Re: smtp crap

[Tim Cross <theophilusx@gmail.com>]

On Mon, Oct 10, 2011 at 1:50 AM, Sivaram Neelakantan

[snip]

 > what about checking whether there's a .gnus file, or a VM,
> Mews/rmail(and other Emacs only mail client) dot file and not doing
> anything in such a case?  Yes, I understand, users can name their dot
> files arbitrarily but since we are trying defaults....
>

The issue is about whether your emacs uses smtp to send mail via a
remote MTA or a locally installed one.  It is further complicated by
the fact that an unknown number of users don't actaully want to use
emacs as their MUA AT ALL. and are irritated by questions concerning
emacs and smtp which they see as irrelevant.

Checking to see if the user is using gnus, VM, mew, wonderlust et. al.
doesn't really help as all of these mail user agents can use either a
local MTA or a remote MTA. For your suggestion to work, it would be
necessary to both know what all the config files are for each MUA and
then also interpret that config to tell if it is using a local MTA or
a remote MTA.  As you point out, there is also the problem of people
using non-standard names for config files. However, in addition to
this, there is the problem that many of these emacs MUAs can/do use
custom for configuration options and may not even have a MUA specific
config file or may have their config details spread between both
package specific config files and custom data, which itself could be
in .emacs or somewhere else.

Note that I think the behavior where emacs is repeatedly asking what
you want to do is a bug and not a feature. From my understanding of
what Lars wanted to do, this question should be asked only once.
Others have argued that asking it even once may be too often.

Tim

-
Tim Cross