[ On Friday, August 11, 2000 at 16:15:40 (+0100), Philip Hazel wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: [Exim] Should vacation messages go to reply_address or return_path?
>
> On Fri, 11 Aug 2000, Dave C. wrote:
>
> > Uhm.. $sender_address is what you want to use. I'm not even sure if
> > $return_path is a valid expansion.. $header-return_path: might be, if
> > that header was defined, but the 'canonical' value to use should always
> > be in $sender_address.
>
> Hmm. Then why did I implement "mail" and "vacation" to default to
> $reply_address? I can't remember, but I suspect I did it because this
> seems to me to be the right one to send vacation messages to. It's the
> address that is expecting replies to the message - and "vacation" is
> saying "there won't be a reply for a while".
If you want to send a *reply* (as opposed to a bounce) then indeed
you do want to send to the $reply_address, as per RFC 822.
I've always considered vacation messages to be replies, not bounces, and
indeed since the "out-of-office" reply is a really a status message to
set expectations about a more specific reply it *MUST* be sent to the
same address(es) which would be expecting a real reply.
That is to say a "vacation" program is really just an automated user
agent, not a transport, and it should be replying to the message, on the
user's behalf, to indicate the status of a more detailed real reply.
An out-of-office reply sent to the $sender_address may not reach the
people expecting a reply, particularly in this day and age where people
often use outgoing mail relays (eg. their dial-up ISP account, or some
web based mailer) that are not associated directly with their own
domains.
The tricky part is in dealing with mailing lists where the rules,
especially if you only read RFC 822, are somewhat more difficult to get
a good understanding of (for example I *want* replies to this message to
go only to the list, since I don't want duplicates, and thus I
explicitly set the Reply-To: header). Fortunately there are other de
facto standard ways to recognise mail from mailing lists (eg. the
precedence header, though some badly broken MLMs, such as L-soft's
LISTSERV, won't even allow such headers to be added to outgoing
messages!) and to abort a reply. Only replying to mail that's been
explicitly addressed in the visible "To:" or "Cc:" to the mailbox being
acted upon (which is what I understand "if personal" means) is also
highly desirable.
In fact I've re-written the *BSD vacation program to be RFC 822
compliant (including proper hanling of RFC 822 header lines) and a
beta-quality version is available here:
ftp://ftp.weird.com/pub/local/vacation.shar
(Note that I'm not sure this program properly does the equivalent of "if
personal" yet, so be sure to test it for yourself before turning it
loose on real mailboxes!)
--
Greg A. Woods
+1 416 218-0098 VE3TCP <gwoods@???> <robohack!woods>
Planix, Inc. <woods@???>; Secrets of the Weird <woods@???>
