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

[Richard Stallman]

    It's the same situation on Linux, really.

Linux has no email facilities -- it is just a kernel.  You must mean
the GNU/Linux system, which is likely to include Exim as well as GNU
Emacs.  Would you please call it "GNU/Linux", not "Linux"?

See http://www.gnu.org/gnu/why-gnu-linux.html for why this makes a difference.

    If you install Ubuntu on a new machine, it will install exim, but leave
    exim in local delivery mode only by default.  If you then send email
    from your brand new fresly installed Emacs, it will fail silently.  It
    will call `sendmail-send-it', and exim will take it, and deliver a
    bounce locally.  Which probably won't be seen by the user.

Now it's clear you're talking about GNU/Linux, because Ubuntu is a
nonfree variant of GNU/Linux.

Emacs now has `mail-interactive' default to t.  Why does `sendmail'
fail silently if it cannot deliver the message?  Why doesn't
`sendmail-send-it' detect the failure and report it?

Why won't the user see the bounce message?  If the bounce message is
delivered locally to the user, why won't Emacs mail readers show it?

Anyway, if things are as you describe, it seems to be asking for
trouble.  I think this needs to be fixed in `sendmail' -- not in each
app that might invole it.

For instance, when exim is configured for local delivery only, we
should make `sendmail' fail quickly for any address with an @ in it,
thus giving Emacs the chance to report the error properly.

One thing Emacs could do in response to such an error is offer
the user the chance to switch to smtpmail instead.


-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation
51 Franklin St
Boston MA 02110
USA
www.fsf.org, www.gnu.org
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