emacs MUAs with working smtp authentication?

emacs MUAs with working smtp authentication?

[Bill White]

Are there any emacs-based MUAs that handle smtp authentication more or
less "out of the box" with the setting of a few clearly-documented
variables?  If so, can you point me to the documentation?

I'm using cvs emacs from this afternoon.

Many thanks -

Bill
minutiae@gmail.com

Re: emacs MUAs with working smtp authentication?

[Peter Dyballa]

Am 30.08.2006 um 06:28 schrieb Bill White:

> Are there any emacs-based MUAs that handle smtp authentication more or
> less "out of the box" with the setting of a few clearly-documented
> variables?  If so, can you point me to the documentation?

This page mentions some: http://homepage.mac.com/zenitani/emacs-e.html

--
Greetings

   Pete

"Don't just do something, sit there."

Re: emacs MUAs with working smtp authentication?

[Alok G. Singh]

On 30 Aug 2006, minutiae@gmail.com wrote:

> Are there any emacs-based MUAs that handle smtp authentication more
> or less "out of the box" with the setting of a few
> clearly-documented variables?

Partly due to the single threaded nature of Emacs, I would suggest
that you leave the actual mail collection to fetchmail (or similar)
and just read from your mailbox.

-- 
Alok

Madison's Inquiry:
	If you have to travel on the Titanic, why not go first class?

Re: emacs MUAs with working smtp authentication?

[Phillip Lord]

>>>>> "BW" == Bill White <minutiae@gmail.com> writes:

  BW> Are there any emacs-based MUAs that handle smtp authentication
  BW> more or less "out of the box" with the setting of a few
  BW> clearly-documented variables?  If so, can you point me to the
  BW> documentation?

  BW> I'm using cvs emacs from this afternoon.


I've just been trying this and as far as I can see the answer is
no. Getting email in an authenticated, secure manner is okay. Sending
is not.

Phil

Re: emacs MUAs with working smtp authentication?

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: "Bill White" <minutiae@gmail.com>
> Date: 29 Aug 2006 21:28:54 -0700
> 
> Are there any emacs-based MUAs that handle smtp authentication more or
> less "out of the box" with the setting of a few clearly-documented
> variables?  If so, can you point me to the documentation?
> 
> I'm using cvs emacs from this afternoon.

I might misunderstand what you mean by ``smtp authentication'', but it
seems to me that smtpmail.el is what you are looking for.

If smtpmail doesn't fit the bill, please tell what's missing there.

Re: emacs MUAs with working smtp authentication?

[Bill White]

Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> > From: "Bill White" <minutiae@gmail.com>
> > Date: 29 Aug 2006 21:28:54 -0700
> >
> > Are there any emacs-based MUAs that handle smtp authentication more or
> > less "out of the box" with the setting of a few clearly-documented
> > variables?  If so, can you point me to the documentation?
> >
> > I'm using cvs emacs from this afternoon.
>
> I might misunderstand what you mean by ``smtp authentication'', but it
> seems to me that smtpmail.el is what you are looking for.
>
> If smtpmail doesn't fit the bill, please tell what's missing there.

Indeed, I need a way to authenticate outgoing email thanks to new
requirements set by my employer.  I'm using gnus (from cvs emacs
compiled on a Fedora Core 4 system) and haven't been able to make it
work.  Simon Josefsson tried to help me with this a couple of years ago
when authentication was set up at my employer (but before it was
*required*), but we failed to get it working.  I no longer remember the
details but I'll dig them up to see whether they might work better
nowadays.

I spent yesterday googling and twiddling variables to no avail.   The
IT folks at work know all about setting up the point-n-click MUAs; I'm
the only one using gnus and they have no idea how to help me.

I wish I knew what was missing in my smtpmail/system setup.  Shall I
post details here, or move the discussion to one of the gnus groups?
I'd even switch to VM or rmail (or others) to do authentication as long
as I can stay within emacs, where I do everything else at work.

Thanks -

Bill
minutiae@gmail.com

Re: emacs MUAs with working smtp authentication?

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: "Bill White" <minutiae@gmail.com>
> Date: 30 Aug 2006 07:39:05 -0700
> 
> I wish I knew what was missing in my smtpmail/system setup.  Shall I
> post details here, or move the discussion to one of the gnus groups?

