[MlMt] MM as default mail client ?

[Bill Cole]

On 8 Nov 2012, at 17:37, Benny Kjær Nielsen wrote:

> On 8 Nov 2012, at 22:34, Seebs wrote:
>
>> On 8 Nov 2012, at 15:28, John Roberts wrote:
>>
>>> This does not work with all applications. Emailing photos from 
>>> Aperture, for example, opens the Apple Mail.app. is there a way to 
>>> set MailMate as the default mail client for all applications?
>>
>> My guess is no, because some apps may not have so much a default as a 
>> hard-coded choice. Same thing happens to me with some other stuff; on 
>> Windows, I have one or two programs which will ALWAYS open IE, no 
>> matter what my default browser is.
>
> Yes, the default email application is only used when the “calling” 
> application uses the `mailto:` URL scheme. Some applications use 
> Applescript to communicate with a hardcoded email client. In some 
> cases it is possible to replace such a script to call MailMate instead 
> of Apple Mail. This was true for iCal on Lion, but it changed on 
> Mountain Lion where this no longer seems to be possible :-(

Clearly I compose mail too slowly :)

I could have sworn that the iCal script replacement hack went away with 
Snow leopard, but it may just have been that *MY* scripts broke. 
Wouldn't be the first time...

Incidentally: there really isn't "blame" for this problem. Using the 
"URL scheme handler" model as a basis for swapping out default apps is 
generally a good idea, keeping the interfaces simple and defined by open 
standards. The downside of that with "mailto:" is that it's a very 
limiting scheme that comes nowhere near mapping the whole task of 
composing mail. Apple isn't being evil and developers aren't being lazy, 
it's just an inherently sticky problem.