Re: [Nmh-workers] Conflict between "mime" command and attach

[Jon Steinhart]

Ralph Corderoy writes:
> Hi Ken,
> 
> > The reason this is cropping up now is that we want to get to the point
> > where a MIME headers are always generated (I assume this is
> > non-controversial).
> 
> Looks down.  Mumbles "No".  Scuffs foot.

No, I don't always want MIME headers.  I'm old-fashioned and don't need
a kilobyte where 10 bytes will suffice.  I like nmh because text-plain is
good enough for most of what I do.

> > Ok, Ralph did say that he wanted to look at the headers
> > post-MIMEification to adjust them
> 
> No, sorry, when I said "edit" I was referring to a whatnow-entry to put
> me back in vi so I can read-only peruse the outcome of "mime".  My
> intent is always to have "mime" do the work;  if something's not right I
> go back to pre-"mime" and fix it because mhbuild could always do want I
> want AIUI.

Do the big MUAs let you do this?  Can you look at post-MIME stuff in
thunderbird?  Or do you just attach things and be happy with the results>
 
 
> There seem to be two issues.  `#' is a poor magic character if mhbuild
> is to run all the time, clashing too much with unindented cpp(1) and
> sh(1) input.  A simple way to attach files shouldn't stop mhbuild
> directives being used.  (Personally, I think having `cd', `pwd', etc.,
> at the whatnow-prompt for "attach foo" is wrong;  MH's raison d'etre was
> to not be its own little shell and whatnow shouldn't grow to be one.)

I agree (as the culprit) that having cd, pwd, etc. at whatnow is wrong.
But only because whatnow is wrong.  IMHO one should finish composing a
draft and then use a send command or other command like tools like attach.
To some degree this is how it gets used in emacs I believe.

> How about if `#' was configurable and could be multiple characters?  And
> that could further be overridden on a per-message basis by an
> nmh-header?  The new default could be /^mhb\>/;  something that's
> unlikely to be accidental.  Any mhbs that don't parse stop whatnow's
> "send" working.
> 
>     mhb image/png \
>         /home/foobar/junk/picture.png
>     mhb forw +inbox 42 43 99

I can't support making a cryptic interface more cryptic.
 
> A new mhbuild directive that guesses the MIME type could provide a
> simple attach mechanism.  whatnow's "attach" could append these instead
> of adding its header.  Or still add its header and they're treated as if
> they were additional directives at the end of the body in the order
> they're encountered.

This is why I suggested having some optional arguments on the attach header
and attach command.  And why I suggested a -check option to verify that
everything is OK before send.  Nobody complains about whom -check!

Jon