Re: Changing the default for `send-mail-function'

[Tim Cross <theophilusx@gmail.com>]

On Fri, Aug 5, 2011 at 7:57 AM, Ken Brown <kbrown@cornell.edu> wrote:
> On 8/4/2011 4:15 PM, Stefan Monnier wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I guess it works on other systems, too?  If sendmail can't be found,
>>>>>>> then perhaps defaulting to mailclient in the `n' case would be a good
>>>>>>> default on all systems?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I'm not sure if the feature freeze would prevent this change from
>>>>>> being made, but I'm sending this as a reminder in case you've
>>>>>> forgotten about it.
>>>>
>>>> Thanks, yes it's something we want to do.
>>>
>>> Good.  There's still the question of exactly what sendmail-query-once
>>> should
>>> do.  I think it should query all users who haven't already set up
>>> smtpmail.
>>
>> I don't understand what you mean.  Clearly it should only query if
>> sendmail-query-once-function is set to `query', otherwise it would keep
>> querying forever those users who don't want to use&setup smtpmail.
>
> Sorry, I wasn't clear.  I meant to refer only to the case where
> sendmail-query-once-function is set to `query'.  The existing code does not
> always query in that situation, even though the documentation says it does.
>
>>> And, when it queries, mailclient should always be one of the choices,
>>> even
>>> if sendmail exists.
>>
>> Yes, of course.  After all, the whole issue that prompted this querying
>> is that the presence of sendmail is not sufficient to guarantee that
>> sendmail can be used.
>
> I'm glad you agree.  Lars seemed to have something else in mind.  (See the
> quote from him at the top of this mail.)  He proposed only offering
> emacsclient as an option on systems that don't have sendmail.
>

This all still feels like over engineering to me. I wonder if we
really need to re-think and re-evaluate some of the assumptions. After
re-reading many of the posts here, I now suspect that the default
should really be mailclient and not smtpmail or sendmail.

- Sendmail is a good choice for people who have a working and
configured sendmail and are not mobile i.e. can either access the net
directly or a smart relay host all the time.

- Mailclient seems appropriate for those who don't use emacs for mail
by choice at all and prefer some other client. I suspect, but it is
only a guess, there are a lot of emacs users out there who do not use
emacs for mail - especially with the growth in web based clients, such
as gmail etc. Nearly everyone on windows would also have a separate
client configured and I suspect it is similar for mac. This is likely
the largest user base.

- smtpmail. This is probably a large chunk of those who do use emacs
as their mail client. A lot of users don't want to bother with the
configuration of a local MTA and prefer to leave that up to someone
else. This paradigm also works better for mobile devices as you can
have authenticated connections that will work regardless of the
network you are currently connected to.

There are numerous other possible configurations, but I suspect they
represent edge cases compared to the three main ones above. These
days, the mailclient and smtpmail users are probably the biggest
numbers.

I would expect that anyone who wants to run emacs as their mail client
is comfortable with configuring it - most likely using smtpmail. They
also probably do this quite early in their install/setup.

Anyone who does not use emacs as their mail client probably gets
frustrated at being forced to configure their mail settings just to do
something like send a bug report. They would probably be more
comfortable and happier with emacs using their normal client,
especially if emacs is able to open the other mail client and setup
the draft message and appropriate recipient headers etc.

I suspect the suggested default of smtpmail is being driven from a
perspective that sees emacs as the mail client for a majority of
users. I'm unconvinced this is actually the case. Looking at mail
header information in emacs related lists certainly gives the
impression that many emacs users do not use emacs as their mail
client.

1. Set the default to mailclient. This will address the concerns
raised regarding misconfigured local MTAs and will work fine for
windows users and probably mac users. It could also work for many GNU
Liinux users if we can honor things like xdg onfig info.

2. Provide a helper function which makes it easier to select and
configure smtpmail. This will help those who want to use smtpmail. On
GNU Linux, we could perhaps default to this setting if we were unable
to identify appropriate mailclient settings.

Tim