Subject: new feature (old request)

From: [email-masked] (Greg Louis)
Date: 14 Mar 1996 16:54:39 GMT

For the wish list:   Pine 3.92 (or 93... :) could react to its user's
opening an incoming email containing, as a header,

X-Confirm-Reading-To: user@somewhere

by dispatching a receipt that quotes the header date, time and
subject, and timestamps the reader's access to the message.

That would be compatible with the mechanism used by Pegasus (which is
probably as widespread in the MSDOS/Windows world as Pine is in the Unix
world), and would therefore be useful to quite a wide audience.
-- 
| G r e g  L o u i s                  | pgp:mail [email-masked] | 
| http://www.consultronics.on.ca/~bgl | [email-masked] |
|   Censorship is arbitrary denial    |    77 0B 39 81 28 CE 7D D0 |
|   substituted for rational debate!  |    4C 7A 6E CC E7 21 4C 55 |

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From: Terry Gray <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 16 Mar 1996 07:29:16 -0800 (PST)

Greg,
There is now an IETF working group looking at the "read receipt" issue,
and when the dust settles, we'll take a close look at it --but anything we
do will require user concurrence before a receipt would be sent.

-teg

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From: [email-masked] (Stephen J. Weihman)
Date: 15 Mar 1996 20:45:01 GMT

>subject, and timestamps the reader's access to the message.

As far as many are concerned - myself included - this is a definite
waste of bandwidth, and an invasion of privacy.  If I want someone 
to know I've read their message, I'll respond to them.  Otherwise,
don't make that decision for me.

--
Will Rogers never met a lawyer.
--
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--   Stephen J. Weihman   -*-   GTE Data Services    --
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--   The opinions expressed herein are entirely my   --
--     own, and are not necessarily those of GTE.    --
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From: Greg Louis <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 17 Mar 1996 07:11:44 -0500 (EST)

> do will require user concurrence before a receipt would be sent.
Thank you for the info, Terry.

What would seem most reasonable, to me anyway, is for honouring such
requests to be a configurable item.  The system default would be set at
installation, and perhaps users could change it in .pinerc if there were
reason to do so.  I think Pine still asks too many questions that either
oughtn't to be choices (like "use reply-to address?"), or ought to be
configuration items.  A matter of taste, admittedly. 

In Pegasus, as you may know, the network installation allows the sysadmin
not only to set the default but to choose whether or not to allow users to
override the setting.  Our installation forces read-receipt-requests to be
honoured, although an exception would be allowed if anyone were really
upset by the loss of privacy thus inflicted.  So far the request has never
been made.  Personally I think this is better than giving the option and
then telling the users it's a matter of company policy that they shouldn't
use it.  That tends to invite mountain-out-of-molehill-making, IMHO. 

After all, if you pick up your phone, the person on the other end knows 
you've received their call... but I digress... :)