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

From: [email-masked] (Jasper Corrigan)
Date: 3 Jun 1995 03:09:57 -0400

Now, to add a wrinkle, how about getting notification of a piece of mail 
being *read*? Can it be done in pine?

Cheers,
-- 
Jasper Corrigan, resident net philosopher            [email-masked]
=============================================================================
       "Never send a Monster to do the work of an Evil Scientist."

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From: [email-masked] (Trey Harris)
Date: 4 Jun 1995 05:16:39 GMT

In article <[email-masked]>,
>being *read*? Can it be done in pine?

No.

It can't be done in any current Internet-standard mail delivery/reading 
scheme.  How it would be done is a good question.  Usually, the reason 
giving for wanting to know this information is to know whether someone is 
ignoring you or just not reading their email.

This is fine, but suppose they see your name and delete your message 
without reading it?  Should you get notification?  How about if the 
recipient reads mail offline?  Should you be notified when the mail is 
downloaded, even if the recipient may not have read the mail?  Notified 
the next time mail is downloaded, assuming that he reads his mail at 
least once in between each download?  Or some other method?

There are a heck of a lot of issues here that can be solved with 
complicated proprientary email solutions (I'm aware that several vendors 
have implemented this feature), but not with Internet mail.  Internet 
mail is essentially just files being transferred from one place to 
another;  having no central authority, no peer-to-peer verification, and 
no standard-issue client means that you have to assume lowest common 
denominator.  And receipt-on-read is an awfully complex feature to model
to the lowest common denominator.

-- 
Trey Harris                              http://sunsite.unc.edu/harris
  System Administrator, Project Isis, Office of Information Technology
                       The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill