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- From: moore@cs.utk.edu (Keith Moore)
- Newsgroups: comp.mail.mime
- Subject: Re: Return-Receipt (Danger Will Robinson!)
- Date: 6 Jan 1993 17:26:52 GMT
- Organization: Univ. of Tenn. Computer Science, Knoxville
- Lines: 39
- Distribution: world
- Message-ID: <1if4osINNd2q@CS.UTK.EDU>
- References: <rhoward.726332201@matd>
- Reply-To: moore@cs.utk.edu
- NNTP-Posting-Host: yertle.cs.utk.edu
-
- In article <rhoward.726332201@matd>, rhoward@matd.gatech.edu (Robert L. Howard) writes:
- > What happened to the discussion on using MIME to handle a MUA
- > level Return-Receipt (RR) mechanism?
- >
- > Some points:
- >
- > 1. It MUST be voluntary. Ideal behavior would be for a MIME
- > MUA to ask, "Sender has requested return-receipt, would you
- > like to return-receipt on this message? (y/n)". MUAs
- > could have user configuration parameters to a) always send
- > RR without asking b) always ask or c) never ask and never
- > send RRs.
- >
- > 2. I don't particulary care how this is to be handled MIME header-
- > wise (could someone recall previous discussions).
- >
- > 3. There should be a unique ID string type thing for RR message
- > parts so that when the receipt comes back the MUA can easily
- > match it to the message the receipt is for.
-
- I don't see any problem with it, so long as it's clear that what's
- being provided is an (optional) "read" acknowledgement, not a
- "delivery" acknowledgement. Basically someone needs to define a MIME
- content type for read acknowledgement requests and another type for
- read acknowledgements, and define how a supporting mail reader should
- act when it receives a message containing a read acknowledgement
- request. Also needed is a definition of exactly what a read
- acknowledgement means.
-
- Note that the mail reader, having generated a read acknowledgement,
- should probably mark the message in some way, so that duplicate read
- acknowledgements are never generated for a message.
-
- The term "return receipt" seems ambiguous. It seems like some of the
- past flaming (thought not all of it) has been due to confusion about
- whether delivery acks or read acks were being discussed.
-
- Keith Moore
-
-