report-emacs-bug / e-mail setup

report-emacs-bug / e-mail setup

[David Reitter]

I was wondering if there is interest in a revised report-emacs-bug  
function.

The current function seems to depend on the mail system being set up.

I found that users of the Aquamacs distribution (Mac OS X users)  
frequently do not use Emacs for mail. Their bug reports get  
swallowed, and people get no error message.

So what we do in Aquamacs is to leave it to the system setup what  
mail application the user wants to use. The complete text (as before)  
is composed automatically, and then the user's preferred mail  
handling application takes care of editing / sending. This works very  
well not only on OS X, but also on my KDE installation under GNU/ 
Linux. Besides, it tends to do a better job at respecting the user's  
mail setup.

If there is interest, I can put a patch together for people to discuss.

Re: report-emacs-bug / e-mail setup

[Lennart Borgman]

David Reitter wrote:

> I was wondering if there is interest in a revised report-emacs-bug  
> function.
>
> The current function seems to depend on the mail system being set up.
>
> I found that users of the Aquamacs distribution (Mac OS X users)  
> frequently do not use Emacs for mail. Their bug reports get  
> swallowed, and people get no error message.
>
> So what we do in Aquamacs is to leave it to the system setup what  
> mail application the user wants to use. The complete text (as before)  
> is composed automatically, and then the user's preferred mail  
> handling application takes care of editing / sending. This works very  
> well not only on OS X, but also on my KDE installation under GNU/ 
> Linux. Besides, it tends to do a better job at respecting the user's  
> mail setup.
>
> If there is interest, I can put a patch together for people to discuss.

I think it is interesting. Will it work on w32 also?

Re: report-emacs-bug / e-mail setup

[Stefan Monnier]

> I found that users of the Aquamacs distribution (Mac OS X users)  frequently
> do not use Emacs for mail. Their bug reports get  swallowed, and people get
> no error message.

Regardless of what we do, this should be reported to Apple as a serious bug
in Mac OS X.  The problem is that

1- the default config has Postfix "setup" (i.e. it happily accepts email,
   although it can only deliver it if the machine has direct access to port
   25 of the various internet mail servers).
2- the Mac OS X "Mail" application encourages the user to not use the system
   mail function.

Pre-installing Postfix is good, but if they're not going to make sure that
users correctly configure it, they should make sure that by default it
rejects emails rather than swallowing them into a(n apparent) black hole.


        Stefan

Re: report-emacs-bug / e-mail setup

[Richard Stallman]

I don't think this was followed up on.

    So what we do in Aquamacs is to leave it to the system setup what  
    mail application the user wants to use. The complete text (as before)  
    is composed automatically, and then the user's preferred mail  
    handling application takes care of editing / sending.

In principle this could be good.  Please show us the proposed code.