Hello Cliff,
On Wednesday, January 2, 2002 at 3:18:21 PM +0100, Cliff Sarginson wrote:
>> Put this line in your muttrc to always request for receipt:
>> my_hdr Disposition-Notification-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> The MTA's involved have to understand this, all of them along the way
> if I recall correctly, so it is not a guarantee.
You are confusing 2 different things, DSN and MDN:
DSN is Delivery Status Notification. It's a set of SMTP extensions
defined in RFC 1891 and reply MIME type in RFC 1894 and 2852, all MTAs
in the path to your recipient must understand it, you set the DSN
request in mutt with the dsn_notify and dsn_return variables (I never
tested: my outgoing MTA isn't compatible), and is basically a way to
customize bounces: you can say when you want a bounce (only on error, or
also on success), and what you want inside (only your header, or the
full message). It's the last MTA who replies: generally an MTA at your
recipient's provider says it has delivered to a POP3 account... Nothing
says the mail has been read or even has reached your recipient's
computer.
MDN is Message Disposition Notification. It's a purely MUA to MUA
thing, the request and the reply's MIME type format are defined in RFC
2298, and your recipient is asked to send back an MDN or not (on each
mail or thru some sort of global option). The MDN says you if (and when)
the mail has been displayed on screen (well, doesn't mean read or
understood!), or filtered out, manually deleted before being displayed,
processed by a bot, printed, faxed, failed, etc... Charles was talking
about MDN.
> Since people get the option not to allow the sending of the receipt
> back in Outlook and Netscape it means squat anyway.
I think, and the RFC confirms, it MUST be a recipient's choice.
> Frankly it is a diabolical practise, causes uneccessary and pointless
> mail.
Your Personal Opinion, or just some sort of universal truth? ;-)
> If a mail is so important that you *must* be certain it has been read
> then phone the person up.
Perhaps he has no phone, or you don't want to bother him? Or the
mail is not *so* important, but you'd like to have a confirmation?
Accepting to send an MDN is also easier and faster than composing an
« OK well received » type reply.
> Since the mechanism is inherently unreliable anyway, what is the point
> of using it ?
Yes it's unreliable, also because not all MUA are MDN aware. But it
can be usefull at times. And sometimes needed: I know of a company who,
at time of choosing an internal mail system, choosed Lotus Notes against
an open SMTP based system just (or nearly just) because of a more
reliable MDN-like feature in Notes.
Bye! Alain.
