At 5:58 PM 30/6/96, Richard Pieri wrote:
=>JD> field is the address of the person who wrote the message and sent it
>JD> to the list for remailing.
>
>Almost. From specifies who wrote the message, the originator. It may
>or may not be the agent responsible for actually submitting it to the
>MTA. When the agent responsible for doing so is *not* the originator,
>the Sender header is generated, and sending agent's mailbox is placed in
>this field.
It usually is, but doesn't have to be. Consider the actual text of
RFC 822:
4.4.1. FROM / RESENT-FROM
This field contains the identity of the person(s) who wished
this message to be sent. The message-creation process should
default this field to be a single, authenticated machine
address, indicating the AGENT (person, system or process)
entering the message. If this is not done, the "Sender" field
MUST be present. If the "From" field IS defaulted this way,
the "Sender" field is optional and is redundant with the
"From" field. In all cases, addresses in the "From" field
must be machine-usable (addr-specs) and may not contain named
lists (groups).
Note that the verb used is "wished", not "sent". RFC 822 makes provision
for someone other than the original author sending the message. This is
the case when a mailing list is used, such as Majordomo.
>And when the originator desired replies to go someplace other than
>himself, he generates a Reply-To header with the mailbox(es) of the
>appropriate recipient(s).
Or you can use a program to do so. This is anticipated by the RFC, as
shown below:
A
somewhat different use may be of some help to "text message
teleconferencing" groups equipped with automatic distribution
services: include the address of that service in the "Reply-
To" field of all messages submitted to the teleconference;
then participants can "reply" to conference submissions to
guarantee the correct distribution of any submission of their
own.
Your objection to the use of Reply-To is that certain mail-agents violate
RFC 822, sending error messages to the Reply-To address rather than
the From or Sender address. Why do you object to a program setting
Reply-To and not a human?
---
Stephen Graham
graham@ee.washington.edu
graham@cs.washington.edu
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