On Wed, 6 Aug 2008, Ned Freed wrote:
Where is the text that explains this to an implementer without enough
common sense or experience with existing SMTPs?
AFAIK there isn't any.
I'm glad you agree. I'm not hard-of-reading after all :-)
Why don't you write some?
Probably a good place to put the text is in section 3.3 Mail Transactions
where it says:
If accepted, the SMTP server
returns a 250 OK reply and stores the forward-path. If the recipient
is known not to be a deliverable address, the SMTP server returns a
550 reply, typically with a string such as "no such user - " and the
mailbox name (other circumstances and reply codes are possible).
Add:
When the client issues more than one RCPT command, the server's replies
can be a mixture of success and failure codes. If any of the RCPT
commands are accepted, the client SHOULD proceed with the rest of the
transaction. If any of the RCPT commands are rejected with a temporary
failure code, the client SHOULD only queue those recipients for later
retry. If any of the RCPT commands are rejected with a permanent
failure code, the client SHOULD only generate delivery failure
notifications for those recipients.
Tony.
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