Re: MSGTRK pre-drafts

> I thought so.
> 
> Given that SMTP is a subset of message transfer protocols, 2) would mean
> adding verbs and extensions to the rest of them too.

uh, no.  yes there are other message transfer protocols, but SMTP is 
the only message transfer protocol of interest.  none of the other
examples you cited are message transfer protocols.  they can be 
employed to read messages or sometimes to submit messages, but 
they are not designed for this purpose.  it's silly to say that
every protocol that can possibly be used to transfer mail has to
be extended to support message tracking, or even to say that an 
external message tracking protocol has to support the ability to 
track messages through arbitrary other protocols.

> Whilst some of them might need extending to provide or understand the
> tracking ID hand-off, it seems that incorporating the querying mechanism
> only into SMTP wouldn't be terribly flexible.

insisting that a protocol be too flexible is a good way to kill it.
 
> A particular example might be extending the EDI-INT AS2 spec (EDI, S/MIME
> and HTTP).  Not an SMTP server in sight - but a definite need for a
> trackable message.

SMTP has explicit support for relaying.  HTTP does not.  I have a 
hard time understanding the need for message tracking when you only
have two parties handling the message.  

yes, HTTP has proxies, but in the case of a transferring an EDI message 
you want to defeat them.

there are probably good reasons to consider using an external protocol,
but IMHO this  isn't one of them.

Keith