Re: Mutt group reply

[Rich Felker <dalias@libc.org>]

On Sun, Jul 13, 2014 at 11:51:44PM -0400, Rich Felker wrote:
> > >  Even better: configure Mutt to use Mail-Followup-To.
> > >  http://cr.yp.to/proto/replyto.html
> > > 
> > >  Mutt supports it, it just needs to be configured via an option. I can't
> > > remember the details because it's been a long time, but back when I was
> > > using Mutt, I did that for all the mailing-lists I was subscribed to, and
> > > it worked flawlessly.
> > 
> > This suggestion keeps coming up, but I think it's a solution to a
> > different problem.  The mailing list sets Reply-To to keep discussions
> > on the list regardless of what MUA people are using.  When the mailing
> > list is configured that way, Mutt exhibits the behavior with group
> > replies that I have mentioned, and the workaround is either to answer
> > "n" to the question or to set the reply_to option differently:
> > 
> >        reply_to
> >               Type: quadoption
> >               Default: ask-yes
> > 
> >               If  set, Mutt will ask you if you want to use the address listed
> >               in the Reply-To: header field when replying to  a  message.   If
> >               you answer no, it will use the address in the From: header field
> >               instead.  This option is useful for reading a mailing list  that
> >               sets the Reply-To: header field to the list address and you want
> >               to send a private message to the author of a message.
> 
> What's really needed is for mutt to have a second variable like
> reply_to but that's used for reply-to-all rather than plain reply. I
> think this is something we could propose upstream, and probably easy
> to patch in. Or maybe there's already a way to do it with hooks.

I found a new config that's working really well for this issue:

ignore_list_reply_to=yes
macro index r <list-reply><reply>

The ignore_list_reply_to=yes option fixes the breakage in 'g'
(omitting the sender of the message being replied to) but breaks 'r'.

The second line is a huge hack: it replaces the 'r' binding by a macro
which first performs list-reply (which errors out of the message being
replied to is not in a recognized list) and then performs reply (which
magically gets lost if the list-reply command path was already taken
successfully. So pressing 'r' on a mailing list message always replies
to the list, regardless of whether the list set a reply-to header
(this will save me from accidentally replying off-list on the busybox
list all the time) and pressing 'r' on a non-list message does an
ordinary reply.

Rich