🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <9212311441.AA06064@TIS.COM> avolio@TIS.COM writes:
| 
| Among other things needed is a clearer definition or, more exactly, a
| model to follow.  Clearly, this is not the model of Certified Mail in
| the U.S. Postal System.  Certified Mail gets a return receipt sent to
| the sender if the delivery agent delivered the mail.  Also, it gets
| signed and stamped in an official, trusted manner.  

I'm not sure that an exact mapping of the way the U.S. Postal system does
things is necessarily a good thing.  As you say, the postal system return
receipt is not what I was describing.  I think that a reasonable analogy
would be the the postal return receipt would correspond to a MTA delivery
report.  A user agent return receipt in the USPS world would be more like
the postman coming into your home or business, watching you open you mail,
and then writing a report back to the sender indicating it had been opened.

| 1. Certified Mail -- the compliant MTA certifies delivery to the
| mailbox.  There may be an option to have this be digitally signed by
| the system to have a valid and acceptable time stamp (like a Post
| Office rubber date stamp).

This is an interesting option - but one that I don't believe would be
necessary for most applications.  Perhaps if we were to come up with a
mechanism that would work with and without digital signitures?

| 2. Read Receipt Requested.  The compliant UA should indicate "A Read
| Receipt was requested.  Shall I send one?"  For non-smart UA's, The
| header line should indicate to the reader that they are being asked to
| confirm their reading it.

It should also be acceptable if the remote UA were to do nothing with
the request.  The key here is that it is a "request".

Best Regards,

Tim Kehres