Re: Default for the envelope From in smtpmail.el

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

chad writes:

 > It's not a superset in the meaningful case; it's a subset - of the users.

Yes, it is, and no, it's not.  My mistake was elsewhere.

 > > That means that smtpmail.el should *default* to using the
 > > logged-in user's mailbox for the envelope sender.
 > 
 > This is a default that will be wrong the vast majority of the time.

Not at all.  `user-mail-address' is an inherited non-default setting
in my opinion.  My mistake was not explicitly acknowledging that your
opinion is different and at least as valid as mine.

 > The cases where a user's login name on an emacs-capable machine is the
 > same as a workable email address are a small minority,

Probably true.  Although I've never bothered on a personal GNU or BSD
system, since I've always been behind the relevant firewall where
relaying was open (not to mention that, until recently, so were
outgoing calls to port 25 :-( ).  I suppose a "sufficiently smart"
network security committee would prohibit both of those, though.  (Do
any of those exist?  But I digress....)

 > Conversely, user-mail-address has been used for decades,

And is the setting that is currently used by smtpmail.el according to
Glenn.  But he wants something else!  Glenn writes:

 >> To put it another way: if an email has a From: header, default to
 >> using that for the Envelope-From. I think the case of wanting to
 >> use something different is much less common, and should be the one
 >> that requires Emacs configuration.

That's what I was arguing against.  So in the end you and I are on the
same team, although I was way too fuzzy in my own head about where the
default mailbox needs to come from and how Emacs might find out what
it is.

 > If the user hasn't told emacs about an email address, then using the
 > login name is a reasonable choice. If the user *has* told emacs their
 > email address, emacs should use it.

And if the user decides to mess with From, he's on his own, at least
as far as Emacs proper is concerned.  No?

I suppose it would be possible to enhance user-mail-address to
something like user-mail-configurations, which would be a list of
lists like (ADDRESS FULLNAME LOGIN AUTHENTICATION EXTRA-HEADERS).  Of
course Gnus already supports this kind of thing (I forget the Gnus
name for the feature, as does VM ("personality crisis").

IIRC, Glenn was specifically referring to Gnus.  So if he rephrases
slightly to specify that MUA "personality" customizations should offer
this option and documentation explaining when it makes sense, I think
everybody would be happy.

In the long run, it might be nice if Emacs would offer this as part of
the compose-mail facility, and MUA packages would call back to
themselves (by default) through this facility.  Probably not going to
happen, though.