Re: [nmh-workers] Unnecessary dependency on vi???

[Ralph Corderoy]

Hi Steffen,

> > mail(1) had the `~e' escape and then added a `~v' one, with VISUAL
> > and EDITOR environment variables echoing the cpp(1) macro names of
> > the default values.  Kurt Shoens, address@hidden, is down
> > as the author in BSD-1-253-gc145e9e0ab5 of
> > https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo.
>
> BSD Mail had both of ~v and ~e from the very start.  I know of no
> known released file which acted otherwise.

But peering at doc/Mail/mail3.nr in BSD-1-3-gfc8c50acc08, so just after
BSD 1 was cut, I see it documents all the tilde escapes and has `~e' but
no `~v'.
https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo/blob/fc8c50acc0870bf28753d3508770428682e915bb/doc/Mail/mail3.nr

By the time of BSD-1-54-ge684660a6a2, src/Mail/Mail.help.~ lists both.
https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo/blob/e684660a6a291c1e4672912bc1b80ffb00934623/src/Mail/Mail.help.%7E

So although the released code had both, I think it's likely that `~e'
was there on its own, and then `~v' added as ex's vi mode came along.
I also noticed that Mail's string option was at one point `EDITOR' for one
and `VISEDITOR' for the other;  also suggestive that one came first
rather than both together.

-- 
Cheers, Ralph.
https://plus.google.com/+RalphCorderoy