Re: [Nmh-workers] Future directions for nmh

[Paul Vixie]

Ken Hornstein wrote:
> > i don't know exactly how to match mime to the simplicity of show(1), and
> > i've been violently repulsed any time i tried to use mhshow(1), but i
>
> I can't really blame you on that one.  But really, mhshow(1) is really just
> the old mhn, slightly rewritten.  And mhn was a horrible hack, we all agree.

well, yes, but i don't think you realize how deep the reaction went. i 
despised mhshow, that's true. but i was horrified by mhn and absolutely 
disgusted by mhl. these apps had byzantine syntaxes and filled my screen 
with what looked like line printer noise. so when you talk about The MH 
Way and speak of whatnow having departed from that Way, please realize 
that whatnow was a choir boy compared to mhn, mhl, and mhshow.

i use show, next, and prev. sometimes scan and pick. and of course rmm. 
the template .cshrc file i built for my colleagues and myself back at 
DECWRL, which many of us still use, contains these elements:

alias   mhf     'pick -seq foo -zero'
alias   n       'next +inbox'
alias   p       'prev +inbox'
alias   s       'show +inbox'
alias   rmn     'rmm +inbox;next +inbox'
alias   rmp     'rmm +inbox;prev +inbox'
alias   rpl     'repl -nocc me  -anno -inplace -filter rplfilter +inbox'
alias   mhc     'find ~/Mail/. \( -name "address@hidden,]*" -o -name "*~" -o -name 
".#*" \) -print | xargs -t /bin/rm'

i think i had some "-nochangecur" options in there at some point. but if 
any of you guys wondered why i worked so hard to fix the flock bug, it's 
because i got tired of corrupt "sequences" files whenever i used MH from 
the shell, from EMH, from uw-imapd, and in my .forward file, all at the 
same time.

> But ... let's take a step back.  I've heard that "whatnow" is a Horrible
> Corruption of the MH way, in that everything should be a distinct
> command rather than create a shell that does a bunch of commands.  I
> find that argument compelling; any shell we create will lack the full
> power of a command shell, and I'm assuming we don't want to cram all of
> /bin/sh into nmh.  So do you (and others) really want a "MIME shell",
> or do you just want a bunch of commands to operate on MIME parts? ...

that's EDONTCARE for me, for the most part. work flow wise, i'd love to 
be dropped into a subshell at about the complexity level of sftp or ftp 
when the message i'm trying to read is full of MIME gravel. that way my 
primary shell level command would just be "rmn". but if you want to 
parse the message into some temporary area and then update something 
like a "context" file in that area as i step through the message using 
separate shell-level commands, i can adapt.

remember, if i'm being too much of a pain in the ass, ignoring me is OK.

--
P Vixie