Re: How to send a return receipt
On Sat, Oct 13, 2007 at 04:13:11PM +0200, Patrick Schoenfeld wrote:
> On Sat, Oct 13, 2007 at 01:37:13PM +0100, Chris G wrote:
> > Surely if a mail is sent to (say) ten recipients it's pretty useless
> > to know that it got to just one of them. If all ten recipients had
>
> Eh.. no?! If you send it to 10 different recipients, with each representing a
> different role, then you are right. But if you have one address for several
> people then it is somewhat obvious, that each person is the representative of
> a
> role that only needs to acknowledge the receival of the mail _once_.
> Believe me: If every (currently 3) people that read the mail would acknowledge
> that our customer would sureley not feel this funny.
>
But as I understand it in most 'normal' MUAs if you have "one address
for several people" then it's split into separate messages at the
sender end of things and from then on is simply a separate message to
each recipient. I suppose if there's an alias for a lot of people at
the receiving end then it's different but in that case it means that
the return receipt is coming from the mail handling software (MTA ?)
at the receiving end and not the MUA - in which case having mutt
return an acknowledgement isn't going to do what you apparently want.
> > MUAs that understood the receipt request thing wouldn't they all
> > acknowledge? If not then it's an even more un-useful facility than
>
> No, they don't, because they ask the recipient in *every* case. That is like
> the postman that asks you to confirm the sending of a letter. Its only
> different in that he does not deliver the mail if you don't confirm the
> sending
> of a letter.
>
Huh? How can the postman ask you to confirm the sending? Post
doesn't work like that and neither does E-Mail in general. I post a
letter by sticking it in a letter box, I don't hand it to the postman.
Similarly I send an E-Mail by giving it to sendmail or possibly by
handing it to a fairly local SMTP port, neither of those can usefully
give any sort of 'proof' that the mail has gone anywhere at all.
--
Chris Green