45:02PM +0200, Thomas Roessler wrote:
> > The essential problem is that when $reply_to is set (and
> > there is a Reply-to header), but $reply_self is unset, Mutt
> > does the wrong thing. It ignores the Reply-to header
> > completely, whether the user is REPLYing or GROUPREPLYing.
> > This apparently is true of all versions of Mutt including
> > and prior to the current CVS.
>
> Maybe I'm thinking about this the wrong way, but the behavior
> that you describe sounds logical to me: If I send a mail, and
> set a reply_to header, then that is an alternative address for
> myself.
No it isn't... at least not necessarily. It is only the address where
you want replies to go. In addition to the other examples I gave,
there is the very common example of mailing lists. People who use
mailing lists often set the Reply-to header to the mailing list they
are reading. If they reply to their own message, clearly they want
the reply to go to the list; not to the recipient list.
Another valid use is if you are sending mail to business associates
shorly before you leave your current position.
> So, if $reply_self is unset, mutt should ignore it.
Hopefully it's clear that this is not the case. Moreover, if
$reply-self IS set, mutt STILL ignores the Reply-to header. You have
no way to tell mutt that you want to honor the sender's wishes (that
is, your own wishes) and use the Reply-to header.
> Mutt's current behavior lets me write a follow-up message to
> the same recipients that the original had. That's a feature to
> me.
But this is exactly what you get if you unset $reply_to. In this
case, you get the same behavior regardless of how it's set, and you
have no way to tell mutt that you actually want to reply to the
reply-to header, as the sender (yourself, for cripes sake) intended in
the first place. Also if that weren't enough, with my patch, if you
do a Group-reply and $reply_self is unset, it will reply to the
original recipients plus the reply-to header, and if $reply_self is
set it will reply to the original recipients, the address list in the
Reply-to header, and your own address in the From header. With the
patch, there are still many ways to get what you are describing...
Without the patch, there is NO way to make mutt honor the Reply-to
header if you are replying to yourself.
The documentation for $reply_to doesn't say, "If set, mutt honors the
Reply-to header, unless you are replying to yourself, in which case it
replies to the From address for Reply, and the entire recipient list
for Reply-All." Nor should it. This behavior doesn't make any sense,
since that is exactly the behavior you would get if $reply_to were
unset.
My patch corrects these cases, and leaves the rest intact.
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