On 12 Mar 2004 at 9:16, Nick Ragouzis wrote about
"RE: [Exim] Request for comment: cha":
|...
| Relating those definitions to SMTP one might take many definitions. But when one limits oneself to SMTP, without the involvement of
| extra-layer services, the reality of the reception is certain once DATA begins. That is, the uncertainty of reception of an offered,
| valid complete message (within SMTP's realm) is completely expired at that point.
Well, that is certainly not true. The sender may drop the connection
before delivering the <CRLF>.<CRLF>, or the receiver may respond with
an error code rather than success. ISTM in neither case has
reception (within SMTP's realm) actually occured.
On the language lawyering point, FWIW, I think that the concensus
view on what the word "received" means is definitive in such a grey
area. I mean that literally.
On the practical point, where your argument is on the same turf as
the original poster's: A single timestamp *must* misrepresent time
spent in either the sender's or the recipient's queue when the
transmission time is long, and this thread demonstrates that admins
can have different opinions about which better serves their needs.
So if a change is worth making it makes sense to include both times
in some form, as Phillip already proposed. You haven't made a clear
*practical* argument for having the parenthetic time be the ending
time rather than the starting time (it could also be a duration, like
"in NNN sec"). I don't see that it makes much difference, so long as
the wording is clear. Is there any consistency to what other MTAs
do?
- Fred
