On Thu, Jun 22, 2006 at 04:04:40PM -0500, Seth Goodman wrote: > So getting back to the topic of this thread, insisting that "all > competent mailers" have a 'Reply to List' function, when none of the > most common mailers for people trapped in the most widely used operating > system have the required feature, is not really helpful to them.
For those with this concern, without considering the other points: Mutt is arguably the most competent mailer in existence (or at least one of them) and does have a "Reply to List" function. It runs on Windows, Linux, and virtually every other major platform in existence. It is probably the most configurable and most powerful MUA in existence today, making easy many things which should be and making possible many things which are hard or impossible using other clients. It's a good choice for anyone who is on a mailing list (or 12), or has a job or hobby that requires a lot of mail processing. It is non-graphical, so it may have certain mild deficiencies related to that, but nicely handles configuration of helper applications for MIME types to compensate. That said... > We seem to be saying, in effect, "if you aren't smart enough to > already use Linux and have a competent MUA, get off this list". > That is hardly welcoming to those who are curious. Indeed! While I happen to agree with the sentiment that ideally everyone should use list reply, not everyone knows that such options exist; and even if they do, not everyone has control over what mail client they use. The choice may be rammed down your throat by your corporate IT department, and often is. Also people who are on mailing lists who do have such powerful tools (and complain that everyone else should too) should also know that there are methods available to them of dealing with mail from people who aren't completely clued in. There's no harm in politely pointing out to people that there's a better way... but you should still be prepared to deal with the problem yourself. > The fact remains that most people who read their mail on Windows > workstations, as I do, _don't_ have a 'Reply to List' button. There are > a lot more of them than 'nix systems. In many cases, lack of education is the issue. Such mailers exist for Windows. You just have to know that, care, and get one. But unfortunately, there is no law requiring that anyone do any of those three things... ;-) > If you'd like to see that change, as I would, perhaps we could be a > little more accommodating and take the operation of their MUA's into > account when deciding how this list operates. We are just doing > M$'s bidding when we make this mailing list cumbersome for Windows > MUA's. This may be a club, but let's not make it an exclusive one. I missed the earlier part of the thread, so I'm not sure what point is being advocated here. I will say that header munging is often requested to combat such problems. The trouble is that header munging often makes otherwise sane mail clients behave insanely (i.e. making it difficult to reply to certain recipients when otherwise it would be easy to select whether to reply to the sender, or to the list, or to everyone in the recipient list; all of which are sometimes called for). The onus should be on the people who choose to run deficient mail clients (even if only by choosing to work at a place that makes the decision for them). They should be the ones who need to correct their recipients if their mailer can't do a good job of doing it for them. -- Derek D. Martin http://www.pizzashack.org/ GPG Key ID: 0x81CFE75D
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