Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!hplabs!hplabsz!taylor
From: taylor@hplabsz.HP.COM (Dave Taylor)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.elm
Subject: Re: group reply includes sender
Message-ID: <2910@hplabsz.HPL.HP.COM>
Date: 14 Feb 89 08:34:26 GMT
References: <290@wubios.wustl.edu> <937@csd4.milw.wisc.edu> <4691@pbhyf.PacBell.COM>
Sender: taylor@hplabsz.HPL.HP.COM
Reply-To: taylor@hplabs.HP.COM (Dave Taylor)
Organization: Intuitive Systems; guest of Hewlett-Packard Laboratories
Lines: 43

Referencing a question about group reply including the recipient, Rob Bernardo
comments:

> Actually ELM is advertized as removing the user from the to  and cc lists
> of the original message when doing a group reply. I haven't investigated
> this bug,  but I suspect ELM might be having a hard time telling if
> an address is to the user or not - it would involve a great deal of parsing
> and understanding of all manner of address formats.

As a matter of fact it is quite a bit more simple than that; in the
users "elmrc" file there is a field called "alternatives" which is
intended to point to a list of strings that are of an almost arbitrary
format and are used for just this purpose; if an address in the list
built internally for a group reply completely contains one of the listed
alternatives for the user, then it is removed from the final list that
the message is sent to.

For example, I could have 

	alternatives = postmaster@digital

in my 'elmrc' file, in which case a message addressed to:

	From: Mike McGuire <mcguire@columbia.edu>
	To: postmaster@digital.dec.com, john@hiscomputer.domain
	Cc: taylor

would have a group reply list of:

	john@hiscomputer.domain, taylor, mcguire@columbia.edu

since it would recognize "postmaster@digital" as an alternative
for me.  (actually, I think it also recognizes by default the
trivla user@hostname and hostname!user pairs...)

			From the far corners of the earth,

				-- Dave Taylor

Intuitive Systems
Los Altos, CA

guest of HP Labs