If you are using smtpmail.el from the CVS version of Emacs, I think
the proper place is emacs-devel@gnu.org.  The details of your smtpmail
setup and the contents of the "*trace of SMTP session to <somewhere>*"
buffer would be a good starting point.

If you use the Gnus facilities, then the Gnus forum would be a better
place to ask for help.

Re: emacs MUAs with working smtp authentication?

[Ralf Angeli]

* Bill White (2006-08-30) writes:

> I wish I knew what was missing in my smtpmail/system setup.

Have you read the smtpmail manual and followed its advice?  It's
accessible with `C-h i d m smtp RET'.

With Gnus you basically need to set `message-send-mail-function' and
`smtpmail-smtp-server' for making basic sending of mail work.  For
authentication you just need to specify machine, login and password in
~/.authinfo, which `smtpmail-auth-credentials' points to per default.
For the syntax of entries in the file see `man netrc'.  If you want to
use starttls with SMTP, set `smtpmail-starttls-credentials'
accordingly.

-- 
Ralf

Re: emacs MUAs with working smtp authentication?

[Phillip Lord]

>>>>> "Eli" == Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

  >> From: "Bill White" <minutiae@gmail.com> Date: 29 Aug 2006
  >> 21:28:54 -0700
  >> 
  >> Are there any emacs-based MUAs that handle smtp authentication
  >> more or less "out of the box" with the setting of a few
  >> clearly-documented variables?  If so, can you point me to the
  >> documentation?
  >> 
  >> I'm using cvs emacs from this afternoon.

  Eli> I might misunderstand what you mean by ``smtp authentication'',
  Eli> but it seems to me that smtpmail.el is what you are looking
  Eli> for.

  Eli> If smtpmail doesn't fit the bill, please tell what's missing
  Eli> there.


Eli

I've been having the same problems. Quite a few people have been
having problems with setting up smtpmail to use authentication and
encryption. 

I think that part of the problem is the protocol, part the
documentation, part of the problem is the lack of good defaults within
the code. Finally, part of the difficulty is that, as far as I can
tell, it just doesn't work on windows.


First, the protocol. SMTP uses tls for encryption. smtpmail uses
gnutls to support this. Why smtp can't use an SSL layer, as IMAP (and
most other things) does I don't know. Still, there is little that can
be done about this. No doubt there are reasons that I am unaware of --
network/mail protocols are something I know little about. 

Second, the defaults. To use TLS, you have to reconfigure things like
the ports manually, and have to do so in multiple places. So, for
example, from the smtpmail documentation.....


;;(setq send-mail-function 'smtpmail-send-it) ; if you use `mail'
;;(setq message-send-mail-function 'smtpmail-send-it) ; if you use message/Gnus
;;(setq smtpmail-default-smtp-server "YOUR SMTP HOST")
;;(setq smtpmail-local-domain "YOUR DOMAIN NAME")
;;(setq smtpmail-sendto-domain "YOUR DOMAIN NAME")
;;(setq smtpmail-debug-info t) ; only to debug problems
;;(setq smtpmail-auth-credentials  ; or use ~/.authinfo
;;      '(("YOUR SMTP HOST" 25 "username" "password")))
;;(setq smtpmail-starttls-credentials
;;      '(("YOUR SMTP HOST" 25 "~/.my_smtp_tls.key" "~/.my_smtp_tls.cert")))




Now authentication mail often uses a different port. So you have to
change this. But this is done in smtpmail-smtp-service. The 25's in
auth-credentials are only used to determine which credentials should
be used. Confusing. I don't know what the standards are, but most mail
readers you just click "SSL/TLS encryption" and the ports get set, or
guessed, automatically. 


Third, the documentation. Take...

;;(setq smtpmail-starttls-credentials
;;      '(("YOUR SMTP HOST" 25 "~/.my_smtp_tls.key" "~/.my_smtp_tls.cert")))


So, whats .my_smtp_tls.key then? Where does it come from? How do I get
it? Can I use gnutls to generate it? I have no idea at all. Further
investigation suggests that actually you can leave this blank, and it
should still work. 

Finally, it doesn't seem to work on windows. I spent three hours with
a debugger a couple of days ago -- I figured this was the only way to
see if I had the configuration right. It appears that starttls.el uses
Unix specific process handling, so won't work with NTEmacs.

At the moment, I have access to a non TLS based stream, but this isn't
going to last for ever. I suspect that many people are in the same
boat. 

