rmail-dont-reply-to false positives (was: Reply to Gmane articles [...])

rmail-dont-reply-to false positives (was: Reply to Gmane articles [...])

[Reiner Steib]

On Wed, Mar 05 2008, Daiki Ueno wrote:

>>>>>> In <871w6rowv2.fsf_-_@broken.deisui.org> 
>>>>>>	Daiki Ueno <ueno@unixuser.org> wrote:
>> I usually type `S W' in the summary buffer but it doesn't pick the
>> address from "To: info-gnus-english@gnu.org".  IIRC this happens on
>> Gmane groups only.  Am I missing something?
>
> I tracked this and found the solution: to remove "\\`info-" from
> rmail-dont-reply-to-names fixed the problem.

[I guess you mean `rmail-default-dont-reply-to-names'?]

According to Eli, ``the intent was to remove the "info-*" mailing
lists, which are essentially read-only (you are sent information, but
are not supposed to reply), [...]''. [1], [2]

I think, the default of `rmail-default-dont-reply-to-names' should be
changed to nil.  The current default "\\`info-" (changed from "info"
after [1]?) still leads to unexpected behavior.  As does the
`user-login-name' magic [3].  In contrast to Daiki, an ordinary user
probably won't find out why info-gnus-english is stripped.

Or/and Gnus should bind `rmail-default-dont-reply-to-names' to nil
when calling the function `rmail-dont-reply-to-names' if
`rmail-default-dont-reply-to-names' equals "\\`info-".

,----[ *ielm* ]
| ELISP> (let ((rmail-dont-reply-to-names nil)
| 	     (recipients "info-gnus-english@gnu.org, foo, bar"))
| 	 (rmail-dont-reply-to recipients))
| "foo, bar"
| ELISP> (let ((rmail-default-dont-reply-to-names nil)
| 	     (recipients "info-gnus-english@gnu.org, foo, bar"))
| 	 (rmail-dont-reply-to recipients))
| "info-gnus-english@gnu.org, foo, bar"
`----

While at it, maybe we should introduce `mail-dont-reply-to' (w/o the
info- and user-login-name magic), cf. `mail-utils.el':

;;; The following piece of ugliness is legacy code.  The name was an
;;; unfortunate choice --- a flagrant violation of the Emacs Lisp
;;; coding conventions.  `mail-dont-reply-to' would have been
;;; infinitely better.  Also, `rmail-dont-reply-to-names' might have
;;; been better named `mail-dont-reply-to-names' and sourced from this
;;; file instead of in rmail.el.  Yuck.  -pmr

Bye, Reiner.

[1] http://article.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.gnus.user/3062

[2]
,----[ (info "(gnus)Summary Mail Commands") ]
|    You can exclude certain recipients from being placed automatically in
| the `CC', using the variable `rmail-dont-reply-to-names'.  Its value
| should be a regular expression (as a string); any recipient that the
| regular expression matches, is excluded from the `CC' field.  The
| default value matches your own name, and any name starting with
| `info-'.  (Those names are excluded because there is a convention of
| using them for large mailing lists to broadcast announcements.)
`----

[3]
,----[ *ielm* ]
| ELISP> (let ((user-mail-address nil)
| 	     (user-login-name "ding")
| 	     (rmail-dont-reply-to-names nil)
| 	     (recipients "info-gnus-english@gnu.org, ding@gnus.org"))
| 	 (rmail-dont-reply-to recipients))
| ""
`----
-- 
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      (o o)
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