Re: Default for the envelope From in smtpmail.el

[Glenn Morris <rgm@gnu.org>]

Eli Zaretskii wrote:

> Sorry, I cannot figure this out, neither the nature of the problem nor
> the details of the proposed solution.  Can you spell that out?

You are writing an email. The From: header has whatever value it has.
Either it came from user-mail-address, or you edited it in the mail
composition buffer to say what you wanted it to say.

Now you send it. The envelope from address (which is used eg for the
MAIL FROM command sent to the stmp server) should default to whatever
was in the From: header. At the moment, it effectively defaults to
user-mail-address. If this is not the same as From:, you can get
confusing failures to send the mail.

If From: is the same as user-mail-address,, then the change has no
impact on you.

> In particular, is the proposal to stop using user-mail-address, or
> stop using it in smtpmail.el only?

No.

> If the proposal is for not using it only in smtpmail.el, then we need
> to verify that there are no valid use cases without a 'From:' header
> in the current buffer.  Or maybe use 'From:' if it exists and fall
> back on the existing machinery if not.

The proposal is effectively:

(setq mail-specify-envelope-from t
      mail-envelope-from 'header)

If you look at the start of smtpmail-send-it, this would do what you
suggest.