--- Which FROM prevails ? / Eugenio Gatto. - Torino, 1995-02-11
 
--> Eleftheria Maratos-Flier & LSTOWN-L
 
"... using the forward option ... the note is always posted as
originating from my account. This morning the note was posted as
originating from the account of the person I was replying to. Also the
from line in my in box (VMS system) listed the other person rather than
me as the sender." [EMF, 1995-01-29, reproposed 1995-02-09]
 
"... not infrequently when the reply or forward function by user B to
reply to a message sent by user A the message is transmitted as if it
were sent out by user A." [EMF, 1995-02-03]
 
I think you are stating the same thing in slightly different terms, and
I am not sure that all the subscribers to your list see it the same way:
probably it dipends more on your/their mail package, than on ListServ.
 
What shows up in a short display as mail origin is choosen by your
system, and sometimes you can reconfigure it: in VMS MAIL (many flavours
exist, my one uses PMDF) it is the first found among Resent-Reply-To,
Resent-From, Reply-To, From, Resent-Sender, Sender, envelope return
address. So the final result may be quite different, because REPLY and
FORWARD differently build the "Resent" fields.
 
Since you are the editor, what command do you use for "forwarding" to
the list ? The only one that behaves correctly in my situation is
REDISTRIBUTE (otherwise the message appears in the list as coming from
me instead of the original author, which I don't like: the opposite of
your choice).
 
HEALTHRE has REPLY-TO=LIST,RESPECT: so, if the original message headers
contain a REPLY-TO field, ListServ RESPECTs it, and doesn't force the
"Reply-To: Health ... List <[log in to unmask]>" showed in your first
example. But I don't think that the more general behaviour you describe
with the second question ("B" seen as "A") dipends dramatically on this:
I have seen very few users able to exercise conscious control on their
REPLY-TO field (so for our list I preferred LIST,IGNORE).
 
What I lack is a clear statement of ListServ behaviour: which headers
are kept, and preferred choices where multiple sources provide relevant
data. Of course, different things happen for different headers settings
(SHORT FULL IETF ...); and when a message is archived, only a small
subset of headers is selected.
 
Can anybody help me in finding the right source ? (I have already
searched and scanned many lines of LST*-L archives).
 
<-- Eugenio Gatto    (CIDEM, Politecnico di Torino, Italia)
                     (list owner [log in to unmask])
    TEL 39.11.564'6600 FACS 39.11.564'6609 EM [log in to unmask]