Re: Change in rmail-reply

[Chetan Pandya <pandyacus@sbcglobal.net>]

Jason Rumney <jasonr@gnu.org> 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