Fwd: mailclient-send-it usage of browse-url

Fwd: mailclient-send-it usage of browse-url

[chad]

On Apr 15, 2010, at 1:14 AM, <christian.lynbech@tieto.com> <christian.lynbech@tieto.com> wrote:

>>>>>> "Stefan" == Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> writes:
> 
> Stefan> The problem is that for most users configuring sendmail is difficult
> 
> This is true but it could be that there are ways of using sendmail where
> one would be less reliant of its configuration.
> 
> This was the situation for me when trying to change to using the
> sendmail client. The default value of `mail-specify-envelope-from' is
> nil meaning that we rely on sendmail to generate the envelope and this
> requires sendmail to be setup correctly which apparently isn't the
> default on OSX. However, by setting the variable to true, emacs
> generates the envelope and now mails are getting delivered since they
> have a legitimate envelope which many mailservers wisely seem to
> require.
> 
> The point I am trying ot make here (without being a great sendmail
> expert) that it may be possible to excert enough external control over
> sendmail to ensure delivery, at least for nodes directly connected to
> the internet. If you are in a situation where you need to authenticate,
> other approaches must be used.
> 
> The biggest problem with sendmail (at least on OSX) is that (as David
> mentioned) it may fail silently. Sendmail will in a number of cases
> happily put the mail into the queue and then fail to deliver it later.

As has previously been mentioned, a great number of users have internet 
connections that cannot use sendmail without arcane configuration, because
their network connection blocks the straightforward connection in an attempt
at spam-bot mitigation.  No emacs default variable will fix this.  The user will
not notice that their mail was dropped into a black hole, because the system 
will not inform them -- it will simply and silently drop the mail.  This is not an
abstract concern -- David mentioned that it happened recently that a tester
complained about bug reports going unanswered when in fact his bug reports
were being swallowed by this sort of firewall when the send-mail function was
accidentally set to use sendmail in a beta release.

Until someone writes M-x telepathically-fix-smtp-auth-settings, sendmail cannot
easily be configured by end users.  Until sendmail can easily be configured by 
end users, using `open' is a far, far better choice.

*Chad

Re: mailclient-send-it usage of browse-url

[Lennart Borgman]

On Thu, Apr 15, 2010 at 6:49 PM, chad <yandros@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Until someone writes M-x telepathically-fix-smtp-auth-settings, sendmail cannot
> easily be configured by end users.  Until sendmail can easily be configured by
> end users, using `open' is a far, far better choice.


Better, but not good enough IMO since it does not work for web mail
and a lot of users might have that. (Perhaps especially those that are
making free software at home. I consider those as an important
target.)

As I have already said (without any response) for those users
browse-url with an intermediate html file (see my prev) reply might be
a better solution. And it probably works for mostly all who have a web
browser.

Re: mailclient-send-it usage of browse-url

[Chad Brown]

On Apr 15, 2010, at 10:15 AM, Lennart Borgman wrote:
> Better, but not good enough IMO since it does not work for web mail
> and a lot of users might have that. (Perhaps especially those that are
> making free software at home. I consider those as an important
> target.)
> 
> As I have already said (without any response) for those users
> browse-url with an intermediate html file (see my prev) reply might be
> a better solution. And it probably works for mostly all who have a web
> browser.

All the web mail systems I know today make it pretty easy to attach a file
to an outgoing message; maybe that would work better than putting the 
(fairly large) text in the clipboard/cut-buffer?

Re: mailclient-send-it usage of browse-url

[Lennart Borgman]

On Thu, Apr 15, 2010 at 7:22 PM, Chad Brown <yandros@mit.edu> wrote:
>
>
> On Apr 15, 2010, at 10:15 AM, Lennart Borgman wrote:
>> Better, but not good enough IMO since it does not work for web mail
>> and a lot of users might have that. (Perhaps especially those that are
>> making free software at home. I consider those as an important
>> target.)
>>
>> As I have already said (without any response) for those users
>> browse-url with an intermediate html file (see my prev) reply might be
>> a better solution. And it probably works for mostly all who have a web
>> browser.
>
> All the web mail systems I know today make it pretty easy to attach a file
> to an outgoing message; maybe that would work better than putting the
> (fairly large) text in the clipboard/cut-buffer?


