>OK, then, is there some standard way to send an e-mail through the default client, instead of setting VFP itself up as an SMTP client?

MAPI is a standard way to send email through default email client as long as the client supports MAPI.

>Although I am not sure whether this is the correct approach; perhaps keeping track of the sent e-mails through VFP tables would be "cleaner", in the sense of keeping them separate from other kinds of e-mails. In any case, I am interested to know what options are available.

We use something similar in one of our applications.