Re: Changing the default for `send-mail-function'

[Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen]

Stefan Monnier <address@hidden> writes:

> Maybe we should set it not to smtpmail-send-it nor to
> mailclient-send-it, but to a new function that prompts the user for
> which method to use (mailclient/smtpmail/sendmail) and then saves the
> result via customize.

Yes, but like I said, we would then, in the future, be unable to change
the default again, since all users would by then have a setting
explicitly in .emacs.

Which may be fine (and may be exactly what we want), but is something we
should consider the ramifications of.

> Of course, maybe we can spice up that function to try and guess which
> choice to make without prompting the user (e.g. maybe gconf already hods
> the answer?), but at least the fallback should be to prompt the user
> because in general there's no safe answer (mailclient won't work on most
> of my machines since I rarely bother to configure another MUA).

I think mailclient, in general, is a very bad default option to offer
the users.  It's fine for random programs (that don't have native SMTP
capabilities) to pop up a strange foreign mail program, but Emacs is
more akin to an OS in this area.

Emacs has a lot of mail (composition and reading) programs running
within it (Wanderlust, Gnus, mew, rmail, VM, etc), and smtpmail.el is
the obvious place to configure mail centrally in Emacs.

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
  bloggy blog http://lars.ingebrigtsen.no/