[Mutt] Re: Group reply To-vs-Cc recipients

[Mihai Lazarescu]

On Tuesday, December 11, 2018 at 21:08:16 +0100, Mihai Lazarescu wrote:

> On Tue, Dec 11, 2018 at 12:29 AM Derek Martin <invalid at pizzashack.org> wrote:
> >
> > On Wed, Dec 05, 2018 at 05:31:28PM +1100, Erik Christiansen wrote:
> > > Thread comment: It's OK to be unaware of the usefulness of RFC features,
> > > but it does seem odd to pretend that they're not useful just because
> > > it's only others who need them.
> >
> > I'm not entirely sure what you mean by this, but for the sake of
> > clarity about RFC features, here's what RFC 2822 says on the matter
> > (3.6.3, paragraph 6):
> >
> >    When a message is a reply to another message, the mailboxes of the
> >    authors of the original message (the mailboxes in the "From:"
> >    field) or mailboxes specified in the "Reply-To:" field (if it
> >    exists) MAY appear in the "To:" field of the reply since these
> >    would normally be the primary recipients of the reply.  If a reply
> >    is sent to a message that has destination fields, it is often
> >    desirable to send a copy of the reply to all of the recipients of
> >    the message, in addition to the author.  When such a reply is
> >    formed, addresses in the "To:" and "Cc:" fields of the original
> >    message MAY appear in the "Cc:" field of the reply, since these are
> >    normally secondary recipients of the reply.
> >
> > It recomments Mutt's current behavior
>
> I disagree on "recommends".  Actually "may", as modal verb, is used to
> express *possibility* or used to ask or give *permission* (or is used
> to make a *suggestion* or suggest a *possibility* in a polite way):
> https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/may
>
> Either way, in the RFC it expresses an option, an acceptable alternate
> behavior to the (implicit, because it's obvious) behavior, which is to
> preserve the distinction between Cc: and To:. Distinction which, BTW,
> the same RFC states beyond doubt (see the relevant quote in my
> previous message in thread).

Seems like I'm talking to myself, :-) but I just 
learned that RFC 2119 (thanks Francesco for the pointer) 
https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2119.txt explains "Key words for 
use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels".  Specifically, 
RFC 2119 says the following about "MAY":

«5.  MAY This word, or the adjective "OPTIONAL", mean that an 
item is truly optional.  One vendor may choose to include the 
item because a particular marketplace requires it or because 
the vendor feels that it enhances the product while another 
vendor may omit the same item.»

So mutt implements as default and mandatory a "truly optional" 
alternate behavior allowed by RFC 2822.  And for sure the 
said behavior is not the "recommended" one, as implied in 
this thread.

Mihai