Cheers

Phil

Re: emacs MUAs with working smtp authentication?

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Phillip Lord <phillip.lord@newcastle.ac.uk>
> Date: Thu, 31 Aug 2006 12:11:53 +0100
> 
> First, the protocol. SMTP uses tls for encryption.

The OP didn't mention encryption.  If he did, I would have understood
the difficulties.  But he only mentioned authentication, which I use
on my system without any significant problems.

> Second, the defaults. To use TLS, you have to reconfigure things like
> the ports manually, and have to do so in multiple places. So, for
> example, from the smtpmail documentation.....
> [...]
> Now authentication mail often uses a different port. So you have to
> change this. But this is done in smtpmail-smtp-service. The 25's in
> auth-credentials are only used to determine which credentials should
> be used. Confusing. I don't know what the standards are, but most mail
> readers you just click "SSL/TLS encryption" and the ports get set, or
> guessed, automatically. 

I suggest to post these (IMHO justified) complaints on
emacs-devel@gnu.org, where the smtpmail maintainer will see them.

> Third, the documentation. Take...
> 
> ;;(setq smtpmail-starttls-credentials
> ;;      '(("YOUR SMTP HOST" 25 "~/.my_smtp_tls.key" "~/.my_smtp_tls.cert")))
> 
> 
> So, whats .my_smtp_tls.key then? Where does it come from? How do I get
> it? Can I use gnutls to generate it? I have no idea at all. Further
> investigation suggests that actually you can leave this blank, and it
> should still work. 

Same here: anything that is unclear in the docs is a bug that should
be fixed.  Reporting this on emacs-devel will cause the maintainer
DTRT.

> Finally, it doesn't seem to work on windows. I spent three hours with
> a debugger a couple of days ago -- I figured this was the only way to
> see if I had the configuration right. It appears that starttls.el uses
> Unix specific process handling, so won't work with NTEmacs.

I think you are right, but I don't use the TLS encryption in my setup.

Re: emacs MUAs with working smtp authentication?

[Phillip Lord]

>>>>> "Eli" == Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

  >> From: Phillip Lord <phillip.lord@newcastle.ac.uk> Date: Thu, 31
  >> Aug 2006 12:11:53 +0100
  >> 
  >> First, the protocol. SMTP uses tls for encryption.

  Eli> The OP didn't mention encryption.  If he did, I would have
  Eli> understood the difficulties.  But he only mentioned
  Eli> authentication, which I use on my system without any
  Eli> significant problems.


I am reading between the lines. There are many forms of
authentication, many of which smtpmail supports. In my experience,
however, the move toward secure channels to SMTP servers is gathering
pace -- the only surprise for me is that it took so long. 

So, I suspect that the OP was talking about SSL/TLS. But he may not
have been. 


  Eli> Same here: anything that is unclear in the docs is a bug that
  Eli> should be fixed.  Reporting this on emacs-devel will cause the
  Eli> maintainer DTRT.

Yes, you are right. I should have just done this. 


  >> Finally, it doesn't seem to work on windows. I spent three hours
  >> with a debugger a couple of days ago -- I figured this was the
  >> only way to see if I had the configuration right. It appears that
  >> starttls.el uses Unix specific process handling, so won't work
  >> with NTEmacs.

  Eli> I think you are right, but I don't use the TLS encryption in my
  Eli> setup.

I have found a hack to fix this now (which isn't pretty!). I'll try it
out in a few days time.

Cheers

Phil

-- 
Phillip Lord,                           Phone: +44 (0) 191 222 7827
Lecturer in Bioinformatics,             Email: phillip.lord@newcastle.ac.uk
School of Computing Science,            http://homepages.cs.ncl.ac.uk/phillip.lord
Newcastle University,                   Claremont Tower, Room 909
NE1 7RU

Re: emacs MUAs with working smtp authentication?

[ken]

Eli Zaretskii wrote:
>> ....
>>
> 
>> Third, the documentation. Take...
>>
>> ;;(setq smtpmail-starttls-credentials
>> ;;      '(("YOUR SMTP HOST" 25 "~/.my_smtp_tls.key" "~/.my_smtp_tls.cert")))
>>
>>
>> So, whats .my_smtp_tls.key then? Where does it come from? How do I get
>> it? Can I use gnutls to generate it? I have no idea at all. Further
>> investigation suggests that actually you can leave this blank, and it
>> should still work. 

