Linux installations behind firewalls are using http/ftp-proxies to provide controlled access to web-resources. Their address is common for all users of a system and therefore it should be set globally. Alas, it is not standardized how is being set. I know the following ways: 1. the http_proxy, https_proxy, ftp_proxy and no_proxy environment variables. They could be set by /etc/bashrc or a script in /etc/profile.d. This scheme is used by a lot of command-line tools like lynx or wget. 2. gnome-vfs uses gconf variables. In the current gnome-vfs there are still some discrepancies (cdda module is using settings from nautilus, other variables under /system/gnome-vfs). Every application using gnome-vfs would use the proxy without user-configuration 3. kde. I am not using it, but there exists probably a mechanism like (2). 4. application specific ways like preferences.js of Netscape or the settings in /etc/sysconfig/rhn of up2date. I think most applications are falling into the first three categories (or can be brought into them). Therefore it would be nice if a Red Hat configuration tool makes this settings.
Don't file bugs against multiple components against a single one. That said, for the one you filed, proxy configuration won't be added this time. Maybe later.
This report was not against multiple components. It said proxy-configuration is common for some classes of applications and to keep consistency, it should happen at a central place. redhat-config-network seems to be a reasonable central place.