Subject: Confirmation of mail received (fwd)

From: Ian Lumb <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 28 Mar 1993 11:16:13 -0500

One of our local users has an interesting question: 

   ? Is there any way that one can confirm that a * specific * message 
   ? sent to someone on [our local host] was received/read?

I should add as background, that this particular user is a regular VAX VMS
user, who is accustomed to such a feature available on this other
platform. 

Perhaps the solution would involve some combination of pine's features and
those of finger. Perhaps there already exists such a feature in finger? 

Any thoughts?

Ian.

--
Ian Lumb     Internet: <[email-masked]>
Earth & Atmospheric Science, York University
North York, Ontario  M3J 1P3,  CANADA
Voice: (416) 736-5245; Fax: (416) 736-5817

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From: Laurence Lundblade <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 28 Mar 1993 15:34:59 -0500 (EST)

Hello Ian,

The short answer is that Internet e-mail does not support this facility,
and Pine is committed to adhering to Internet Standards in order to
preserve interoperability in the long run.

This feature, usually known as return-receipt-requested, is easy to
implement within a closed e-mail system like VMS Mail or LAN based mail,
but is not easy to implement across many platforms as would be appropriate
for an Internet mailer. I doubt that it works in VMS Mail if you send mail
to a non-VMS mail user. 

There was a bit of a long discussion on this here a month or two ago.

LL

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From: [email-masked] (Will Estes)
Date: Sun, 28 Mar 93 14:02:23 PST

'Laurence Lundblade says:'
> preserve interoperability in the long run.

I don't want to re-hash the previous discussion in its entirety, but
I would like to make the comment that Return-Receipt-To: is one of
the most useful features supported on Internet mail today.

I frequently send mail to systems that occasionally lose mail, and
when I send something that is critical, I include a
Return-Receipt-To: to verify its receipt.  Only about 70% of the
hosts out there support this feature, but that is enough to make it
quite useful.  If there were only *one* host out there that
supported it, and I was sending mail to that host, I would want to
be able to use it.

The privacy issue that Mark Crispin raises is really not a reason to
remove this capability for all users.  At best, it is a
justification for an application feature in sendmail (or whatever
application generates the return receipt) that lets you
restrict notification back to a particular user, depending on the
user destination of his note.

So, all I can say is that I use Return-Receipt-To: successfully from
other mailers every three-to-four days, and that this facility is
supported informally by enough Internet hosts to make it truly
useful.  

-- 
Thanks,
Will Estes              Internet: [email-masked]
U.S. Computer           Cupertino, CA  95014

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From: Mark Crispin <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 28 Mar 1993 14:01:35 -0800 (PST)

Ian -

     This is a frequently asked question, and one that involves a great deal
of controversy.  Without going into the intense religious arguments that have
been expressed on the subject (and I have been as guilty as any!), the
technical answer is that there is no method today which is reliable enough to
be used.  It would be quite confusing to Pine's users to have a feature that
only works sometimes.

     I have found that preceeding a message with ``Please acknowledge receipt
of this message'' in the text of the message works quite reliably in getting a
return receipt to me.  Most people will respond to such a request, and those
that don't generally have a specific reason for not doing so.

-- Mark --

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From: Laurence Lundblade <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 28 Mar 1993 22:24:04 -0500 (EST)

Yeah, from a marketing, non-purist point of view it might make sense to
add this to Pine as it comes up againts other mailer that can do it. It's
also probably not going to be any less effective than the others since
they're crossing gateways and domains as often. 

LL