Re: [Nmh-workers] Replying ... but not to "me" too

[Bob Carragher]

On Wed, 26 Mar 2014 09:27:15 -0400 Ken Hornstein <address@hidden> sez:

> >> Sigh.  My only point was ... if address@hidden is not, in fact, a
> >> valid email address for you, you'd be better served by changing
> >> Local-Mailbox.  It does more things (things you'd likely want) than
> >> Alternate-Mailboxes does.
> >
> >I've tried this while also removing the Alternate-Mailboxes
> >entry.  It doesn't solve my original problem of suppressing
> >my (non-local @gmail.com) email address in replies.
> >
> >Are you suggesting that I add both Local-Mailboxes and
> >Alternate-Mailboxes entries?
> 
> Did you use Local-MailboxES, or Local-Mailbox?  The latter is the
> correct one (it's singular).

Argh, I used the incorrect (plural) one.  Changing to the proper
(singular) one did the trick!

>                               You could check exactly what nmh thinks is
> your local mailbox by executing the command:
> 
> % ap -format '%(localmbox)' null
> 
> (ap lives in your nmh lib directory).  That should show you what nmh thinks
> is your local mailbox, and that's what the Local-Mailbox setting changs.

Yep, it's catching the Local-Mailbox update!

> >When I first started using MH (in grad school), the default for
> >Local-Mailbox (<user>@<host>) was my actual mailbox address.  It
> >wasn't until much later, when I started using a laptop and
> >connecting via commercial ISPs, that my current situation arose,
> >where <user>@<host> has no use for email purposes.  (In fact, I
> >set up my repl*comps at that time to explicitly specify what my
> >addresses, for From:, Reply-To:, etc., are.  They do that to
> >this day.)
> 
> Let me expand on this a bit.
> 
> Local-Mailbox is a new feature, created as part of the address handling
> cleanup done for 1.5.  Like you said, the "old" way MH used to operate
> was that it would synthesize your local email address based on your local
> username and hostname; there was no way to override that (nor was there
> even a way to see what it thought it was).  The world has moved on since
> then, so for 1.5 I created the code that let you override the local mailbox
> setting.
> 
> So what exactly does Local-Mailbox _do_?  Well, in addition to matching
> an email address as local (which really means it will match the
> %(mymbox) format function), it will be output by the %(localmbox)
> format function.  This is now used by component templates (components,
> repl*comps, forwcomps, distcomps) to fill in the "From" field.  Now you
> (and plenty of others) have been papering over this problem for a while
> now by adjusting the relevant components files yourself, but after a bunch
> of thrashing on the mailing list we all decided that we needed a better
> solution.

Just tried this, and it works!  Outstanding!  (I always thought my
solution was a "hack," and it's great to know that there's support
for a "proper" solution.)

> So, Local-Mailbox changes nmh's idea of what your local mailbox is (which,
> in practice, boils down to changing the output of %(localmbox)).  Compare
> that to Alternate-Mailboxes (plural); what that does is simply add to the
> list that %(mymbox) will match.  That, plus a little extra magic, is how
> "local" email addresses don't end up in replies.
> 
> Okay, long digression.  What's the "right" solution?  IMHO, it's:

But a *helpful* digression (for me)!  B-)

> - If address@hidden does not match your email address, add a
>   Local-Mailbox line to your .mh_profile that has your complete email
>   address (including your real name).

This is correct.

> - If you have additional email addresses that you want nmh to consider a
>   local address, add them to Alternate-Mailboxes.

This is not correct, so I will eschew Alternate-Mailboxes.

A fix for a nagging problem, with the bonus of the cleanup of a
longstanding hack:  thanks a lot!  B-)

                                Bob