On Fri, 2022-05-06 at 08:56 -0400, Adam Tauno Williams wrote:
On Thu, 2022-05-05 at 21:38 -0700, Ubuntu Shoto Dojo wrote:How can I receive from a group?SMTP has no concept of a group; the upshot is there is nothing in the message envelope [headers, etc...] which indicate a message was sent to a group. What "group" means is always an implementation detail of the client and/or server.
The mail standards are divided into the SMTP transport itself (RFC5321) and the 'Internet Message Format' standard (RFC5322). You are strictly correct the *SMTP* has no concept of a group. It's not mentioned in RFC5321 and not a concept which the underlying SMTP transport has. Note also, though, that message *headers* are not part of the SMTP envelope; those are part of the message format as described by RFC5322. They don't always match. When you receive this message it'll probably have 'evolution-list gnome org' in the cosmetic To: header that is part of the message itself, but in the copy that you receive from the mailing list software, the SMTP *envelope* will only be to you. So while you're right about SMTP itself, that's not the point; the message format as described in RFC5322 (and all the way back to RFC822) very much *does* have the concept of a group. See RFC5322 ยง3.4 at https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc5322#section-3.4 group = display-name ":" [group-list] ";" [CFWS] These are all valid To: headers with groups in them: To: Undisclosed recipients : ; To: Bob and Jane: bob example com, jane example com; To: Just Bob: "Bob Example" <bob example com>; You can see more examples at https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc5322#appendix-A.1.3 There's even RFC6854 which allows groups to be used in the From: and Sender: fields as well as the recipient fields: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc6854 So yes, if a mail user agent uses groups and puts them into the cosmetic To/Cc headers correctly, then a recipient *can* filter on the name of the group, e.g. "Bob and Jane" or "Just Bob" and do what it likes based on that information. That said, I don't think Evolution gets groups right at all. Last time I checked, it doesn't even let you explicitly type a standard RFC5322- compliant group into the To: or Cc: headers.
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