[Zope] Mail, reply-to, & Zope (an attempt at topicality)

Bill Anderson bill@libc.org
Thu, 02 Mar 2000 02:22:02 -0700


Glyph Lefkowitz wrote:
...
> The first thing to consider is that RFC 822, the document which defines
> the standards and usages for email, specifically mentions this usage in
> section 4.4.3:
> 
>  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.
> 
> It's not "against" the standard.  It may be a quirk of the
> standard.  Detractors, please familiarize yourselves before FUDding.

<nitpick> adding to != changing </nitpick>
;)
...

> 4) "It removes useful information."
> 
> If you're using the 'reply-to' header rather than your 'from' header to
> encode the address you want responses sent to, I know this is within the
> standard, but you're wasting my bandwidth and my time.  I don't need to
> know both what machine you sent from and what machine you want me to reply
> to.  Just put your own address in the 'from' header.  (This is what most
> people do anyway.  I don't know anyone that works otherwise.)

In addition to the valid uses posted otherwise ...

Real life example:
 At work, I am within a corporate firewall. On my unixen, my email
address is local to the machine, ie. bill@somehostname.bigcorp.com. If
you reply to that, you will be wasting your time and badwidth, since you
_can't_ access it from outside the firewall. Thus, I (in this example)
add a reply-to that has a _useable_ email address, ie. one avaiable to
you, form outside the firewall. I personally know of several hundred
people who do this, and several thousand who _should_ be. And before you
say it, no, not every mailer lets you set the 'from' header.


The point? Now you know someone who uses it. ;^)

How can this be on topic, you ask? Read on. :)

I've notice a certain increase in the amount of 'sending mass email with
zope' messages lately, and not many solutions.

Since I don't zope on windows, one method I have used when wanting to
avoid the sendmail tag (I _was_ having problems with the friggin thing
not working), was to shell out and call mail (or mailx, depending on
your *nix) to send each message. Problem was, when doing that, the
'from' address was 'nobody@foo.bar.com'. Since I wanted replies, I had
to add the reply-to to get a response that was useful.

(Hey, I din't say it was a strong effort to bring it back on topic for
the list :)
Perhaps those wanting to send out mass emails *cough*spam*cough* with
zope, and not finding answers from within Zope and the sendlmail tag
(yeah, I still look at that puppy with suspicion and a sneer :) may see
this as an option

 


-- 
In flying I have learned that carelessness and overconfidence are 
usually far more dangerous than deliberately accepted risks. 
          -- Wilbur Wright in a letter to his father, September 1900