Xref: utzoo comp.mail.headers:630 comp.mail.misc:4700 Path: utzoo!censor!geac!torsqnt!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!julius.cs.uiuc.edu!rpi!uupsi!sunic!fuug!demos!avg From: avg@hq.demos.su (Vadim Antonov) Newsgroups: comp.mail.headers,comp.mail.misc Subject: wanna be sure your message will arrive? Keywords: e-mail RFC Message-ID: <1991Jan4.182308.16683@hq.demos.su> Date: 4 Jan 91 18:23:08 GMT Organization: DEMOS, Moscow, USSR Lines: 48 IMHO the current autobounce scheme needs some improvements allowing user mail programs to understand a report about receiption of the message automatically. I suggest to introduce a couple of new obligatory header fields and to manage *all* mail delivery systems to generate it. The first is: Receipt-Rejected: or Receipt-Rejected: retry The first form informs the sender that the message is illegal (say mistyped address etc). The second form suggests the originator to retry posting (say 'cause of a disk crash etc). The body of the autobounced message should contain the header and body of rejected message (probably with some debugging information). The second proposed field Receipt-Confirmed: should be generated only if the original message has contained Return-Receipt-To: in its header and mail delivery service is sure that the message reached the destination (quite like a usual effect of Return-Receipt-To: ). I think it may be reasonable to allow users to suppress long automatic replys (if you're keeping the copy of the message on your machine you need not to see its header, don't you?). It could be done using something like: X-Report: brief Return-Receipt-To: author@foo.bar Hm. I'm worrying why this very simple and clear scheme was not introduced from the wery beginning. Net gurus, where are you? I want to hear opinions of netlanders about turning it into the standard way of error processing. I wanna be sure my e-mail will not disappear in this infinite maze of wires. Cheers, Vadim Antonov DEMOS, Moscow, USSR