From: Karl Fogel <kfogel@red-bean.com>
To: Emacs developers <emacs-devel@gnu.org>
Subject: Question about `message-options-set-recipient' and friends.
Date: Mon, 04 Nov 2019 14:08:06 -0600 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <87bltr8k42.fsf@red-bean.com> (raw)
While debugging a new problem I encountered with sending OpenPGP-signed replies in Gnus via message-mode, I ran into some confusing code:
The function `message-options-set-recipient' in gnus/message.el is undocumented, but -- if one overlooks a little singular/plural inconsistency -- its name suggests that it sets the recipients (in `message-options'). What it actually does, though, is set *both* the sender and the recipient:
(defun message-options-set-recipient ()
(save-restriction
(message-narrow-to-headers-or-head)
(message-options-set 'message-sender
(mail-strip-quoted-names
(message-fetch-field "from")))
(message-options-set 'message-recipients
(mail-strip-quoted-names
(let ((to (message-fetch-field "to"))
(cc (message-fetch-field "cc"))
(bcc (message-fetch-field "bcc")))
(concat
(or to "")
(if (and to cc) ", ")
(or cc "")
(if (and (or to cc) bcc) ", ")
(or bcc "")))))))
I don't know this code very well, so I'm checking here before making any changes.
What I'd like to do is change its name to `message-options-set-sender-and-recipients' and add a doc string. I know it's an awkward name, but I couldn't think of anything better. No functional change is intended here, obviously -- I'm just trying to make the code more comprehensible. Note that there are various places in the code that call "(message-options-set 'message-recipients SOME-VALUE)" manually. I'm not proposing to update those calls to use this function, because I don't know what the effects of also setting the sender in those places would be.
One of the things I don't fully understand is exactly what `message-options' does. Here's how it is defined:
(defvar message-options nil
"Some saved answers when sending message.")
(make-variable-buffer-local 'message-options)
So is it... a cache of some sort? What's its lifetime? When can we count on information being there? Why is it better to look for a value in `message-options' instead of just doing something like `(message-fetch-field "from")' or whatever? Why are we saving answers at all when sending a message?
If that variable were fully documented, I'd be able to write better documentation for the function I'm proposing to rename to `message-options-set-sender-and-recipients'.
(By the way, all of the above is yak-shaving on the way to debugging the real problem I encountered, which is that suddenly when replying to GPG-signed message, such that my reply is also set to be GPG-signed, in `mml-secure-epg-sign' the value of `signer-names' in the initial `let' is set to nil because even though `sender' is set correctly to my usual sending email address and protocol is `OpenPGP', `mml-secure-signer-names' returns nil. I don't know what might have changed recently to cause this; if anyone does, please post.)
Best regards,
-Karl
reply other threads:[~2019-11-04 20:08 UTC|newest]
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