emacs: Wrong "From" address when forwarding a mail

Jinwoo Lee jinwoo68 at gmail.com
Sun Dec 20 13:26:17 PST 2015


On Sun, Dec 20, 2015 at 12:54 PM, Mark Walters <markwalters1009 at gmail.com> wrote:
> You can get around some of this by setting
> notmuch-always-prompt-for-sender to t (it is a customizable
> variable). This means that whenever you create a new message or forward
> a message you will be prompted to choose a sender address.

I think forwarding should be more symmetric with replying than with
sending a new message.  Forwarding is an act of sending a mail you
received at your account A to another person, and so the default account
that it's sent from must be account A, not one of your other accounts.

Isn't it really weird if a mail was "forwarded" from an account that
never had received that mail?

> Indeed, I am surprised you don't find it annoying that, when you start a
> new personal email (e.g., with "m"), notmuch uses your corp address.

I'm not surprised because it's a new mail and not associated with any of
my accounts yet before I send it.  Forwarding is different because it's
already associated with one of the accounts and that one should be the
default From address when forwarding.  That's my expectation and I think
it's intuitive.

>> Can we make notmuch-show-forward-message behave like
>> notmuch-show-reply-sender, which chooses the From address correctly?
>
> We could do this, but it's not clear to me that it is better than what
> we have. Indeed, under your suggestion, suppose someone with their
> personal address as their primary address received an idiotic email from
> their boss, which they forward to their wife saying "what an
> idiot". Suddenly, it is now being read by work...

Agreed that this issue can happen in this case.  Let's forget about the
privacy issue.

> Overall, I don't think is is possible for notmuch  to get this right
> enough of the time to make anything other than
> notmuch-always-prompt-for-sender sensible in this sort of situation.
>
> Best wishes
>
> Mark


More information about the notmuch mailing list