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[log in to unmask] said:
> I am after an e-mail tool that can let me know: - if my correspondent
> has read my message. This apparently not only depends on me ticking
> the Confirm delivery / Confirm reading boxes of a tool like Pegasus
> Mail before sending a message, it also depnds on the receiver! Is
> there anything I can do to have say complete control, knowing that
> these messages will be sent to students?
Short answer : No. There is a proposed standard - Message Disposition Notification
(rfc2298) but it hasn't yet been widely adopted. The Pegasus solution will only
work if the recipient is also using Pegasus mail as it's proprietary.
There are two issues here - Confirm delivery and Confirm reading. The former needs
the capability built into the message transfer agent (MTA e.g., sendmail , exim)
which moves mail between sites - this would require that the headers of every mail
message be parsed to see if a confirmation is required. Most postmasters would
balk at the extra load this would put on the system ; the current situation - if it
isn't bounced it got there looks fine from a systems person's point of view.
Forcing a Confirm reading reply is unlikely to come about. The general opinion is
that it's the recipient's choice whether to honour a confirm request.
[log in to unmask] said:
> - know if the students have visited a certain Web page ie if they
> have accessed the Web page as opposed to necessarily reading it (do I
> necessarily need a database?)
Password protect them. The user name then appears in log file (well that's true
for Apache and NCSA servers , couldn't comment on others).
[log in to unmask] said:
> - send them the appropriate message according to whether they have
> visited the Web page(s) or not.
Read up on server side includes.
Gareth
- --
Gareth Owen , Network Systems Group , LIS ,
Aston University , Birmingham , UK
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