Re: [Nmh-workers] Items for nmh 1.7

[Ken Hornstein]

>So, ALL nmh responsibility for parsing and extracting mime parts would be in
>[what mhl would become]. None would be in show, mhshow, repl, or anywhere else
>Correct?

Yeah, exactly.  Really, I view it as getting back to the core MH architecture.
When you look at the complete toolset, show's job was to pick out a message
for you to display, but mhl did the actual work of displaying that message.

MH's original MIME support kind of busted that model; you had a new program
that handled these weird (and at the time, rare) messages.  mhl wouldn't
handle these messages, this other utility took care of it.  But now that
MIME messages are the norm, mhl isn't used so much and that causes us
problems ... the fact that mhl isn't MIME-aware makes things hard for
when we deal with MIME replies, leading to things that aren't so wonderful,
like replyfilter.

>You didn't say so, but I take it that the results of the new program, would
>also be available for other, user created, purposes.

Sure, just the same way that mhl is available now.

>I like the basic idea. I like it a lot. But the new mhl would be sufficiently
>different that it should have a new name, to avoid backward compatibility
>constraints.

I believe the mhl configuration file is sufficiently expandable enough
so that we can continue to use it as-is.  Although .... I guess my question
to you would be, if we had a new mhl-like program that was MIME-aware,
why would you want to keep the old mhl around?

--Ken