On Mon, 7 May 2001, Nick Simicich wrote:
We may have to disagree on this one. The way I read the standard, MDNs
first have to be requested with a Disposition-notification-to header.
Vacation notices are sent unsolicited, and as such, do not have a
disposition-notification-to style target, and thus the genesis of this
discussion, "where do we send the vacation notices"?
Interesting point. Now that you mention it, I can see how the spec
could be read to mean that MDNs are only generated upon request, given
the opening sentence in Section 2. Of course, that fits with all the
keywords currently defined.
Personally, I've never been stuck on that point. In addition, the
specification is intended to be extensible and any conversations I've
had about vacation notices always revolved around MDNs, so I don't think
that's a requirement one should expect to survive forever.
Now, I don't *really* think that DSN or MDN applies to vacation notices.
But Vacation notices are closer to DSN than to MDN since they may be sent
unsolicited, and I think that, in the absense of other guidance, they
should be sent to the transport envelope address and not the from or
reply-to address.
It is worth noting that DSNs are for MTAs and MDNs are for UAs. Since
vacation notices are generated by UAs on behalf of users, I think we'll
find that the email technical community considers them closer to MDNs,
not DSNs, irrespective of your solicited versus unsolicited distinction.
Now if you think that DSN applies to vacation notices, I will bring this
quote from 1894 up: ...
As far as DSNs requiring the use of the MAIL FROM address in the SMTP
transaction, so do MDNs, currently. That's what's in the Return-Path:
header. More specifically, the MDN should not be automatically
generated unless the address requesting the notification matches the
Return-Path:; the generation should be confirmed with a user.
Jim
