Subject: bug#40561: 27.0.90; Mail-related errors in docstrings and manuals

From: Štěpán Němec <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 12 Apr 2020 22:36:41 +0200

On Sun, 12 Apr 2020 21:34:13 +0300
Eli Zaretskii wrote:

>> > That section is not about message-mode, it's about sending email.
>> > message-mode is just the default mode we use for editing and sending.
>> 
>> I still find the manual a bit misleading.  The first sentence of the
>> last paragraph of the parent section says:
>> 
>>     In this section, we will describe some of the most commonly-used
>>     commands available in Message mode.
>> 
>> Then the [[info:emacs#Mail Sending]] section says
>> 
>>     The variable ‘message-send-mail-function’ controls how the message is
>>     delivered (‘send-mail-function’ is used for Mail mode).
>> 
>> That made me think that people who use Message Mode should set
>> ‘message-send-mail-function’ instead of ‘send-mail-function’.
>> 
>> It is possible that this misunderstanding was caused by bad reading
>> comprehension on my part -- and my native (and everyday) language is
>> Portuguese.
>
> I'd be interested to hear opinions by others about this.

I agree with Jorge that the quoted section is confusing, and the recent
change from bug#39639 (which I've now found when trying to make some
sense of it doing 'git blame' on sending.texi) mostly just added to that
confusion, as it only stuck `message-send-mail-function' in the middle
of the 10-year-old text.

https://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=39639

It would be great if someone who understands how the current default
setup is supposed to fit together had a look at that part of the manual.

-- 
Štěpán