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

[Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen]

Eli Zaretskii <address@hidden> writes:

>> What about if we default to `query-user', and then the first time you
>> use it, it'll ask "Use the built-in SMTP support, or use {the Windows
>> mailer,exim} to send the mail?", and then save the response.
>
> That'd be fine, I think.

I can hack that up pretty easily, but we won't be able to change the
default again afterwards, which kinda makes me nervous.  :-)

That is, if we change this to:

(defcustom send-mail-function 'query)

Then the next time a user sends email, they'll get queried, and will
choose one value, which will then be stored in .emacs (via customize).

So, basically, all Emacs users will have a setting for this variable
stored after a while.

We then can't change the default of `send-mail-function' to a new,
fabulous function in the future that we have determined will solve all
out problem, and we should default to instead.  :-)

So perhaps we should think about a `query' solution a bit more first
before we actually do it.

Hm...  another possible solution here would be to have a sort of
multi-sending solution.

It might work as follows.  On Windows, this would default to

(defcustom send-mail-function '(smtpmail-send-it mailclient-send-it))

This would mean that the user, when sending email, would first be
prompted with

"Outgoing SMTP server?"

and if the user just responds RET, or the sending fails in any other
protocol-related way, it just goes to the second function in the list...

On Linux, of course, it wouldn't make sense to fall back to
`sendmail-sent-it', since that will fail silently if it's not
configured.

So...  eh...  doesn't seem all that attractive, either.

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