FYI
 
*---------------------- Original message follows -----------------------*
 
Date sent:      Sat, 4 Mar 1995 16:52:18 +1200
Send reply to:  Pegasus Mail Discussion List <[log in to unmask]>
From:           David Harris <[log in to unmask]>
Organization:   Pegasus Mail, Dunedin, New Zealand
Subject:        IMPORTANT! Re: Receipt Confirmation Question
To:             James Ford <[log in to unmask]>
 
> Why do receipt confirmation go to the reply-to address rather than to
> the X-Confirm-Reading-To address ?  What's the purpose of this header
> field then ?
 
I owe the list and all my users an apology over this.
 
First of all, you should understand that I regard Pegasus Mail's
"confirmation of reading" as a form of automatic reply, not as a message
transport status message. Accordingly, under RFC822, Pegasus Mail follows
the parsing rules EXACTLY by using the Reply-to: then the From: address.
I believe that Pegasus Mail is NOT at fault here - the problem is a more
general problem with the way list mail is managed on the Internet. There
is no standard for where the List puts its own address and there is no
reliable way of detecting that mail originates from a mailing list.
 
Having said that, it became clear to me several releases ago that the
path of least resistance for fixing the problem of receipts going to
lists was for me to change Pegasus Mail, since the rest of the Internet
clearly wasn't going to fall into any kind of shape very quickly.
Accordingly, I changed Pegasus Mail's receipt confirmation mechanism so
that instead of simply having "X-PMRQC: 1" in the headers and using a
standard reply mechanism, I use a special "directed" header which
contains the specific address to which confirmations should be sent.
This special header is "X-CONFIRM-READING-TO:" and is generated by all
versions of Pegasus Mail for DOS v3.2 and later, WinPMail v1.2 and later,
and Pegasus Mail/Mac v2.1 and later. If this header is present, these
versions of Pegasus Mail are meant to send confirmations to the address it
specifies; if only an X-PMRQC header is present (ie, the sender used an
old version of Pegasus Mail), it will use the old confirmation method,
following the Reply-to: address then the From: address, in that order.
 
Recently I have had a number of complaints about confirmations going to
lists, and have assumed that this was arising from SENDERS using old
versions of Pegasus Mail. Unfortunately, I now find that this is
actually a goof on my part. While Pegasus Mail is GENERATING the correct
"X-Confirm-Reading-To" header, it is actually SEARCHING incoming
messages for a header called "X-Confirm-RECEIPT-To", which it will never
find. Accordingly, all confirmation requests are being handled in the
traditional way which, although I still believe it is quite proper and
legal, is not useful.
 
To fix this problem, open the .EXE file for the Pegasus Mail version
you have using a binary editor such as "Hacker's View" or "Norton's Disk
Edit"; locate the string "X-CONFIRM-RECEIPT-TO" (there is only one copy
in the .EXE file) and change it to "X-CONFIRM-READING-TO". This will
correct the problem and will allow Pegasus Mail to send directed
confirmations of reading. You can expect to find the string at
approximately these hexadecimal offsets in the .EXE file:
 
    For Pegasus Mail/DOS v3.22      --     215B5H (136629 decimal)
    For WinPMail v1.22              --      B8A7H (47271 decimal)
 
Once again, my apologies to you all over this; the hardest problems to
find are often the ones you think you've fixed.
 
Cheers!
 
-- David --
 
------------------ David Harris -+- Pegasus Mail --------------------------
  Box 5451, Dunedin, New Zealand | e-mail: [log in to unmask]
 +64 3 4536880/Fax +64 3 4536612 | CIS: >internet:[log in to unmask]
 
Quote for the day:
    "If all the girls at the Yale Prom were laid end-to-end
     I wouldn't be at all surprised."     -- Dorothy Parker