unofficial mirror of emacs-devel@gnu.org 
 help / color / mirror / code / Atom feed
From: "Drew Adams" <drew.adams@oracle.com>
To: <emacs-devel@gnu.org>
Subject: Can bug #9074 please be fixed? Reporting bugs is still horribly broken
Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2011 09:18:15 -0700	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <3FD3886FCD2A4C05941772F07AB86673@us.oracle.com> (raw)

This annoying bug is going on two months old soon.  Can it please be fixed?

We should NOT be making users jump through unnecessary hoops to report bugs from
emacs -Q.  We should make it as easy as possible for users to report bugs.

There is NO reason that a user who already has an outside-Emacs email client
(e.g. Outlook, Thunderbird) configured should be bothered by questions about the
email address, forced to edit the `From:' field etc. each time s?he trys to
report a bug from emacs -Q (and emacs -Q reports are what we encourage).

This smacks of annoying marketeering solications to subscribe, enter a contest,
etc..  "SPECIAL OFFER! - Do you want to use Emacs to do your laundry? Enter
NOW!"  And yet we're not selling soap or anything else here - we're just asking
for some help from users in the form of feedback.

The recent zeal to GNUSify things (or SMTPify, or whatever the motivation) has
hampered Emacs for ordinary users, many of whom already have mail configured
outside Emacs and should not be bothered by this silliness.

This is totally unnecessary.  It is a sophomoric UI:

1. "Is `someone@SOMEMACHINE.i-did-not-set--mail-host-address--so-tickle-me'
really your email address? (yes or no) "

2. Answer `no'.

3. Scroll up to find `From:'.  Edit it to show the correct email address.

4. Try C-c C-c again.

5. "Configure outgoing SMTP in Emacs (y or n)"

6. Answer `n'.

ALL of that is unnecessary annoyance.  It does not respect users.  And it
probably has a negative effect on our obtaining bug reports.

This just gives the impression that _Emacs_ doesn't know how to use email!

After all, who doesn't already have email configured nowadays?  (No, please
don't bother explaining about configuring email for a local GNU/Linux machine.
Tim already addressed this in detail - if you cannot see the light otherwise,
please just think "mobile devices" and "21st century".)

Whether or not a user has email configured is NOT the business of
`report-emacs-bug'.

If email is not configured properly then the user will find out about it soon
enough.  Our missing a bug report because the occasional user's email was not
configured is nowhere near as bad as annoying lots of users over and over again
(and possibly missing bug reports because they decide it's just not worth the
silly hassle).

The dialog to send a bug report should not include a dialog to configure email.
Period.  This should be a no-brainer.  I cannot believe the Emacs maintainers
have let this nonsense go on so long.




             reply	other threads:[~2011-08-22 16:18 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 2+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2011-08-22 16:18 Drew Adams [this message]
2011-08-22 19:11 ` Can bug #9074 please be fixed? Reporting bugs is still horribly broken Deniz Dogan

Reply instructions:

You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:

* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
  and reply-to-all from there: mbox

  Avoid top-posting and favor interleaved quoting:
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style

  List information: https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/

* Reply using the --to, --cc, and --in-reply-to
  switches of git-send-email(1):

  git send-email \
    --in-reply-to=3FD3886FCD2A4C05941772F07AB86673@us.oracle.com \
    --to=drew.adams@oracle.com \
    --cc=emacs-devel@gnu.org \
    /path/to/YOUR_REPLY

  https://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-send-email.html

* If your mail client supports setting the In-Reply-To header
  via mailto: links, try the mailto: link
Be sure your reply has a Subject: header at the top and a blank line before the message body.
Code repositories for project(s) associated with this public inbox

	https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/emacs.git

This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox;
as well as URLs for read-only IMAP folder(s) and NNTP newsgroup(s).