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

[Derek Martin]

On Tue, Dec 11, 2018 at 09:08:16PM +0100, Mihai T. Lazarescu wrote:
> > 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

Yes, I'm well aware of what the word "may" means, both in English and
in RFCs.  I've been doing this a very long time.  The choice of "MAY"
is essentially wrong... [Don't worry, I'll get to it...]

> Either way, in the RFC it expresses an option, an acceptable alternate
> behavior to the (implicit, because it's obvious) behavior

Obvious in the sense that it is the only possible alternative to a
group reply...  Removing the other recipients would be the other
alternative but then it wouldn't be a group reply.

It is a recommendation in that it points out the reason to do this is
that it matches the stated purpose of the To: and Cc: fields, which it
just explained 4 paragraphs ago.  Consider:

> >    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.  

Would you agree that no one disagrees with this?  Where else would you
put them?  Nothing else makes sense here.  So why is this "MAY" rather
than "SHOULD" or "MUST?"  The choice of "MAY" here is, sadly,
logically inconsistent.  And while it is technically possible for a
message to have more than one author, in general there is only ever
one From: address and on replies it is always placed on the To: line
by every mailer ever.  Likewise:

> >    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.

OK, so the author JUST TOLD YOU that 1. Cc: is for secondary
recipients, and 2. on a reply, the other recipients in the To: and Cc:
fields are secondary recipients.  It follows logically that therefore,
you SHOULD (in both the English sense and the RFC sense) put the other
recipients in the Cc: line.  This is basic logic.

So again, why is this "MAY" and not "SHOULD" or "MUST?"  Mostly, I
think, because it's known that some other mailers don't follow this,
and the RFC author didn't want to effectively retroactively declare
them to be out of spec.  But given the author's reasoning, the choice
of "MAY" is again logically inconsistent.  By choosing "MAY" it's not
*technically* a recommendation, but in name only, since it just told
you that exactly that is how the fields are meant to be used.  

Basically, "MAY" here is an unfortunate mistake--But the RFC contains
more words than just "MAY" or "SHOULD", and you mustn't pay attention
only to that, ignoring everything else it says.  The context matters,
and the rest of the context is clearly a recommendation for that
behavior.

-- 
Derek D. Martin    http://www.pizzashack.org/   GPG Key ID: 0xDFBEAD02
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