[H-GEN] software runs the world

Robert Brockway rbrockway at opentrend.net
Sat Mar 19 13:38:25 EST 2005


On Sat, 19 Mar 2005, Russell Stuart wrote:

> I did think about how I could re-write the reply to address
> with my existing sendmail / Red Hat setup, but I could not 
> think of way that only required the tiny amount of work 

Hi Stuart.  When this came up the first time (or maybe the 2nd time, it 
has come up so many times) I wrote a procmail receipes to write the 
reply-to for Humbug General and Humbug Chat:

# Add Reply-To to HUMBUG General list
:0 cfw
* ^X-BeenThere:.*general at lists.humbug.org.au.*
| formail -a "Reply-To: general at lists.humbug.org.au"

# Add Reply-To to HUMBUG Chat list
:0 cfw
* ^X-BeenThere:.*chat at lists.humbug.org.au.*
| formail -a "Reply-To: chat at lists.humbug.org.au"

I've been using this successfully for a couple of years.

Disclaimer: I do not provide any warranty with these receipes although 
they work for me.  Test all procmail rules before using in production as 
procmail is unforgiving of mistakes.

There is a receipe in the procmailex man page for backing up messages.  
One option is to subscribe a test account to one of the lists for a while 
and test procmail there.

> As for leaving it to list members to do the right thing, if
> I want them to reply to the list, it seems polite to make
> it easy for them to do so.  Besides, I happen to regard the
> not munging the reply to as harmful for the list - it 
> reduces traffic when people who are as forgetful as me 
> forget to change the "To:" address.  So relying on list 

Personally I think it is imperative that people examine where every email 
is going before sending.  I regularly see private emails going to lists.  

I consider this a basic email skill along with having an idea how to 
unsubscribe (or being prepared to look as far as the footer before 
asking).

A new tips section is going up on www.opentrend.net.  One of the first 
sections is "Email skills" and one of the first things being listed is 
"examination of the To and Cc fields before sending".

It's just a habit.  Once you get used to reviewing (or changing) those 
fields before sending it becomes 2nd nature.

> members to do the right thing doesn't always work.  As it 
> happens, you commented negatively at the start of this 
> thread on this being one of the bad things about mailing 
> lists - people replying to the wrong list.  Munging ReplyTo
> automatically would eliminate that.  It would only happen
> when someone deliberately wanted to cross post.

With respect, it seems to me that you are presuming that the approach that 
works for you should be imposed on all list users.  I propose that since 
the default is other than what you want, others must find an alternative 
desirable.

The current approach allows for the retention of the most state 
information since some people set the Reply-To themselves.  If we forcibly 
over-write it when an email passes through the list then information is 
lost (specifically, the original Replt-To setting).

You can munge your own Reply-To, and don't need the list managers to do 
it (as per my procmail receipes).

If you want help getting procmail setup, this list is a wealth of 
knowledge.

Cheers,
	Rob

-- 
Robert Brockway B.Sc.
Senior Technical Consultant, OpenTrend Solutions Ltd.
Phone: 416-669-3073 Email: rbrockway at opentrend.net http://www.opentrend.net
OpenTrend Solutions: Reliable, secure solutions to real world problems.
Contributing Member of Software in the Public Interest (http://www.spi-inc.org)




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