Re: [Evolution] Return receipts

[Ed Wilts <ewilts ewilts org>]

On Tue, Nov 13, 2001 at 08:17:53PM -0500, Dan Winship wrote:
> On Tue, 2001-11-13 at 17:35, Luis Villa wrote:
> > Nope. We'll be happy to take [a patch for return receipts], though.
>
>         * Return receipts are not a standard feature of internet mail.

Please refer to RFCs 1891 and 2298.  The first deals with delivery 
notification, and the second with message disposition.  Please note that
we're talking about two separate issues here:
1)  Did the message reach its intended destination and actually get
delivered?  That's covered in RFC 1891 and is the MTA's responsibility.
For example, this message will be considered "delivered" as soon as it hits
the mailing list, even though it has not yet reached every recipient.

2) Did the end user actually read the message?  That's RFC 2298 and is the
MUA's responsibility.

>           In the Outlook/Exchange world, you can be reasonably sure that
>           most of the people you send mail to are running the same
>           software you are, so if you request a receipt, you'll probably
>           get it. This is not true for the majority of Evolution users.
>           Thus, the implementation of the feature would need to make it
>           clear that it wasn't reliable.

RFC 2298 actually spells this out very clearly.

>         * Return receipts are a big potential privacy violation.
>         From: hitman mafia org
>         To: witness-protection-program-members fbi gov
>         X-Return-Receipt-Requested: true
>     So we would have to add a dialog asking if it's ok to send a return
>     receipt, and probably some config gui for "never send return
>     receipts" or "always send return receipts to people in this domain
>     without asking" and stuff.

This is also covered in 2298.

>         * You need to keep track of when the user has already sent a
>           return receipt. In particular, if you read the message via
>           IMAP on two different machines, it should not ask you about
>           sending a return receipt the second time.

Actually, I believe it should.  The MDN includes optional information about 
the MUA so perhaps you should be sending a read receipt multiple times.  I
didn't read the RFC in any great detail last night (too busy watching Evo hang 
sending e-mail :-(), but I expect that issue to be covered too.

Evolution should be modified in two places:  
1)  Allow a user to request a delivery and/or read receipt on outgoing mail
2)  Deal with incoming mail that requests a read receipt (you don't need to
worry about a delivery receipt since that should be issue by the MTA).

I don't expect either to make it into 1.0... You've got some more issues to 
deal with right now (like allowing me to send any mail from Evo!).

        .../Ed
-- 
Ed Wilts, Mounds View, MN, USA
mailto:ewilts ewilts org