The documentation could be made considerably clearer by speaking in
terms of SERVER and CLIENT rather than simply HOST.


> ....

Re: emacs MUAs with working smtp authentication?

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Fri, 01 Sep 2006 10:58:46 -0400
> From: ken <gebser@speakeasy.net>
> CC: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org
> 
> The documentation could be made considerably clearer by speaking in
> terms of SERVER and CLIENT rather than simply HOST.

PLEASE! post such suggestions to emacs-devel, as I wrote in my
message.  Posting them here is just useless waste of time and net
bandwidth, because most Emacs maintainers don't read this list.

TIA

Re: emacs MUAs with working smtp authentication?

[Ralf Angeli]

* Eli Zaretskii (2006-09-01) writes:

>> From: Phillip Lord <phillip.lord@newcastle.ac.uk>
>> 
>> Finally, it doesn't seem to work on windows. I spent three hours with
>> a debugger a couple of days ago -- I figured this was the only way to
>> see if I had the configuration right. It appears that starttls.el uses
>> Unix specific process handling, so won't work with NTEmacs.
>
> I think you are right, but I don't use the TLS encryption in my setup.

Simon Josefsson is working on a gnutls-cli executable for Windows.

-- 
Ralf

Re: emacs MUAs with working smtp authentication?

[ken]

Eli Zaretskii wrote:
>> ....
>>
> 
>> Third, the documentation. Take...
>>
>> ;;(setq smtpmail-starttls-credentials
>> ;;      '(("YOUR SMTP HOST" 25 "~/.my_smtp_tls.key" "~/.my_smtp_tls.cert")))
>>
>>
>> So, whats .my_smtp_tls.key then? Where does it come from? How do I get
>> it? Can I use gnutls to generate it? I have no idea at all. Further
>> investigation suggests that actually you can leave this blank, and it
>> should still work. 

The documentation could be made considerably clearer by speaking in
terms of SERVER and CLIENT rather than simply HOST.


> ....

Re: emacs MUAs with working smtp authentication?

[Patricia J. Hawkins]

>>>>> "PL" == Phillip Lord <phillip.lord@newcastle.ac.uk> writes:

PL> Second, the defaults. To use TLS, you have to reconfigure things like
PL> the ports manually, and have to do so in multiple places. So, for
PL> example, from the smtpmail documentation.....

One solution on Windows is simply to use Hamster as a machine-local
mail/news server.
http://www.arcorhome.de/newshamster/tgl/

-- 
Patricia J. Hawkins
Hawkins Internet Applications
www.hawkinsia.com

Re: emacs MUAs with working smtp authentication?

[Phillip Lord]

>>>>> "Eli" == Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:

  >> Date: Fri, 01 Sep 2006 10:58:46 -0400 From: ken
  >> <gebser@speakeasy.net> CC: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org
  >> 
  >> The documentation could be made considerably clearer by speaking
  >> in terms of SERVER and CLIENT rather than simply HOST.

  Eli> PLEASE! post such suggestions to emacs-devel, as I wrote in my
  Eli> message.  Posting them here is just useless waste of time and
  Eli> net bandwidth, because most Emacs maintainers don't read this
  Eli> list.

I've sent my original comments in now. 

Cheers

Phil

Re: emacs MUAs with working smtp authentication?

[Ryo]

Bill White wrote:
> Are there any emacs-based MUAs that handle smtp authentication more or
> less "out of the box" with the setting of a few clearly-documented
> variables?  If so, can you point me to the documentation?

Has somebody mentioned "mew"? (http://www.mew.org/ )
I think it does everything "out of the box", including
SMTP on SSL with or without authentication for sending email;
and IMAP and POP on SSL for receiving email.  For example,

http://www.mew.org/release/info/mew_78.html.en#SEC78

How much of the functionality works "out of the box" debends
on how your "box" is configured "out of the box". :-)  I've
been using mew for a long time.  I remember that switching from
plain SMTP to authenticated SMTP required only a couple
of lines in mew's configuration file, ~/.mew.el  .

Ryo

Re: emacs MUAs with working smtp authentication?

