Re: Change in rmail-reply

[Chetan Pandya]

Jason Rumney <address@hidden> wrote:


> Chetan Pandya wrote:

>> One thing I don't like about this command is the potential for misuse - 
>> unless this is one of the intended uses.
>> The problem is that the recipient of the message may have no idea that the 
>> message is not really received from what it claims to be, if the recipient 
>> MUA does not look at the resend headers.  This might look like deception. 
>> Granted it is already possible to do it by other means, but the question is 
>> whether it should be made easier to do so.
>>  

>If the intention is to deceive, then it is trivially easy to forge email 
>headers, especially in an environment as configurable as Emacs. The resend 
>command is very useful to a small minority of users who deal with mailing list 
>moderation or catch-all mailboxes and want to forward mail in a way that keeps 
>the original headers intact. The feature is provided by other mail clients, 
>either as standard or as an optional extension, so its inclusion in rmail is 
>not unique.

The usefulness in some situations is not disputed.  However, the fact still 
remains that as it is, it has a limited usefulness for ordinary users. Like 
other commands that may be confusing to users, it could be disabled by default, 
unless explicitly enabled by the user. Within emacs itself, mh-e also seems to 
provide the feature, so it certainly isn't unique. Irrespective of what is done 
on the send side, it might make sense to show resent-from, especially if it is 
different from from field. Similar situation exists wrt "sender:", but in that 
case it is not conditional. Of course, it could be argued that it is 
configurable, but the default configuration should be not be a cause for 
confusion to users who may not be familiar with all the issues, IMO.

Chetan