After an evaluation, GNOME has moved from Bugzilla to GitLab. Learn more about GitLab.
No new issues can be reported in GNOME Bugzilla anymore.
To report an issue in a GNOME project, go to GNOME GitLab.
Do not go to GNOME Gitlab for: Bluefish, Doxygen, GnuCash, GStreamer, java-gnome, LDTP, NetworkManager, Tomboy.
Bug 201609 - Support delivery status and receipt notification
Support delivery status and receipt notification
Status: RESOLVED FIXED
Product: evolution
Classification: Applications
Component: Mailer
unspecified
Other All
: Normal normal
: Future
Assigned To: evolution-mail-maintainers
Evolution QA team
: 218888 236144 237957 245887 252172 263468 265321 (view as bug list)
Depends on: 201725
Blocks:
 
 
Reported: 2001-02-26 21:30 UTC by Richard Zach
Modified: 2005-08-10 14:31 UTC
See Also:
GNOME target: ---
GNOME version: ---



Description Richard Zach 2001-02-26 21:30:47 UTC
These are really two issues:

- Delivery Status Notification requires sending the relevant options to the
ESTMP server to request notification by the delivering MTA when the message has
been delivered.

This is RFC 1891:
http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1891.html

- Receipt Notification (Message Disposition Notification) requires setting the
right header fields (Disposition-Notification-To) and honoring the the field
when a message requesting receipt notification is received.

This is RFC 2298: 
http://www.landfield.com/rfcs/rfc2298.html

Claus Assman (sendmail) has a page with links to the various RFCs: 
http://www.sendmail.org/~ca/email/dsn.html
Comment 1 Jeffrey Stedfast 2001-02-27 00:30:09 UTC
Not by 1.0
Comment 2 Cory Prowse 2002-09-25 03:27:03 UTC
Updating to reflect this applies to the Beta (1.1.1), as well as a
_possible_ dependency on bug#201725

Not sure how requested this bug is, but I'd like to add my vote for it 
:)
Comment 3 Gerardo Marin 2003-01-03 22:49:53 UTC
*** bug 236144 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 4 Gerardo Marin 2003-01-09 21:06:52 UTC
*** bug 218888 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 5 Gerardo Marin 2003-02-12 20:45:23 UTC
*** bug 237957 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 6 Hakon 2003-03-15 17:39:50 UTC
How would this be designed? In Mozilla you just receive another
message in your inbox which says that the recipient "read" your message.
I understand many would prefer such a behaviour, but I think it would
be cool to have an alternative where you don't receive any visual
message-style receipt. Instead it could be handled invisibly, and
there could be some kind of flag on each message, similar to the GnuPG
icon (see list beneath).
Accordingly, there wouldn't be any outgoing receipt-messages in your
local "Sent" folder either.
Then there could be an extra option on whether there should be an
alert when a new receipt is gotten.

  Open envelope (or no icon at all) -> Mail has not been sent yet (draft)

  Closed envelope (maybe also a question mark) -> Mail has been sent,
but no receipt gotten, for any reason.

  Ripped envelope -> Mail has been sent, and reported back as read.

These mark could be shown in different variants both in the list and
in the message display.
In the display message view, it should also be possible to look up
when the message was read.
Comment 7 Travis Owens 2003-04-03 08:32:18 UTC
Since we can fix Evolution specific enhancements into whatever we do,
and it only affects Evolution clients, perhaps this might be worth
looking at:

Message-Id: <1049350672.2420.64.camel@myhost.mydomain.com>


Couldn't this be used for a tracking reference relative to Evolution?
Isn't this a unique ID generated by Evolution on each machine?
Therefore when the read receipt came in, it would reference this
message in the "INBOX" or wherever there is mail.

Just a suggestion to help add the features, in a way relative to the
previous requests. (Non-Messenging features)
Comment 8 Gerardo Marin 2003-07-07 20:19:02 UTC
*** bug 245887 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 9 Andrea Cerrito 2003-11-18 08:01:56 UTC
I think return receipt can be considered a must: many spam mail
request it. Evolution send it without notification (so, my mail
address is verified).
Comment 10 Jeffrey Stedfast 2003-11-18 15:45:09 UTC
Andrea: huh? spammers cannot verify your email address if you are
using Evolution. I don't understand what you are talking about.
Comment 11 Andrea Cerrito 2003-11-19 00:03:32 UTC
Some days ago, I received a mail (spam) from a company: unfortunately
that mail passes through my spam filters. So, I select the mail to
delete it.
After few minutes, I received an error from the server that it cannot
delivery the return-receipt for that mail.

So, I assumed that evolution sent the notify without asking me what to
do.... or am I wrong?
Comment 12 Jeffrey Stedfast 2003-11-19 06:17:46 UTC
you are way wrong. that's the whole point of this bug. people WANT
return receipt, but it has not yet even been implemented. so what you
claim couldn't POSSIBLY be true.
Comment 13 Andrea Cerrito 2003-11-19 09:33:33 UTC
I'm happy to read you reply: I thought that the function was
implemented but the user wasn't able to use it (same as importance: I
can see the importance of a mail but I cannot set it on a new message).

