Re: gnus / message-send-mail-with-mailclient [patch]

[Reiner Steib]

On Wed, Mar 22 2006, David Reitter wrote:

[ Apparently you message didn't make it to the list (yet) => Not
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> On 18 Mar 2006, at 11:44, Reiner Steib wrote:
>> Eli Zaretskii wrote:
>>> So I think mailclient should be used in preference to smtpmail.
>>
>> If the user (or site admin) has configured
>> `smtpmail-[default-]smtp-server' (or $SMTPSERVER) I think we can
>> assume that it works.  Else the user can customize the variable
>> `message-send-mail-function'.
>>
>> I'd like to add `mailclient.el' to Gnus' contrib directory so that
>> Emacs 21 (or XEmacs) users can also use it.  David, WDYT?
>
> I just tried out mailclient on emacs 21 on my FC3 (KDE) installation
> (where Firefox 1.06 is the standard web browser and reacts to
> browse- url). Turns out that there, browse-url does not work with
> mailto URLs. No feedback is given, and Emacs wrongly states that the
> e-mail is sent.
>
> browse-url-browser-function is set to `htmlview', which seems to be
> the default.
>
> On Darwin/OS X, Emacs 21 in the terminal works just fine with
> mailclient.
>
> In conclusion I'd say: yes, offer it to Emacs 21 users. 

Thanks for your feedback.  I will add it in contrib and change the
`message-send-mail-function' after the upcoming release of Gnus
5.10.8.

> However, do not use mailclient as a preference to zero-configuration
> methods (sendmail) on GNU/Linux systems. As for `smtpmail', I can't
> tell. But at least one would think that smtpmail shows an error
> message in case it hasn't been configured (with a server), right?
> That's better than showing nothing or misleading the user.

ELISP> (and (locate-library "smtpmail")
            (require 'smtpmail)
            smtpmail-default-smtp-server)

nil
ELISP> (setq message-send-mail-function 'message-smtpmail-send-it)
message-smtpmail-send-it

==> smtpmail-via-smtp: `smtpmail-smtp-server' not defined

For sendmail, we also get a warning:

ELISP> (setq sendmail-program "/foo/bar/baz")
"/foo/bar/baz"
ELISP> (setq message-send-mail-function 'message-send-mail-with-sendmail)
message-send-mail-with-sendmail

==> Searching for program: no such file or directory, /foo/bar/baz

> Maybe we should caution users appropriately if mailclient is used on
> systems where we can't guarantee reliability?

I can't think of a reliable way to check if the application called by
`browse-url' handled the mailto link correctly.

At least, `mailclient-send-it' could inform the user what it does.

Something like "Delegating [shortened-mailto-stuff] to
`browse-url'...".  Maybe including the value of
`browse-url-browser-function' in the message.  Note that
`browse-url-browser-function' might be a (REGEXP . FUNCTION) list.

Bye, Reiner.
-- 
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      (o o)
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