Subj : Newsgroup replies to a sp
To   : Tharius
From : Digital Man
Date : Tue Aug 30 2005 12:55 pm

  Re: Newsgroup replies to a sp
  By: Tharius to DOVE.Hardware/Software_He on Tue Aug 30 2005 02:52 am

 > Hi all,
 > 
 > I'm using Outlook Express to read my message areas and it's been working
 > well.
 > 
 > Someone gave me a slap on the wrist in Fido (not someone I'm worried about,
 > but they had a point) that my reader was posting replies to ALL instead of
 > the sender.
 > 
 > I explored my local groups and see that Outlook responds to messages in the
 > locals and in dovenet just fine, with the TO field being the person I'm
 > responding to, however, my fidonet echomail is responding to ALL
 > 
 > Is there perhaps a toggle I made when setting up the other areas that I
 > missed when I did a .na import?  Any suggestions are very welcome.

No, what you're experiencing is a shortcoming of the NNTP (network news
transfer protocol) article format (doesn't include a "to" field). The
Synchronet NNTP service will use a "to" field if present (or "X-comment-to" or
"apparently-to"), but Outlook Express doesn't add any of those header fields.

The reason your replies in DOVE-Net use the proper "To" person is the
in-reply-to message-ID is specified in the reply message from OE, so the
Synchronet NNTP service can (usually) find the message you're replying to and
automatically use the author's name as the "to" name automatically.

This feature *should* work in FidoNet message areas as well. What version (and
revision) of SBBSecho are you using? And what version of Synchronet? If you
want to investigate the cause more closely, you can view the message header
fields of the message you're replying to in Synchronet (via Telnet) using the
"O, H" command from the reading message prompt. And your reply message posted
in OE should have a "in-reply-to" header field which matches the original
messages "rfc822msgid" field.

                                                  digital man

Snapple "Real Fact" #37:
A snail breathes through it's foot.

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