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Archiver > Listowners > 2005-09 > 1125856339


From: "Darrell A. Martin" <>
Subject: Clarifying Re: [LO] Reply or Reply All?
Date: Sun, 04 Sep 2005 17:52:19 +0000
References: <00da01c5af73$4e870ae0$8c04fea9@RBerkheise><431AFF87.2050507@verizon.net><6.2.1.2.0.20050904142409.033827d8@pop.sprynet.com>
In-Reply-To: <6.2.1.2.0.20050904142409.033827d8@pop.sprynet.com>


At 02:36 PM 9/4/2005, Darrell A. Martin wrote:
> [and wrote badly while trying to get out the door on the way to church]
>3. The second thing that confuses people is that the action of "Reply All" is determined *solely* by the e-mail client of the person making the reply. For example, my Web based client, provided by Earthlink, insists on creating a "Reply To" in every sent message. I would use it more often if it weren't for that. Eudora, on the other hand, does not do any such terrible thing.

Hi, again:

The action of "Reply All" to a specific message is indeed "determined *solely* by the e-mail client of the person making the reply", but only in comparison to what another person's e-mail client might do with the same message. That doesn't communicate what I was trying to say. Let me try again.

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3. The second thing that confuses people is that "Reply All" in one e-mail client may act differently than another e-mail client, when dealing with the exact same list message. Each client has to decide whether to include addresses found in various message header lines. Normally the client will not look at "X-" lines; here are the other lines (with some added spacing), from my last message to the LO list, that contain addresses a client *might* pull in when "Reply All" is used:

Old-To:
From: "Darrell A. Martin" <>
To:
Resent-From:

That message was sent via Eudora, so a "Reply-To" was not sent to the list. Interestingly enough, in the list message that came back to me there is no "Reply-To" at all, and I expected one, set to the list address....

However, for a message sent to SECONDSITE-L from my Web client (which requires a "Reply-To" be sent [grumble]) the list message that came back to me also included the line:

Reply-To: Darrell Martin <>

SECONDSITE-L is set up to default replies to the list, like LO is. I believe every client I have encountered will include the address in "Reply-To" when "Reply All" is used. Anyway, you can see the potential for variations in behavior, especially since some clients are clumsy enough to duplicate an address in "To" if it finds it in more than one line that it checks.
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I apologize for the earlier confused message, and hope this sheds more light than heat.

Darrell


Darrell A. Martin - RootsWeb list admin
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