Re: Default for the envelope From in smtpmail.el

[chad <yandros@MIT.EDU>]

On 11 Aug 2012, at 19:08, Glenn Morris <rgm@gnu.org> wrote:

>> I suspect that Glenn is talking about the case where Emacs is
>> pretending to be an MTA.
> 
> Not as far as I know. I'm talking about plain old talking to an SMTP
> server.

Probably poor terminology on my part; I learned most of this when MSA and MTA meant basically the same thing (if they were even coined). This is the case that I meant: emacs speaking a network protocol, as opposed to formatting a file and handing it off to a locale program for delivery.

In the case Stephen was talking about, local users needed privileges to request an envelope-from (via comand-line switch or From: header) that's not the username. Those systems are still out there, but many people just use network services instead, entirely ignoring the local mail systems.  This is basically what emacs does when it talks directly to an SMTP server.

I'd be surprised that the current default ever worked, but with all the changes to the SMTP infrastructure in the past several months, it seems likely that everyone who cares fixes it for themselves (I used to do so myself, with some simple wrapper code around the mail sending code).

I was hoping to clarify for Stephen that you guys aren't talking about the same cases (at least, it seemed to me that you weren't).  I do agree with you about the better default choice, although I also imagine that it's still manually fixed by almost everyone who cares.

I hope that helps.  Sorry for adding to the noise.
*Chad