Re: [Nmh-workers] show message number scrolls off terminal?

[Paul Fox]

ken wrote:
 > >it only shows that header if you're only looking at just one message. 
 > 
 > I didn't know what you guys were talking about, because I've had in my
 > .mh_profile for approximately forever:
 > 
 > show:        -noheader
 > 
 > But I don't have that for things like "next", and what happens is AFTER
 > I quit the pager, I see the line:
 > 
 > (Message inbox:xxx)

after?  i suppose if your pager does the screen switch thing, then it
might appear to come after, but it's definitely being output before.

 > 
 > I take it Andy isn't on an xterm?  I didn't look at that code, I had thought
 > that it was that way for everyone.
 > 
 > >and as eric pointed out the other day, if any of your messages
 > >are MIME, you'll currently get no per-message headers at all, unless
 > >there's only one of them, in which case you'll get the one you've
 > >mentioned.  (i'm in the process of preparing a patch to let mhshow
 > >produce per-message headers.)
 > 
 > Technically, it's not just MIME.  If it's a single text/plain part that has
 > a C-T-E of 7bit, 8bit, or binary AND it's in a character set that can
 > be displayed without conversion, 'show' still handles it directly.

okay.  i didn't see that in my quick look.

 > 
 > >i myself haven't used "show" in a number of years.  i have wrapper
 > >scripts that i invoke in any case, and they've been calling mhshow
 > >for a long time.  my wife was using show until more recently, until
 > >i got tired of the occasional complaint that something wasn't working
 > >for her, and i made a new "show" alias that invokes mhshow.  she never
 > >noticed.
 > 
 > I am kinda surprised there was a problem ... I mean, show invokes mhshow
 > if it can't handle the message.  Why did you need to set the alias?  What
 > didn't work?

i doubt there was anything wrong with show.  i think i thought she was
using the wrapper scripts for everything, but she was actually typing
"show" sometimes, which caused some things i'd set up to not work at
those "sometimes".  it was better to create the alias than ask her to
change habits.

 > 
 > >so here's a serious question:  are there compelling features within
 > >show that keep people using it?  so much mail is MIME these days that
 > >i can't imagine mhl is being invoked very often.  if "show" became
 > >"mhshow" in a future release, i wonder how many folks would actually
 > >notice.
 > 
 > Well, I think that's going the wrong direction myself.
 > 
 > Contrary to it's name, "show"'s job isn't really to display a message;
 > it's to SELECT one or more messages for display.  Hence the reason
 > "next" and "prev" are really links to "show".  Once messages have been
 > selected, it's really supposed to be your showproc's job to display the
 > message, and the default showproc is mhl.  This suggests to me not that
 > we should switch show over to mhshow, but really make mhl MIME-aware.
 > Then show would get the relevant switches for things like MIME part
 > selection (which would end up being passed down to mhl) and mhshow would
 > go away.  Well, we'd keep a link around for it, but really, mhshow would
 > just become show.

okay.  i'll have to think about that some.

paul
=----------------------
 paul fox, address@hidden (arlington, ma, where it's 21.6 degrees)