Please note that I have actually changed my mind on the role
that the Mail-Followup-To hearder plays in this
world.
It is not a standard, and some people argue against it for
good reasons (see an example of arguments against Mail-Followup-To). Until
there actually is an RFC solving the problems
Mail-Followup-To is trying to address, or a group
of people working on it and making it fit in the rest of the
electronic mail scenary (RFC 2822 and
friends), I am
forced to see this header as a hack that can potentially do
more harm than good.
I am leaving this page here because I think that it is useful documentation, but I am now setting:
set followup_to=no set honor_followup_to=no
I will be happy to be pointed to a place where such discussions happen.
If you are in a hurry and want to see quickly what to put in your .muttrc, go the example configuration.
I am getting tired of receiving emails twice when somebody replies to an email I sent to a mailing list (one copy for me, another one to a mailing list).
As I explained in my email guidelines, people should preferably write to a mailing list unless they really want to draw sombody's attention, in which case they can copy this person.
Most mail user agents do not know how to deal with mailing lists. Fortunately, Mutt does.
I want to summarize here how to configure Mutt to be able to send email to mailing lists in an efficient way. If you want more information about mailing list capabilities in Mutt, please have a look at the configuration and advanced usage information in the Mutt manual.
I am talking here about mailing list support in Mutt version 1.2.4.
Mutt recognizes mailing lists in two ways:
subscribe and listsYou should tell Mutt about mailing lists you use:
subscribe: you are subscribed to a mailing list.
For example, if you subscribed to coolstuff@lists.example.com, add to your configuration:
subscribe coolstuff@lists.example.com
lists: it is a list but you are not subscribed
too.
If you occasionnaly send email to bugs@lists.example.com but do not receive it, you want to put in your configuration:
lists bugs@lists.example.com
This allows you to use the list-reply function ('L'
key) to reply to a mailing list.
Please see my comment about this hearder.
To tell people how to reply to an email you send to those mailing lists, you must use a Mail-Followup-To header. In order to do that, put in your configuration:
set followup_to
This will have the following effect:
emails sent to mailing lists you subscribed to will be answered in the
mailing list (specified with subscribe) and not to you. With our
previous example, the following header will be used:
Mail-Followup-To: coolstuff@lists.example.com
emails sent to other mailing lists (specified with
lists) will be answered to the list and to you. Our
example would give:
Mail-Followup-To: bugs@lists.example.com, your.address@your.domain.example.org
the Reply-To field can be used if people want to reply to you directly, keeping in mind that some mail user-agents force the user to reply to the address specified in the Reply-To field...
You must also tell Mutt that it should not ignore the Mail-Followup-To header. This is done with:
set honor_followup_to=yes
That way, group-replys and list-replys
will use the information in the Mail-Followup-To field.
For example, doing a group-reply to an email sent by
user1@example.org to bugs@lists.example.com and
user2@example.org with the following headers:
From: user1@example.org To: bugs@lists.example.com, user2@example.org Mail-Followup-To: bugs@lists.example.com, user2@example.org
will send your mail to bugs@lists.example.com, user2@example.org as specified by Mail-Followup-To, but not to user1@example.org. The Mail-Followup-To field set will include your address since you are not subscribed to that list:
From: your.address@your.domain.example.org To: bugs@lists.example.com, user2@example.org Mail-Followup-To: bugs@lists.example.com, user2@example.org, your.address@your.domain.example.org
If the same email had been sent to coolstuff@lists.example.com to which you subscribed:
From: user1@example.org To: coolstuff@lists.example.com, user2@example.org Mail-Followup-To: coolstuff@lists.example.com, user2@example.org
your reply would have been:
From: your.address@your.domain.example.org To: coolstuff@lists.example.com, user2@example.org Mail-Followup-To: coolstuff@lists.example.com, user2@example.org
in order to tell people not to copy you if they want to reply to the list.
The summary of the configuration in this example is:
# I subscribed to coolstuff@lists.example.com subscribe coolstuff@lists.example.com # I know that bugs@lists.example.com is a list, but I didn't subscribe to it lists bugs@lists.example.com # Please see my comment at the top of this page about this set followup_to set honor_followup_to=yes
You should really consider configuring Mutt like that in order to make everybody's life easier.