[Fsfe-uk] Reply-To, List-Id, RFCs, mail clients etc (was: QnetiQ study)

[MJ Ray]

On 2003-08-25 09:47:08 +0100 Tom Coady <address@hidden> 
wrote:
> [...] Perhaps MJR can fix this to reply to list by default, 
> assuming others consider this a good idea?

No, sorry.  The reasons are many and documented in many other places, 
including destruction of data and potential for harm to list members, 
but there is hope!  This list adds the RFC 2369 and 2919 List-* 
headers.  All good free software mail clients should offer "List 
reply" and other list handling commands, or you can use maildrop or 
similar to munge locally if you really want to.  If your mail client 
doesn't support mailing lists, then please do the world a favour and 
help them!

There's certainly work to be done.  Last I knew (May 2003), some 
common clients still had work to do:

* Mozilla has a bug open at 
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=29041

* KMail seems to have "Mailing list aware" folders, but you have to 
enable them and they don't use the List-* headers.

* Evolution has buggy support for lists (but should work with most 
mailman lists with the right settings).

* Balsa doesn't support lists and I don't think they want to fix it.  
Their FAQ reads like "the reply-to situation" is all the fault of bad 
list admins, instead of ignorant email client authors.

* GNUMail should have it in next version, but help testing is welcome 
(ask on gnumail-users).

* mutt currently has no support for List-* and I don't know if anyone 
is working on it.  You can enable a "list reply" command with 
appropriate config file settings for each list.

If you can update this list, please let me know.  I'm going to put it 
on a web site somewhere soon.

--
MJR/slef   My Opinion Only and possibly not of any group I know.
      http://mjr.towers.org.uk/   jabber://address@hidden
Creative copyleft computing services via http://www.ttllp.co.uk/