Re: `send-mail-function' default change

[Tim Cross]

On Fri, Jul 8, 2011 at 7:24 AM, Stefan Monnier <address@hidden> wrote:
>> But I have a suspicion that most people would like to get an error
>> message as early as possible.
>
> That's part of the choice between smtpmail and sendmail.
> So it's not related to the change of defaults, except that it makes this
> choice more explicit.
>
>
>        Stefan
>
>

Huh? Its exactly what this was about (ignoring the subsequent addition
of the prompting/helper function). The default has been sendmail and
the original suggestion was to change it to smtpmail.

To some extent, the debate has moved on to the issue of making the
choice more explicit via the config helper function, but the original
instigator was the proposal to change to a default of smtpmail. The
new proposed default will require that everyone now make an explicit
choice where previously, only those wanting smtpmail had to make that
explicit choice. For some, this did mean things did not work, either
because of a misconfigured or missing MTA or because of external
restrictions, such as laptops on a foreign network or ISP firewalls
etc. However, for others, such as those on win32 or those on GNU Linux
desktops with a working MTA, there was no need to make an explicit
choice or even have the knowledge to understand what this choice meant
and how to make the correct one.

Tim