🚀 go-pugleaf

Return-Receipt-To is a kluge and a hack invented and first used by the
abominable sendmail program for BSD Unix.  It is not standardized,
neither as a header, nor as functionality.  No one has bothered to write
up a specification for it and submitted it as an RFC.  It's generally
considered a Bad Thing because (1) not all mailers implement it, so
absence of a returned receipt means nothing, and mail is not 100%
reliable, anyway, so even if a receipt is generated, it may not get back
to you, especially if headers get rewritten and the address in the
header is useless where generated, (2) it's often used indiscriminately
by those who use it all, causing much wasted bandwidth, and (3) it gives
users the impression that they can get a service that doesn't exist in
the Internet mail system.

'Tis best to ignore it entirely.

An argument could be put forth that it should be deleted, but this
requires some level of recognition of it, which is almost as bad as
responding positively to it.

Let's hope that 1993 will see a replacement for sendmail, and wide
deployment of real MTA software, to support 8-bit data paths, MIME, etc.
I might as well hope for the demise of X.400 while I'm at it.

Best regards,
</Erik>
--
Erik Naggum                 ISO  8879 SGML                    +47 295 0313
                            ISO 10744 HyTime
<erik@naggum.no>            ISO  9899 C                 Memento, terrigena
<SGML@ifi.uio.no>           ISO 10646 UCS             Memento, vita brevis