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

[Mihai Lazarescu]

On Tuesday, December 11, 2018 at 18:23:11 -0600, Derek Martin wrote:

> On Tue, Dec 11, 2018 at 09:51:08AM -0800, Kevin J. McCarthy wrote:
> > On Mon, Dec 10, 2018 at 05:29:01PM -0600, Derek Martin wrote:
> > >  [...]since these are normally secondary recipients of the reply.
> > >
> > >It recomments Mutt's current behavior, for precisely the reasons I
> > >gave in support of it.
> >
> > Okay, that's a good argument for keeping the default behavior as-is.
> >
> > But the "reason" supplied by the RFC, which I snipped to emphasize,
> > is a bit weak.
>
> I'm not sure why you think that.  You, just now, responded to
> something I said.  Without the thing I said you have no purpose in
> replying to the message.  Therefore principally, inherently, it is me
> that you are responding to... no one else said the thing you're
> responding to, only me.  I am the only principle recipient of your
> message.  Everyone else who is a recipient, inherently, you are just
> keeping in the loop, because they may be interested in your follow-up
> to my message.  That's exactly the stated purpose of the Cc: line.
> That is a fact, and it's a fact your mailer can easily deal with.

Both behaviours are useful, for distinct use cases.  An example:

1. Incoming: manager-to-team members, with team members in To: 
   + some recipients from aux services in Cc:.

   Replies from team members very likely should have only the 
   manager in To: and the rest in Cc:.

2. Incoming: manager-to-managers all at same level and all in 
   To: + some aux recipients in Cc: (e.g., secretaries)

   Replies from other managers should preserve the incoming 
   To:/Cc: distribution.

Technically, To: and Cc: deliver the message the same way. 
So the RFC could have discarded Cc: altogether.

However, Cc: is there exactly because of the carbon-copy era 
distinction between primary and secondary recipients, which 
matters in some use cases.

If and when the Cc:/To: distinction matters and how the 
recipients should be distributed between these fields is only 
environment- and user-specific.

The RFC or other static rules cannot determine it universally.

That's why the RFC and other MUAs allow both behaviours.

Mihai