On Fri, 17 Jan 2003 07:25:23 EST, Wayne Smith <[log in to unmask]> said: > I think your client has overloaded the concept of "cc:" and expects > LISTSERV to bail him out. I don't like any of the suggested changes to > LISTSERV (a step backward they would be). Not at all true. The client is well within its expectations of how mail headers should behave. RFC2822 (quoted below) is pretty clear on several things: A) CC: addresses are to be preserved. B) BCC: addresses may or may not be preserved C) In the absense of a Reply-To:, the CC and/or BCC fields may be used as the source of destination addresses for a 'reply all' function. Listserv is treating CC: addresses in the way that the standard says bcc: should be treated. It's Just Plain Wrong. /Valdis 3.6.3. Destination address fields The destination fields of a message consist of three possible fields, each of the same form: The field name, which is either "To", "Cc", or "Bcc", followed by a comma-separated list of one or more addresses (either mailbox or group syntax). to = "To:" address-list CRLF cc = "Cc:" address-list CRLF bcc = "Bcc:" (address-list / [CFWS]) CRLF The destination fields specify the recipients of the message. Each destination field may have one or more addresses, and each of the addresses indicate the intended recipients of the message. The only difference between the three fields is how each is used. The "To:" field contains the address(es) of the primary recipient(s) of the message. The "Cc:" field (where the "Cc" means "Carbon Copy" in the sense of making a copy on a typewriter using carbon paper) contains the addresses of others who are to receive the message, though the content of the message may not be directed at them. The "Bcc:" field (where the "Bcc" means "Blind Carbon Copy") contains addresses of recipients of the message whose addresses are not to be revealed to other recipients of the message. There are three ways in which the "Bcc:" field is used. In the first case, when a message containing a "Bcc:" field is prepared to be sent, the "Bcc:" line is removed even though all of the recipients (including those specified in the "Bcc:" field) are sent a copy of the message. In the second case, recipients specified in the "To:" and "Cc:" lines each are sent a copy of the message with the "Bcc:" line removed as above, but the recipients on the "Bcc:" line get a separate copy of the message containing a "Bcc:" line. (When there are multiple recipient addresses in the "Bcc:" field, some implementations actually send a separate copy of the message to each recipient with a "Bcc:" containing only the address of that particular recipient.) Finally, since a "Bcc:" field may contain no addresses, a "Bcc:" field can be sent without any addresses indicating to the recipients that blind copies were sent to someone. Which method to use with "Bcc:" fields is implementation dependent, but refer to the "Security Considerations" section of this document for a discussion of each. 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. If a "Bcc:" field is present in the original message, addresses in that field MAY appear in the "Bcc:" field of the reply, but SHOULD NOT appear in the "To:" or "Cc:" fields. Note: Some mail applications have automatic reply commands that include the destination addresses of the original message in the destination addresses of the reply. How those reply commands behave is implementation dependent and is beyond the scope of this document. In particular, whether or not to include the original destination addresses when the original message had a "Reply-To:" field is not addressed here.