Subject: 24.0.50; problems trying to mail bug report, again

From: "Drew Adams" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 13 Jul 2011 16:39:20 -0700

I quickly scanned some recent mails in emacs-devel about users being
forced, one time only, to answer a question about their mailer, when
they try to submit a bug.  At least that's what I thought I read.
That in itself sounded like something users of an outside mail
client such as myself could live with.
 
But it seems that what was described is nowhere near as annoying and
confusing as what really happens.
 
Before you get to the (confusing enough) question about SMTP mail
configuration, where some users of outside mail clients will want to
answer `n', never to be bothered again, you have to go through the same
silliness we saw before (see previous bugs), about the `From:' field.
 
If the user is going to answer `n' to the SMTP mail config question,
in order to just use an outsider mailer (e.g. Outlook), then there is no
reason for them to have to go through the silly dialog about "tickle me"
and be told they must edit the `From:' field in order to be able to
continue.
 
The UI for this seems to be all backward.  Whoever dreamed it up
perhaps did not take serious enough the use case of a user who just
wants to say, once and for all, "No, I do not want to use Emacs for
mail. I do not want to configure SMTP mail".  You've made it 42
times more complex than it should be.  Please straighten this out.
 
Not only that, but it is apparently the case that this is NOT a
one-time ordeal.  For emacs -Q, a user has to go through all of
this EACH time.  Just hitting `n' would be bad enough.  But no
one who will use `n' should have to go through all of this crap:
 
"Is [email-masked]'
really your email address? (yes or no) " no
 
"Please edit the From address and try again"
 
WTF?, edit, edit, grumble, edit...
 
C-c C-c
 
"Send this bug report to the Emacs maintainers (yes or no) " yes
 
"Configure outgoing SMTP in Emacs (y or n) " n
 
Args out of range: 102021, 102022
 
[I saw that error one time I tried, from emacs -Q.  I don't know
how systematic it is.  THIS bug report is only about the RIDICULOUS
obstacle-course dialog we make users go through now, after asking
them to please start each bug report from emacs -Q.]

And why would we even think about mixing `(yes or no)' and `(y or n)' in the
same dialog?  Downright diabolical.
 
In GNU Emacs 24.0.50.1 (i386-mingw-nt5.1.2600)
 of 2011-07-11 on 3249CTO
Windowing system distributor `Microsoft Corp.', version 5.1.2600
configured using `configure --with-gcc (4.5) --no-opt --cflags
-Ic:/build/include'