GUMBY@mit-ai.arpa (David Vinayak Wallace) (11/18/86)
Date: Mon, 17 Nov 86 11:07:45 pst
From: Scott J. Kramer <sjk at grape.ads.arpa>
Speaking of mail replies, there's an annoyance related to using a
REPLY-TO field, which I currently use because the host I'm sending
from isn't recognized on the Internet.
When the recipient responds to a message with a REPLY-TO which also
has CC addresses, the CC's are omitted in the reply; only the REPLY-TO
address is used. RFC822 isn't specific about this; it just says "if
REPLY-TO exists, then the reply should go to the addresses indicated
in that field and not to the address(es) indicated in the FROM field."
I'm CC'ing Header-People on this since someone there may know of a way
to do what I'm trying to do (ie, have CC's get replies if I use
REPLY-TO). From what I can tell, the only way is to have a valid FROM
field.
Reply-To: means send replies to this address. If there's no Reply-to:
then your mail reader should compose a reply to the union of CC and
From. If you're sending from a host which for some reason won't
identify itself usefully, specify a From:. Hopefully your mailer will
set the Sender: field to be the invalid address, ut preserver the
From:.
In other words, gnu emacs is doing the right thing; you should use
From: where you now use Reply-to:.