Re: Understanding response protocols

Hector Santos writes:
> I am seriously thinking of adding support for Mail-Followup-To:  if I
> can understand it better.

See http://cr.yp.to/proto/replyto.html.

The easy part is using Mail-Reply-To and Mail-Followup-To for incoming
messages. You don't need any changes to the normal two-button interface,
one button for quiet responses and one button for loud responses. You
simply have the buttons pay attention to some extra fields:

   Quiet responses, old behavior:
     Reply-To, or From if Reply-To isn't set
   Quiet responses, new behavior:
     Mail-Reply-To, or the old behavior if Mail-Followup-To isn't set
   Loud responses, old behavior:
     To, plus Cc, plus the quiet-response list
   Loud responses, new behavior:
     Mail-Followup-To, or the old behavior if Mail-Followup-To isn't set

The harder part is generating Mail-Followup-To for outgoing messages---
the expert user will want Mail-Followup-To automatically generated for
any message that include certain magical addresses in To+Cc. (Typically
the magical addresses are the mailing lists that the user has subscribed
to.) You need to let the user configure those addresses.

---D. J. Bernstein, Associate Professor, Department of Mathematics,
Statistics, and Computer Science, University of Illinois at Chicago