Can bug #9074 please be fixed? Reporting bugs is still horribly broken

Can bug #9074 please be fixed? Reporting bugs is still horribly broken

[Drew Adams]

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.

Re: Can bug #9074 please be fixed? Reporting bugs is still horribly broken

[Deniz Dogan]

On 2011-08-22 18:18, Drew Adams wrote:
> [justified rant]

For what it's worth, I completely agree.  It is a nuisance.