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: "Ryo" <furufuru@ccsr.u-tokyo.ac.jp>
> Date: 5 Sep 2006 19:35:43 -0700
> 
> Bill White wrote:
> > Are there any emacs-based MUAs that handle smtp authentication more or
> > less "out of the box" with the setting of a few clearly-documented
> > variables?  If so, can you point me to the documentation?
> 
> Has somebody mentioned "mew"? (http://www.mew.org/ )

No, because the OP said he doesn't want to abandon RMAIL.

Installing mew (editing Makefile.in)

[ken]

Ryo wrote:
> Bill White wrote:
>> Are there any emacs-based MUAs that handle smtp authentication more or
>> less "out of the box" with the setting of a few clearly-documented
>> variables?  If so, can you point me to the documentation?
> 
> Has somebody mentioned "mew"? (http://www.mew.org/ )
> I think it does everything "out of the box", including
> SMTP on SSL with or without authentication for sending email;
> and IMAP and POP on SSL for receiving email.  For example,
> 
> http://www.mew.org/release/info/mew_78.html.en#SEC78
> 
> How much of the functionality works "out of the box" debends
> on how your "box" is configured "out of the box". :-)  I've
> been using mew for a long time.  I remember that switching from
> plain SMTP to authenticated SMTP required only a couple
> of lines in mew's configuration file, ~/.mew.el  .

Thanks very much, Ryo.  I hope mew works.  I've just downloaded and
untarred mew-5.1 and know I need to edit the values of some variables in
Makefile.in:

prefix=@prefix@
exec_prefix=@exec_prefix@
libdir=@libdir@
datadir=@datadir@
infodir=@infodir@

These are very much standard variables; I've installed emacs from a
tarball several times before and it's always been a guessing game,
trying to figure out what the values of these should be.  This guessing
game is complicated a bit more this time because mew is to work with an
installation of emacs which was installed, not for the entire
machine/system, but just for one user.  I.e., emacs v.22.0.50.1 was
installed under a user's $HOME just for the use of this one user.  The
emacs executable is still in $HOME/linux/tarballs/emacs/src/ where the
emacs install put it; it's run by means of an alias.

The questions I have are simply this: how do one determine the values
for the above Makefile.in variables?  While it's never a good idea to
guess what a value should be based on the variable name (for, as
programmers know, a variable name can be anything the programmer wants),
there's little or no other information to go on.  So-- guessing-- I
could well imagine that

infodir=$HOME/linux/tarballs/emacs/info/

though it's another guess whether the trailing slash (/) is necessary or
an error or developer- or OS- or machine-dependent.  So this becomes two
questions.

Guessing again by the variable name, I'm imagining that "exec-prefix"
means "where the 'emacs' executable is located," and so that for my
particular installation it would be

exec_prefix=$HOME/linux/tarballs/emacs/src/

But without documentation which might explain if exec_prefix is looking
for a particular file or set of files, or the purpose or reasoning
behind using it, it's really impossible to know.

The other above-mentioned variable names are quite vague, so much so
that even imagination fails to come up with likely value candidates.  So
if someone knows how to determine what values these variables should
have, it would be much appreciated.

prefix=
exec_prefix=
libdir=
datadir=
infodir=


Thanks.


-- 
One is not superior merely because one
sees the world as odious.
                -- Chateaubriand (1768-1848)

Re: Installing mew (editing Makefile.in)

[Ryo]

ken wrote:
[. . .]
> Thanks very much, Ryo.  I hope mew works.  I've just downloaded and
> untarred mew-5.1 and know I need to edit the values of some variables in
> Makefile.in:
>
> prefix=@prefix@
> exec_prefix=@exec_prefix@
> libdir=@libdir@
> datadir=@datadir@
> infodir=@infodir@
>
> These are very much standard variables; I've installed emacs from a
> tarball several times before and it's always been a guessing game,
> trying to figure out what the values of these should be.  This guessing
> game is complicated a bit more this time because mew is to work with an
> installation of emacs which was installed, not for the entire
> machine/system, but just for one user.  I.e., emacs v.22.0.50.1 was
> installed under a user's $HOME just for the use of this one user.

Brave you, Ken. :) I've given up installing emacs for myself for a
long time, so I'm afraid I can't help you here.  I still install
small packages from tarballs or sources from time to time, but
big ones like emacs and TeX are too time-consuming to me.  I use
Debian GNU/Linux, where most things are available in the form of
binary packages.  Add-ons to emacs (such as mew) are provided as
separate packages, which are installed for various versions emacs
(xemacs, emacs20, emacs21, etc.) automatically.  I know this
doesn't install things under your home directory.

