328341 - Return Receipt tag is not put in header when option is selected to do so.

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Thunderbird :: Message Compose Window, defect)

Description

[Todd Rogers]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.8.0.1) Gecko/20060111 Firefox/1.5.0.1
Build Identifier: Mozilla Thunderbird version 1.5 (20051201) -- Windows 2000

Using Thunderbird in windows the options to include a return receipt in a message does not make Thunderbird put the return receipt request option in the header. 

Scenerios I have tried and do not work:

Compose new message, select Options->Return Receipt.  Fill in To:, subject, message, and send.

Setup preferences to automatically request return receipt, compose new message and send.

In both cases when the message is received by another Thunderbird client, no prompt is given to send a return receipt.  The option is possible on the receiving client, it prompts when requested when a message is sent using SquirrelMail (1.4.5-1).

The source of a message sent using Thunderbird with the Return Receipt option selected is as follows (e-mail addresses edited):

From - Thu Feb 23 14:11:03 2006
X-Mozilla-Status: 0001
X-Mozilla-Status2: 00800000
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: Thu, 23 Feb 2006 14:11:02 -0500
From: Todd Rogers <[e-mail]>
User-Agent: Thunderbird 1.5 (Windows/20051201)
MIME-Version: 1.0
Followup-To: [e-mail]
To: User <[e-mail]>
Subject: test
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

message text

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Compose Message
2. Select Options->Return Receipt
3. Fill in To, Subject, Body
4. Send Message.

Comment 1

[Keith Moore]

I don't think this is a bug.  There is no standard for requesting return receipts via message headers.  There is a nonstandard header field (Return-Receipt-To) but this is known to cause problems with mailing lists (and forwarding in general) so its use is discouraged.

The term "return receipt" is ambiguous anyway.  If you want a confirmation when a message is delivered, there is an SMTP extension to request this, but the request will not be visible in the message header.  (See RFCs 3461-3464 for details.) If you want a confirmation that the message is read, you can request one via a standard message header (Disposition-Notification-To).  But for privacy reasons the recipient's mail reader is free to ignore this request.  (See RFC 3798)

Comment 2

[David :Bienvenu]

the header Disposition-Notification-To should be present, so it does sound like a bug. If you look in your sent folder, does the copy of the message in the sent folder have that header in it's source? If so, the mail server might be stripping it out.

I know in general that return receipt requests work, because I get them from Thunderbird users.

Comment 3

[Keith Moore]

well, my experience has generally been that when people say "return receipt" 
you can't tell what they mean by that (and often, the people using that
term don't fully understand what they mean either.)

but if the intent in Thunderbird is to equate "return receipt" in the user interface with Disposition-Notification-To requests and MDNs, then it seems to work okay for me.

Comment 4

[[:Aureliano Buendía]]

WFM here on 

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.3pre) Gecko/20090819 Lightning/1.0pre Shredder/3.0b4pre ID:20090819062533

Reporter could you try to see if it still happens with
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/thunderbird/nightly/latest-comm-1.9.1/ ?

Comment 5

[[:Aureliano Buendía]]

Closing Incomplete for lack of answers.

Feel free to reopen if you can provide more information.