message-make-sender - what's the purpose?

message-make-sender - what's the purpose?

[Sam Steingold]

Hi,
For me (message-make-sender) returns "sds@sds-MacBook-Pro.local".
When can this value be ever useful?
Thanks
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Re: message-make-sender - what's the purpose?

[Lars Ingebrigtsen]

Sam Steingold <sds@gnu.org> writes:

> For me (message-make-sender) returns "sds@sds-MacBook-Pro.local".
> When can this value be ever useful?

It's not very useful, but it's supposed to be a value that the user
"can't" change, so that when posting on Usenet News, we can generate a
"more secure" Sender header to complement the user-driven From header.
For instance when doing Cancel-Lock stuff.

But I assume that your (system-name) evaluates to
"sds@sds-MacBook-Pro.local", which doesn't look very pretty, so you have
a misconfigured OS.

-- 
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Re: message-make-sender - what's the purpose?

[Yuri Khan]

On Fri, May 15, 2015 at 12:54 AM, Sam Steingold <sds@gnu.org> wrote:

> For me (message-make-sender) returns "sds@sds-MacBook-Pro.local".
> When can this value be ever useful?

That function relies on several assumptions that has long become
obsolete: that every machine where a mail user agent might run is
reachable on the Internet, has a host name, and runs a mail transfer
agent which accepts mail directed at that host name.

Under that assumption, if you were user “sds” on a host “example.org”,
email addressed at “sds@example.org” would be delivered to you.

In a modern world, MUAs run on machines which are not “on” the
Internet. They only have true connectivity within a local network and
use NAT when talking to the outside world. Users’ machines have host
names which are only meaningful within the local network. Users’
machines do not run an MTA, preferring to send mail via their mail
provider’s servers.

Now if you were to ssh into a box on your provider’s network and run
Emacs there, the value returned by (message-make-sender) might have a
chance of being useful.

Re: message-make-sender - what's the purpose?

[Sam Steingold]

> * Lars Ingebrigtsen <ynefv@tahf.bet> [2015-12-24 17:19:13 +0100]:
>
> Sam Steingold <sds@gnu.org> writes:
>
>> For me (message-make-sender) returns "sds@sds-MacBook-Pro.local".
>> When can this value be ever useful?
>
> It's not very useful, but it's supposed to be a value that the user
> "can't" change, so that when posting on Usenet News, we can generate a
> "more secure" Sender header to complement the user-driven From header.
> For instance when doing Cancel-Lock stuff.

Given the ease of change of those values (which you acknowledge by using
quotes), and the no-longer-applicable history (as described by Yuri
Khan), isn't it time to remove `message-make-sender' and use
`user-mail-address' instead?

> But I assume that your (system-name) evaluates to
> "sds@sds-MacBook-Pro.local", which doesn't look very pretty, so you have
> a misconfigured OS.

I am not sure this is, in fact, a misconfiguration.
My OOTB ubuntu has (system-name) ==> "sdsGazPro".
Is this a misconfiguration too?


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