Anyway, I don't know if it's of any help to you, but I found elisp
files and their byte-compiled versions of mew in
/usr/share/emacs21/site-lisp/mew/ .  I hope experts on emacs will
help you.

Regards,
Ryo

Re: Installing mew (editing Makefile.in)

[Peter Dyballa]

Am 13.09.2006 um 21:34 schrieb Ryo:

>> prefix=@prefix@
>> exec_prefix=@exec_prefix@
>> libdir=@libdir@
>> datadir=@datadir@
>> infodir=@infodir@

Usually configure finds the right values. This set is used in my  
*Makefile* for GNU Emacs 22.0.50:

	prefix=/usr/local
	exec_prefix=${prefix}
	
	datadir=${prefix}/share
	infodir=${prefix}/info
	
	archlibdir=${libexecdir}/emacs/${version}/${configuration}

Substitute /usr/local with the parent directory in which the share  
and info directories were created.

--
Greetings

   Pete

The day Microsoft makes something that doesn't suck
is the day they start selling vacuum cleaners.
                                     Ernest Jan Plugge

Re: Installing mew (editing Makefile.in)

[Miles Bader]

ken <gebser@speakeasy.net> writes:
> Thanks very much, Ryo.  I hope mew works.  I've just downloaded and
> untarred mew-5.1 and know I need to edit the values of some variables in
> Makefile.in:

No, you _shouldn't_ be editting Makefile.in, you should be running the
configure script which will do all that stuff for you...

E.g.:

   ./configure

or:

   ./configure --prefix=$HOME

to install everything underneath your home directory.

The configure script will derive all those various specific variables
using the prefix you give it.

-Miles

-- 
80% of success is just showing up.  --Woody Allen

Re: Installing mew (editing Makefile.in)

[ken]

Miles Bader wrote:
> ken <gebser@speakeasy.net> writes:
>> Thanks very much, Ryo.  I hope mew works.  I've just downloaded and
>> untarred mew-5.1 and know I need to edit the values of some variables in
>> Makefile.in:
> 
> No, you _shouldn't_ be editting Makefile.in, you should be running the
> configure script which will do all that stuff for you...
> 
> E.g.:
> 
>    ./configure
> 
> or:
> 
>    ./configure --prefix=$HOME
>
> to install everything underneath your home directory.

Really?  Even though the emacs executable is in
$HOME/linux/tarballs/emacs/src/ and the source and byte-compiled lisp
files are in $HOME/linux/tarballs/emacs/lisp/?  Doesn't mew need to find
certain emacs files and vice versa?  Or does ./configure figure out
where everything is?


> The configure script will derive all those various specific variables
> using the prefix you give it.

Say I'm not optimistic about everything going right....  Is there anyway
to do a check before doing the make?


Thanks for the tip.
ken


> 
> -Miles
> 

Re: Installing mew (editing Makefile.in)

[ken]

Ryo wrote:
> ken wrote:
> [. . .]
>> Thanks very much, Ryo.  I hope mew works.  I've just downloaded and
>> untarred mew-5.1 and know I need to edit the values of some variables in
>> Makefile.in:
>>
>> prefix=@prefix@
>> exec_prefix=@exec_prefix@
>> libdir=@libdir@
>> datadir=@datadir@
>> infodir=@infodir@
>>
>> These are very much standard variables; I've installed emacs from a
>> tarball several times before and it's always been a guessing game,
>> trying to figure out what the values of these should be.  This guessing
>> game is complicated a bit more this time because mew is to work with an
>> installation of emacs which was installed, not for the entire
>> machine/system, but just for one user.  I.e., emacs v.22.0.50.1 was
>> installed under a user's $HOME just for the use of this one user.
> 
> Brave you, Ken. :) I've given up installing emacs for myself for a
> long time, so I'm afraid I can't help you here.  I still install
> small packages from tarballs or sources from time to time, but
> big ones like emacs and TeX are too time-consuming to me.  I use
> Debian GNU/Linux, where most things are available in the form of
> binary packages.  Add-ons to emacs (such as mew) are provided as
> separate packages, which are installed for various versions emacs
> (xemacs, emacs20, emacs21, etc.) automatically.  I know this
> doesn't install things under your home directory. 