Anyway, I don't know what's happened with that mail... nevermind.
Comment 14 timo 2003-11-29 14:51:33 UTC
Ximian support pointed me to this bug when I asked them about
possibility to DISABLE Evolution automatically sending a RETURN
RECEIPT. Currently whenever I receive mail which has RETURN RECEIPT
reqeuest, Evolution automatically sends a RECEIPT. I would like a
configuration option allowing me to totally DISABLE this feature, or
at the minimum prompted for a permission to send RETURN RECEIPT.
Current implementation which automatically sends the reply is not very
privacy friendly.... Many email clients do this, though Outlook
doesn't :-).
Comment 15 Gerardo Marin 2003-11-29 23:21:19 UTC
We do NOT send return receipts. I tested sending myself from Outlook
and Eudora and never got a response.
Comment 16 Jeffrey Stedfast 2003-12-01 01:33:02 UTC
Evolution doesn't return any receipt notifications at all. this bug
report is asking for the ability to send them, not to not send them :-)

so if people are getting return receipt notifications from you, then
they aren't coming from Evolution.
Comment 17 timo 2003-12-05 13:15:12 UTC
ok, sorry my misunderstanding. I use Evolution with Connector and MS
Exchange, so then it must be either the Connector or more likely,
Exchange which is doing it. But people do get the RRs when I read
email using Evolution with MS Exchange. Thanks for the tip.
Comment 18 Jeffrey Stedfast 2003-12-05 14:44:05 UTC
ah, that's an Exchange "feature".
Comment 19 Gerardo Marin 2003-12-16 06:49:36 UTC
This shouldn-t be closed
Comment 20 Gerardo Marin 2003-12-16 06:50:54 UTC
*** bug 252172 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 21 Andrea Cerrito 2004-01-14 15:12:19 UTC
What is the plan for this feature?
I'm sending mail when I really don't like it, and this is causing spam
growning every day.

Is there any trick that can be used meanwhile?
Comment 22 Jeffrey Stedfast 2004-01-14 15:31:57 UTC
stop sending the mail then? I don't understand how evolution is
causing you to get more spam because of the lack of this feature.
makes no sense.
Comment 23 Andrea Cerrito 2004-01-14 17:06:11 UTC
Spam mails are requesting return-recepit, and evolution (or exchange)
is sending it automatically, convalidating my email-address to spammer.

I'm NOT sending any mail, just return-recepit (unfortunately).
Comment 24 Jeffrey Stedfast 2004-01-14 17:20:03 UTC
well, that's an exchange bug I'm afrad... it has nothing to do with
Evolution.
Comment 25 Choose to remain Anonymous 2004-04-14 09:39:14 UTC
PMFJI. There really are two issues. One is adding the DNT/MDN request
header to outgoing email, and the other is how to respond to an email
with such a header in it.

In regard to Andrea's post above, her mail server may have responded
to the request (this happens) and that's why she thought Evo was
sending out a response.

This web page has a pretty good description of the issue and some
positive suggestions for implementation,
http://viper.haque.net/~timeless/blog/13/. 

As for implementation in Evo, there are a few options.
Add a checkbox in Settings/Mail Preferences to globally request return
receipts in outgoing email, and to set a default response (Respond
Always, Ask Each Time, Ignore Always) to an incoming DNT/MDN request. 
In each outgoing email composer screen, add a checbox in the Security
menu for Request Return Receipt.
Create a virtual folder to hold outgoing mail that request a RR until
a response is received. Then implement Hakon's suggestion or some variant.
Depending on the default setting for responding to RR requests, when
incoming mail asks for a confirmation, challenge the user for an action.
Set a template for outgoing RECEIVED notification that user can
personalize.

JMHO.
Comment 26 Choose to remain Anonymous 2004-04-14 09:45:56 UTC
Oh yes, one more option. Allow the user to manually add a header to
any email, so in effect, he/she can add the MDN header whenever
desired. This could be implemented similar to adding a signature to
all outgoing messages. This would be quick and dirty, and not handle
the incoming mail, but in this case, the Filters can be used to query
specific headers. For example,

Disposition-Notification-To could be queried and
Disposition-Notification-Options also.

Then these emails could be put into a virtual folder or marked
Important or something like that.
Comment 27 Gerardo Marin 2004-08-21 06:09:14 UTC
*** bug 263468 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 28 Jeffrey Stedfast 2004-09-03 17:31:59 UTC
*** bug 265321 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 29 André Klapper 2004-12-31 10:55:40 UTC
fixing a typo in the summary so one finds this bug when searching for 
a receipt (formerly: "reciept")
Comment 30 Carlos 2005-02-21 20:29:08 UTC
I'd like to put my two cents in worth into the bug comments if I
might.  The inability to either ask for a read receipt or respond to
one in Evolution itself, is the first feature that I have found that
Evolution is missing but which Microsoft products seem to have.  While
it is not always a useful or even a desired feature it is on occasion
quite handy.  

I worked in an office recently where we emailed each other internally
with questions, reports, etc..  It was quite handy to be able to ask
for a read receipt and then to get an email notice that the intended
recipient had read the email sent.  

To be sure it got to be too much getting tons of receipts but it was
handy in the sense that one could track who got what in their email so
that recipients could not say that they had not at least indicated
seeing the email by authorized a return receipt themselves.  

So as a general feature for all email it's not that good of a thing. 
But as feature to give users of Evolution the opportunity to do that,
if they want to for a particular email, it is very desirable.  If for
not other reason it will allow Evolution to be seen as even more of a
potential replacement for Microsoft email clients altogather.  

So if voting for a feature has any relevance, I vote to have Evolution
allow us to ask for a return receipt and to allow us to indicate that
we have received an email by notifying the sender (but only at our
initiation - not automatically). 

Carlos 
Comment 31 Ron Johnson 2005-02-22 10:18:41 UTC
Here's my vote that Evo implement RFCs 1891 & 2298.

Ron
Comment 32 Amish Munshi 2005-03-11 08:47:26 UTC
This is a urgent requirement. 
When will this feature be available with Evolution.

Amish.
Comment 33 Not Zed 2005-03-16 02:08:54 UTC
so when did this become a critical bug?

its just a new feature.

we have a bounty patch for it anyway iirc.
Comment 34 vivek jain 2005-08-10 14:31:45 UTC
This is available in groupwise provider with the latest version of evolution.
Closing the bug.