(no subject)

[fanf]

Excellent idea from stephdiary in the pub last night: something like a proxyconfig.pac but for auto-configuring email software. This would be a boon because it's too complicated for most users.

gerald_duck mentioned that he has written a C++ program which frobs the registry in order to acheive something like this for common MUAs running on NT or its descendents.

Comments

[knell.livejournal.com]

A mail server discovery protocol might be interesting (FSVO "interesting"), but the proxy.pac route would most likely be easier to implement with current technology. The wpad.whatever stuff Windows uses for auto proxy discovery could easy be extended sideways to do this.

And yes, mail server configuration is too complicated for most users, especially now that there are all those exciting options for, say, exactly how you want to do SMTP authentication.