I used to install everything from tarballs.  The first Linux I ever
installed, Slackware, was nothing but tarballs.  (It took two or three
weeks to download the distro-- using a 2400bd modem-- and then a day to
install and configure!)  I think since tarballs was all there was and
*everyone* was using them, the documentation was better.  You could see
and understand much better what was going on and it was easier to fix
things that didn't go right.  But Linux systems have gotten more complex
while, at the same time, the documentation has gotten worse, so much so
that it's just not fun anymore.  And it's not just me saying this.  All
my old Linux buddies say the same.


> 
> Anyway, I don't know if it's of any help to you, but I found elisp
> files and their byte-compiled versions of mew in
> /usr/share/emacs21/site-lisp/mew/ .  I hope experts on emacs will
> help you.

Thanks.  Yeah, that sounds like where they should go... normally.  But
again, I'm installing, not for the whole system, but just for the use of
one user.  So the whole install should go under that one user's $HOME.
So the site-lisp directory is at ~/linux/tarballs/emacs/site-lisp/.
Well, so I guess after I install mew there should be a mew directory
there.  We'll see how that goes.


> 
> Regards,
> Ryo

Thanks, Ryo.

Re: Installing mew (editing Makefile.in)

[Miles Bader]

ken <gebser@speakeasy.net> writes:
> Really?  Even though the emacs executable is in
> $HOME/linux/tarballs/emacs/src/ and the source and byte-compiled lisp
> files are in $HOME/linux/tarballs/emacs/lisp/?  Doesn't mew need to find
> certain emacs files and vice versa?  Or does ./configure figure out
> where everything is?

Typically it _tries_ to find out, but has options you can use to specify
anything that's too weird.

I don't know about mew in particular, but ./configure --help should
show most of the options you can use.

-Miles

-- 
We live, as we dream -- alone....

Re: Installing mew (editing Makefile.in)

[ken]

Miles Bader wrote:
> On 9/14/06, ken <gebser@speakeasy.net> wrote:
>> 
>> ....
> 
> Er, well, they almost always have reasonable defaults.  If you don't
> know what the value should be, why not just let it pick whatever it
> picks?  It will always be something underneath the prefix you specify,
> e.g., if you use --prefix=$HOME/linux, it will usually put executables
> in $HOME/linux/bin, typical lisp files in
> $HOME/linux/share/emacs/site-lisp, etc.

When working with computers, I guess I much prefer a rational
approach... sort of averse to wingin' it.


> Now that I look at your message again, it sounds like you never
> actually installed Emacs, and are running it out of the build
> directory.  ....

Peter mentioned a similar concern.  See my reply to him.


> ....
> 
> I suspect the right thing to do is specify a prefix like $HOME/linux,
> and then if emacs isn't looking there, just add the resulting
> site-lisp directory to the load-path variable in your .emacs file.

Or I could "C-h v load-path", see where emacs thinks site-lisp is, and
then just move the files there.  Seems cleaner to me.

Speaking of clean and load-path, where's the best place to trim out some
of the (too many and unused) directories listed in load-path?


Thanks for all the tips,
ken

PS.  I remember now that long ago there wasn't a configure script... you
just edited the Makefile to configure the variable for compiling.  I
guess some of those old brain cells woke up at the wrong time.


-- 
One is not superior merely because one
sees the world as odious.
                -- Chateaubriand (1768-1848)

Re: Installing mew (editing Makefile.in)

[Peter Dyballa]

Am 15.09.2006 um 03:39 schrieb ken:

> Speaking of clean and load-path, where's the best place to trim out  
> some
> of the (too many and unused) directories listed in load-path?

src/epaths.h – but it's not easy, since it's created late during  
configuration. Could be there are more C files.

--
Greetings

   Pete

The mathematician who pursues his studies without clear views of this  
matter, must often have the uncomfortable feeling that his paper and  
pencil surpass him in intelligence.
                                            Ernst Mach

Re: emacs MUAs with working smtp authentication?

[Paul Puschmann]

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Bill White <minutiae@gmail.com> schrieb am Tue, Aug 29, 2006 at 09:28:54PM -0700:
> Are there any emacs-based MUAs that handle smtp authentication more or
> less "out of the box" with the setting of a few clearly-documented
> variables?  If so, can you point me to the documentation?
> 
> I'm using cvs emacs from this afternoon.
> 
It is not emacs-only but works well: msmtp (often used with mutt)

Paul

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