Re: [nmh-workers] Unnecessary dependency on vi???

[Bakul Shah]

On Mar 20, 2018, at 5:04 PM, Ralph Corderoy <address@hidden> wrote:
> 
> Hi Steffen,
> 
>>> mail(1) had the `~e' escape and then added a `~v' one, with VISUAL
>>> and EDITOR environment variables echoing the cpp(1) macro names of
>>> the default values.  Kurt Shoens, address@hidden, is down
>>> as the author in BSD-1-253-gc145e9e0ab5 of
>>> https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo.
>> 
>> BSD Mail had both of ~v and ~e from the very start.  I know of no
>> known released file which acted otherwise.
> 
> But peering at doc/Mail/mail3.nr in BSD-1-3-gfc8c50acc08, so just after
> BSD 1 was cut, I see it documents all the tilde escapes and has `~e' but
> no `~v'.
> https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo/blob/fc8c50acc0870bf28753d3508770428682e915bb/doc/Mail/mail3.nr

<nitpick>
This is a doc. bug! ~v is mentioned in mail7.nr in the
same fc8c50acc0 "commit". This has April 19, 1979 date.
The same as the 2bsd date on TUHS unix-archives. See my
previous message. ~v was already in!

> By the time of BSD-1-54-ge684660a6a2, src/Mail/Mail.help.~ lists both.
> https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo/blob/e684660a6a291c1e4672912bc1b80ffb00934623/src/Mail/Mail.help.%7E
> 
> So although the released code had both, I think it's likely that `~e'
> was there on its own, and then `~v' added as ex's vi mode came along.
> I also noticed that Mail's string option was at one point `EDITOR' for one
> and `VISEDITOR' for the other;  also suggestive that one came first
> rather than both together.

This is in mail7.nr but looking at the sources, it is 'VISUAL'
so I suspect this is another doc. bug (both bugs are also in
doc/Mail/mail{3,7}.nr in the 2bsd dist. on TUHS).
</nitpick>

:-)