But what is on the clipboard in this case is the message body for the
bug mail message. I do not think that should be sent as an attachment.

Re: mailclient-send-it usage of browse-url

[Stefan Monnier]

> Better, but not good enough IMO since it does not work for web mail
> and a lot of users might have that.

Maybe it won't quite do the best possible thing, but it does solve the
main problem: using an interface where the user is likely to send a bug
report that will just get silently dropped somewhere along the way.

Furthermore, the current code tries mostly to let the "system" figure out
what MUA to use, so if a user is using webmail as her MUA, then the
"system" should know about it; and if the "system" can't be told to use
that webmail system, then it's a problem in the "system".


        Stefan

Re: mailclient-send-it usage of browse-url

[Lennart Borgman]

On Fri, Apr 16, 2010 at 2:14 AM, Stefan Monnier
<monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> wrote:
>> Better, but not good enough IMO since it does not work for web mail
>> and a lot of users might have that.
>
> Maybe it won't quite do the best possible thing, but it does solve the
> main problem: using an interface where the user is likely to send a bug
> report that will just get silently dropped somewhere along the way.
>
> Furthermore, the current code tries mostly to let the "system" figure out
> what MUA to use, so if a user is using webmail as her MUA, then the
> "system" should know about it; and if the "system" can't be told to use
> that webmail system, then it's a problem in the "system".


Yes, it is a system failure, but are we not trying to get around these
here for the purpose of getting the bug reports? I believe the two
step procedure of first displaying a web page and then letting the
user click a mail link there is a little bit more likely to succeed.

I myself has resorted to copy-and-paste when sending bug reports
because of the bad integration with web mail.

Here is how gmail web mail works currently with the best possible w32
system integration (affixa + gmail):

- When "opening" a mailto url affixa catches it and saves it to the
gmail draft folder. And it ask some not very good question first.
- This means there is an empty mail in the draft folder addressed to
bug-gnu-emacs.
- To send the message I have to open the draft folder in the gmail web
interface and then copy the message from the clipboard to it.

Of course I do not do that. I just create a new message from the gmail
web interface.

However even without installing the affixa firefox knows that I am
using gmail. Unfortunately firefox does not care to tell w32 that so
it only works from web pages, not from w32 "open" mailto calls. (That
is why I am suggesting the two step workaround.)

Re: mailclient-send-it usage of browse-url

[Stefan Monnier]

> Yes, it is a system failure, but are we not trying to get around these
> here for the purpose of getting the bug reports?

No.  We have to assume that the "system"'s mail works.
In the past the "system" mail was basically /usr/sbin/sendmail, and
nowadays it's xdg-email/open/....


        Stefan

Re: mailclient-send-it usage of browse-url

[Lennart Borgman]

On Fri, Apr 16, 2010 at 3:08 AM, Stefan Monnier
<monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> wrote:
>> Yes, it is a system failure, but are we not trying to get around these
>> here for the purpose of getting the bug reports?
>
> No.  We have to assume that the "system"'s mail works.
> In the past the "system" mail was basically /usr/sbin/sendmail, and
> nowadays it's xdg-email/open/....


I do not think that the systems's mail is well defined today. It looks
to me like web mail interfaces are becoming more and more important.
They live in the web browser and are often well integrated with web
browsers.

Web pages are important enough to be integrated with the desk top
everywhere (though I am not aware of any real standards). Web mail
does not seem to be integrated very well with the desk top anywhere
(maybe because you can go through web pages).

Re: mailclient-send-it usage of browse-url

[Stefan Monnier]

>>> Yes, it is a system failure, but are we not trying to get around these
>>> here for the purpose of getting the bug reports?
>> No.  We have to assume that the "system"'s mail works.
>> In the past the "system" mail was basically /usr/sbin/sendmail, and
>> nowadays it's xdg-email/open/....
> I do not think that the systems's mail is well defined today.

It is.

> It looks to me like web mail interfaces are becoming more and more
> important.  They live in the web browser and are often well integrated
> with web browsers.

Why is that relevant to Emacs?  If they're important and
xdg-email/open/... don't support it, then please send a bug-report to
the corresponding maintainers.


        Stefan