Re: Return Receipts

[hammond@csc.albany.edu (William F. Hammond)]

Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org> writes in gnu.emacs.gnus:

> I think this sounds like a good idea.  I've Cc'd this to the ding
> mailing list, so we can see whether anybody there has any comments.
> (Follow up to the mailing list only, please.)

(Hmmm ... If you had set "Followup-To: ding@gnus.org", would that have
suppressed followup to the newsgroup?)

Doesn't it pose risks if a user inadvertently opens spam?  For example,
does gnus know what w3 might do, much less what nonsense, as bandied
about elsewhere in this discussion, might show up in someone's mailcap?

The least of these might be a spammer who queues the user for more
spam every time a return-receipt comes in.

By the way, in my locale the postal service charges extra money for
return receipts.  There are indeed extra expenses.  It's just not
responsible use of the network.

Alternatively, it's very easy for a user to wire a keystroke to a
boiler-plate acknowledgement by writing a little elisp.  So maybe that
could be provided for users who want to be able to use a keystroke to
honor a return-receipt request.  If so, the request needs to be made
plain to the user, but, pretty please, no prompt, or, at worst, a
user configurable return-receipt-request display-mode like 0=hide,
1=show, 2=prompt.

                                    -- Bill