From: Brian Clapper (bmc@WillsCreek.com)
Date: Thu Jan 18 2001 - 10:10:19 PST
On 18 January, 2001, at 09:07 (-0800)
Joseph S. Barrera III <joe@barrera.org> wrote:
> If you think THAT'S scary,
> have you checked out the latest RFC?
>
> http://rfc.fh-koeln.de/rfc/html/rfc1894.html
>
> If this RFC is adopted, then even senders
> of PLAIN TEXT MAIL will be able to tell
> IF and WHEN their sendees have read their mail!
Where does that RFC say *that?* The delivery status notifications (DSNs)
described by that document are issued by the mail transport agent (MTA),
which (at least in layered, non-proprietary environments with heterogenous
MTAs and MUAs) has no way of knowing when a user has actually read the
message.
The document itself makes that clear, in section 2.3.3
"delivered" indicates that the message was successfully delivered to
the recipient address specified by the sender, which
includes "delivery" to a mailing list exploder. It does
not indicate that the message has been read. This is a
terminal state and no further DSN for this recipient should
be expected.
The MTA can only notify the sender that the document has been delivered,
not whether anyone has bothered to read it.
Or did I miss something obvious? (It wouldn't be the first time.)
Brian Clapper, bmc@WillsCreek.com
(Sorry, I didn't feel like coding this message in HTML.)
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Jan 18 2001 - 10:15:34 PST