From: Curtis Jewell (csjc05@mizzou.edu)
Date: Tue Sep 26 2000 - 22:59:24 CDT
----- Original Message -----
From: "Charles Lindsey" <chl@clw.cs.man.ac.uk>
To: <usenet-format@rkive.landfield.com>
Sent: Tuesday, September 26, 2000 15:45
Subject: Mail-Copies-To.00
> 6. Optional Headers
>
> 6.1. Mail-Copies-To
>
> The Mail-Copies-To header indicates whether or not followups to the
> article should be emailed to the poster in addition to being posted
> to Netnews and, if so, may provide an address to which they should be
> sent. The content syntax makes use of syntax defined in [MESSFOR],
> but subject to the revised definition of local-part given in section
> 5.2.
>
> Mail-Copies-To-content = copy-addr / "nobody" / "poster"
> copy-addr = mailbox
> [<mailbox> allows only a single address. I might alternatively have said
> <From-content> allowing several. Note that the default is in any case
> Reply-To, which in general allows several. John Moreno provided the
> following rationale for this:
> The reasons for allowing an address are to allow the poster to specify a
> special address as a destination for copies of posted replies and to
> allow people posting with an invalid address to specify a valid address
> to which to send a Cc. Only one address is allowed, so as to limit the
> potential for abuse.
> I am not totally convinced, especially about the "abuse" bit.]
Neither am I.
>
> NOTE: Some existing practice uses the keyword "never" in place
> of "nobody" and "always" in place of "poster". These usages are
> deprecated. Posting agents MUST NOT generate them, but followup
> agents SHOULD observe them.
> [I stuck my neck out a bit there, by leaving them entirely out of the
> syntax. Is that agreeable?]
yes.
> A followup agent MUST NOT (unless its user explicitly overrides it)
> email a copy of the followup article to the author of the original
> article if the Mail-Copies-To header contains the "nobody" keyword.
> If the user explicitly overrides this provision, the followup agent
> MUST/SHOULD/Ought to issue a warning to the user and ask for
> confirmation.
> [MUST/SHOULD/Ought? This hardly causes interoperability problems.
> Perhaps that sentence is not needed at all. Opinions?]
It is needed, and I'd say it should be a MUST.
> A followup agent SHOULD (unless its user explicitly overrides it)
> email a copy of the followup article to the author of the original
> article if the Mail-Copies-To header contains a copy-addr or the
> "poster" keyword. The copy MUST be sent to the address in the copy-
> addr, and in the absence of that to the address(es) in the Reply-To
> header, and in the absence of that to the address(es) in the From
> header. The followup agent SHOULD also include a "Posted-And
> Mailed: yes" header ().
> [There is a suggestion that it should be allowed to include a Posted-
> And-Mailed in the body instead of that header. But I do not like
> specifying what body content should contain, and how would I interpret
> such a possibility if the body were a Mime multipart?]
You specify that the particular body content is in the first text/plain part
that the user is expected to read.
>
> If this header is absent, a followup agent MUST NOT automatically
> email a copy of the followup article, but the user MAY do so at his
> discretion.
>
>
> NOTE: This header is only relevant for posted followups to
> Netnews articles, and is to be ignored when sending pure email
> replies to the author, which are handled as prescribed under the
> Reply-To header (6.1). Whether or not this header will also
> find similar usage for replies to messages sent to mailing lists
> is not defined by this standard.
>
> 6.2. Posted-And-Mailed
>
> Posted-And-Mailed-content = "yes" / "no"
>
> This header, when used with the "yes" keyword, is used to indicate
> that the article has been both posted to the specified newgroups and
> emailed, either to the author of the article to which this is a
> followup (see the Mail-Copies-To header in section) or to the
> recipient(s) identified in any To and/or Cc header that may be
> present. The "no" keyword is included for the sake of completeness;
> it MAY be used to indicate the opposite state, but is redundant
> insofar as it only describes the default state when this header is
> absent.
>
> This header, if present, MUST be included in both the posted and
> emailed versions of the article. The Newsgroups header of the posted
> article MAY be included in the email version as provided for in
> section 5.5.
> [Well, do we want this header, or not?]
Yes.
>
>
> [MESSFOR] P. Resnick, "Internet Message Format Standard", draft-
> ietf-drums-msg-fmt-07.txt, March 1998.
--
Curtis Jewell http://www.geocities.com/curtis_whalen/ csjc05@mizzou.edu
http://new-york.utica.mission.net/ cjewell@mission.net
No matter where we fall or where we land | curtis@mlug.missouri.edu
I believe we're part of a master plan (from "Wonderland" on the Ptm2K OMPS)