Gnus and the Sender: field

[adb@bdi.com (Aaron D. Ball)]

I just read question 2.15 of the Gnus FAQ, and found myself rather
annoyed with the answer.  While I agree that address munging is a poor
idea, there are other reasons one might not want the Sender: field to
be present: for example, when one is writing in a role that has an
email address other than the one constructed from the host and
username one happens to be logged in to, as when I write a
work-related email from home or vice versa.

RFC 2822 says this:

   If the originator of the message can be indicated by a single
   mailbox and the author and transmitter are identical, the "Sender:"
   field SHOULD NOT be used.  Otherwise, both fields SHOULD appear.

It appears that Gnus is interpreting "the author and transmitter are
identical" to mean "the From: address coincides with
user-login-name@system-name".  I claim that it makes more sense to
interpret this as "the author and transmitter are the same person",
and that Gnus should respect the user's judgment as to what goes in
the Sender: header, since it doesn't know anything at all about
whether or two email addresses describe the same person.


I am subscribed to the list for the time being, so there is no need to
CC me on replies.  I will happily discuss the particular situations in
which this bothers me, but I didn't want to confuse the issue by
introducing them initially: to me, this is not about solving
particular problems, but rather about the basic requirement that Gnus
trust the user and do what he or she wants.