Subject: How can I get a "successful delivered" mail after sending?

From: [email-masked] (Christian Schwarz)
Date: 19 May 1995 08:45:11 GMT

Hi!

Sometimes, I want to get sure that an email message was delivered
to the target host successfully. I've read about a special feature
in some mail systems, where you get a short email back, after your
mail has reached the target host. Can I do this with pine?

Thanks in advance,
Chris

-- 
Christian Schwarz
[email-masked], [email-masked]

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From: "Paul O. Bartlett" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 19 May 1995 09:41:52 -0400

On 19 May 1995, Christian Schwarz wrote:

> [...]

    Getting acknowledgement of receipt of mail from a remote system, 
sometimes called a delivery receipt, is a dicey proposition.  (There 
could be two forms: acknowledgement by the remote system that the mail 
arrived at that host at all, or an acknowledgement sent when the 
recipient actually looks at the mail.)

    To the best of my knowledge, there is no requirement in the Internet 
community whatever that delivery receipts be provided, and there are no 
standards for it.  When it is done at all, different host systems do it 
in different ways, and many do not do it at all.  Therefore, even if 
Pine made some sort of provision for automatic acknowledgement of receipt, 
there is no guarantee whatever that a remote receiving system would even 
respect it.  So far as I know, Pine does not even make provision for it.  
Sorry.

Paul
--------------------------------------------------
Paul O. Bartlett         <[email-masked]>
P. O. Box 857     Vienna, VA 22183-0857     U.S.A.
Finger, keyserver, or email for PGP 2.6 public key
--------------------------------------------------

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From: [email-masked] (Mary Brown)
Date: Sat, 20 May 1995 04:17:16 GMT

In article <[email-masked]>,

> respect it.  So far as I know, Pine does not even make provision for it.  

Yes you can. Use the Custom Headers. I posted this question about how to
get a receipt, before, and nobody answered, but I hacked around with it
and got it to work. I'm not in Pine right now, so I can't tell you exactly
what I did. But I'll post it if anyone is interested when I check what I
did ...

Works for most systems, although it didn't work when trying to post a
newsgroup message in Pine. Maybe it was just that particular newsgroup,
though.

-- 
Mary D. Brown
[email-masked]
Check out my Home Page at http://www.eskimo.com/~maryb

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From: "Paul O. Bartlett" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 21 May 1995 12:03:28 -0400

> newsgroup message in Pine. Maybe it was just that particular newsgroup,

    Please do post this information, especially as I was the one who 
replied that it couldn't be done by Pine.  I am aware that it can be done 
to some extent by mail-processing front ends such as procmail on Unix.  I 
still don't see how it could be done for newsgroup postings (or why one 
would even want to, most of the time).  I would be interested in knowing 
of your solution.

Paul

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From: [email-masked] (Mary Brown)
Date: Sun, 21 May 1995 22:02:53 GMT

In article <[email-masked]>,

> replied that it couldn't be done by Pine.

Ok, I checked and this is what I added to the Setup/Configuration: 

customized-hdrs        = Return-Receipt-To: [email-masked]

That's it. It won't show up in your outgoing message unless you select
Rich Headers. 

Works for me, anyway ...

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From: "Paul O. Bartlett" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 21 May 1995 19:28:20 -0400

On Sun, 21 May 1995, Ian Russell Ollmann wrote:

> If you add a customized header which says: 
> 
> 	Return-Receipt-To:
> 
> to your message, most sendmail programs will send a receipt to any address
> appearing after the header.  [...]
>               It should be emphasised that this does not work on all
> systems since not _all_ systems support the Return-Receipt feature.  [...]

    Thanks for replying.  I was aware of these points (especially how to 
configure Pine).  Somehow I had the idea (perhaps mistakenly on my part) 
that someone was claiming to have coerced a delivery reciept from a 
receiving end by doing something on a sending end.  As you point out, 
not all systems even respond to the Return-Receipt-To: field if it is 
present.

    I certainly do not have any kind of figures, but I speculate that
a significant portion of non-Unix systems (e.g., IBM VM/PROFS) do not
recognize this field.  In such a case, there is nothing the person using
Pine to *send* mail can do, short of getting a new Internet standard
through and waiting for it to be universally implemented. 

Paul

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From: Terry Gray <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 21 May 1995 21:58:36 -0700 (PDT)

Mary,
The header is sent even if you don't happen to look at it via ^R.

If you want to choose on a case-by-case basis, then just put the header
name in the custom headers, then add your own address (which you may want
to have in your addressbook as a single character nickname) whenever you
need this facility.  If you don't also have that header in the default
composer header list, you'll need to use ^R to reveal it.

-teg

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From: Ian Russell Ollmann <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 21 May 1995 13:45:52 -0700

Return-Receipt-To:

to your message, most sendmail programs will send a receipt to any address
appearing after the header. If for example, you want the receipt to go to
yourself (the usual case, I imagine) then when writing a message, you'd
append your e-mail address to the header line, generating something like
this: 

Return-Receipt-To: [email-masked]

If you leave the space after "Return-Receipt-To:" blank, then no receipt
is generated. It should be emphasised that this does not work on all
systems since not _all_ systems support the Return-Receipt feature.  So,
if you get a receipt, your message was delivered (but not necessarily
read!), but if you do not get a receipt, that means that the message may
or may not have been delivered. 

To add this customized header, go to Setup/Config from the main pine menu
and scroll down to where it says "customized hdrs". Add Return-Receipt-To
to the list and then Exit. This need only be done once.  To use the
Return-Receipt feature when writing a message, use the Rich Header command
(^R) while the cursor is in the header area of the Compose Message or the
Compose Message Reply page. Enter the e-mail address of the person to 
receive the receipt (most likely you) after the "Return-R:" line. 

				Ian

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From: "Paul O. Bartlett" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 22 May 1995 10:45:39 -0400

On Sun, 21 May 1995, Mary Brown wrote:

> Date: Sun, 21 MAY 1995 22:02:53 GMT 
> From: Mary Brown <[email-masked]>
> Newgroups: comp.mail.pine
> Subject: Re: How can I get a "successful delivered" mail after sending? 
> 
> > [etc.]
On Sat, 20 May 1995, Mary Brown wrote:
> [etc.]

    Thanks for responding.  As it turns out, someone else beat you to the 
punch with essentially the same answer.  I admit that I was already aware 
of this technique.  However, it works if and ONLY if the receiving mailer 
is set up to process and use the return-receipt header line.  Many totally 
ignore it, in which case it accomplishes nothing whatever.  Although I do 
not have any figures, I have the hunch that many non-Unix-based mailers 
do not honor the return-receipt request.  Somehow I had the idea, 
obviously mistakenly, that you were claiming to have found a way to 
coax/coerce a delivery receipt out of ANY receiving system.

Thanks again.
Paul

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From: [email-masked] (Mary Brown)
Date: Sun, 21 May 1995 22:02:53 GMT

Works for me, anyway ...