[Nmh-workers] profile lookup

[hymie]

Greetings.  Long-time MH/NMH user, just upgraded to NMH 1.6

I'm trying out some new features, and I've hit a misunderstanding.

I have a .mh_profile which sets up my user-based defaults.

I understand that I can also optionally have a file, whose name is stored
in the $MHSHOW variable, which (if it exists) will read a secondary user
profile specifically for the mhshow program.

However, acording to the mh-profile man page

     After consulting .mh_profile, some programs read  an  optional  profile
     specified by a program-specific environment variable [...]
     The first occurrence of a component is used, e.g. .mh_profile's  trumps
     $MHSHOW's.

so I seem to be missing the point.  I can have my list of defaults
in .mh_profile, and I can have a different set of options specific
to my current environment, but my specific options won't override
the general ones?

My goal here is that, 95% of the time, I want to read my email with
mhshow-show-text/html: lynx %f
but the other 5% of the time, when I'm on a specific computer (my laptop)
in a specific location (my dining room), I want to read my email with
mhshow-show-text/html: dillo %f

So it seems logical to me that my .mh_profile should include
mhshow-show-text/html: lynx %f
and my $MHSHOW alternative-profile would include
mhshow-show-text/html: dillo %f  
for only those times I want to use it.

But it appears that any option that I want to have two possible
entries for, I need to *always* use the $MHSHOW option to select my
profile?  That seems ... like overkill.

So what am I missing?  What is the proper way to have a default option,
with an override that I want to use only occasionally?

Thanks.

--hymie!    http://lactose.homelinux.net/~hymie    address@hidden
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------