Re: [Nmh-workers] Replace mh-format?

[Joel Uckelman]

Thus spake address@hidden:
> 
> I _really_ like the idea of using command-line (and .mhprofile) switches to 
> specify a script to call in place of mhl. 
> 
> To generalize this, I'd suggest that nmh doesn't need to have any knowledge o
> f 
> specific languages or interperters, but that the user could specify a 
> substitute for mhl, with the expectation that the stdout of the substitute 
> process is fed back into the calling nmh program. This way, the external 
> process could be anything that produces "conforming" text on stdout.
>

About a year ago two friends and I were considering reimplementing MH in
Python because we love MH and thought that nmh had died, since there
hadn't been a release in ages. I gave the mh-format problem some thought and
came to the same conclusion: Have a "formatproc", which could be mhl or
something else, and use that to spit out formatted text as appropriate.
That way, if the user wants to do something which can't be done using
mh-format, it can be done in a more organic fashion than at present---no
need for a wrapper for scan, e.g.---and in whatever language the user
prefers (Perl, C, INTERCAL).

-- 
J.