Re: 23.0.60; Feature request: Menu item "load init files" after -q/-Q

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@xemacs.org>]

Lennart Borgman (gmail) writes:

 > I told earlier that on w32 this works because the bug reporter falls 
 > back to using the system mail program (as an example this in my case 
 > Thunderbird). Why can't this be done on other systems as well today?

Primarily because Windows workstations don't provide a mail server,
and so if you use mail at all you must configure your mail client to
send and receive via an external server, typically managed by
professionals in a for-pay service such as your employer or an ISP.
If you do not have an ISP, your mail will normally fail in a rather
obvious way.  Ie, mail works, or you know that it didn't, and you'll
try something else.

Free OSes *do* usually provide mail servers, and configure clients to
communicate with the local mail server.  This includes clients like
Thunderbird that on Windows you would expect to configure to use a
smart host.  On the other hand, it's not so easy to use webmail
services like Gmail as batch mailers (which is what report-emacs-bug
expects), so as far as I know report-emacs-bug doesn't even try to use
those.

In the past (not so distant, either), the default configuration of a
free OS as a non-relaying Internet mail host worked quite well.
Today, however, these hosts typically are subject to spam filtering
and firewalling for various reasons.  You can no longer expect to
receive notice of problems with your mail service unless you have set
it up quite carefully.  In fact, it is quite common for messages to
disappear silently into a black hole.  However, since mail still works
fairly well most of the time even if misconfigured, many users make
the dubious choice (or simply accept a partially functional default)
of providing their own mail transfer service, rather than using a
smart host provided by qualified mail administrators.

HTH