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

[David Reitter]

On 18 Mar 2006, at 11:44, Reiner Steib 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. 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.

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