Re: comp man page

[Bob Carragher]

On Wed, 29 Jul 2020 11:02:49 -0400 Ken Hornstein <kenh@pobox.com> sez:

> >As a user who _barely_ uses more than the basic features of NMH,
> >I was completely unaware of all this.  (That is my fault, of
> >course.  B-)  The SYNOPSIS section does not show that "-use"
> >optionally takes an argument.
>
> Well, so, here's the thing ... -use doesn't actually take an optional
> argument.
>
> If you look at the SYNOPSIS, the beginning is:
>
>        comp [-help] [-version] [+folder] [msg] ...
>
> So when you say "comp -use 1", you're setting the -use flag, and "1"
> is the optional "msg" argument.

I _thought_ that that might be the case, but was confused when
(due to the -use flag) providing the "msg" argument wasn't
generating a new draft based on that message.  I'm guessing that
the effect of the -use flag overrides any conflicting behavior
from supplying a message argument.

> >Maybe add a (possibly
> >parenthetical) sentence to the end of the current -use
> >explanation paragraph -- e.g.
> >
> >       The switch -use directs comp to continue editing an
> >       already started message.  That is, if a comp (or dist,
> >       repl, or forw) is terminated without sending the draft,
> >       the draft can be edited again via “comp -use”.  Note:
> >       consult also the mh-draft(5) man page if using the draft
> >       folder facility.
>
> Ooof, Bob ... can we talk?  Your message was sent out using the
> character set iso8859-1, but the bytes you sent in the above paragraph
> were UTF-8.  Which makes me think that your local character set is UTF-8
> but for some reason you have configured nmh to only use ISO8859-1,
> which is just a recipie for problems in the long run.  It looks like
> those were supposed to be left & right double quotation marks
> (U+201C & U+201D).

Oops!  Sorry about that!  Yes, I forgot to change the outgoing
message's character set to UTF-8 (from my default iso-8859-1).

And you're correct, Ken, that my system (Ubuntu 18.04) is set up
for UTF-8:

     $ echo $XTERM_LOCALE
     en_US.UTF-8

> >> And sigh, the handling around the draft file vs a draft folder
> >> is a confusing mess.  In a perfect world I'd just switch
> >> everything to draft folders and toss draft file handling in the
> >> trash can.
> >
> >I can see how that might make things more uniform.  B-)  I'd need
> >to change my muscle memory, but I wouldn't mind.
> >
> >On that note, and for folks and Norms curious about -use, lack of
> >Draft-folder, etc., I provide the following anec-data.
>
> So, I was kind of in the same boat, except ... as a long-time exmh users,
> I was forced to use a Draft-folder entry a few decades ago so I am used
> to the draft-folder behavior.

Every (long) once in a while, you guys change the behavior of NMH
in a way that forces me to update my procedures -- almost always
correcting something based on a misunderstanding.  B-)  And, to
be very clear, I'm very grateful that you're still doing that!
I'll adapt.  B-)

> >As far as I can tell, comp(1) is just verifying that the message
> >exists.  It doesn't use it to construct a new reply (and thus
> >overwrite what's already in ~/Mail/draft), or change the current
> >message.  In particular, if the number or list doesn't exist,
> >comp will complain about it:
> >[...]
>
> _Huh_.  Boy, talk about a confusing mess.  I wouldn't have expected
> that from reading the code.  So ... I guess this is happening in
> m_draft().  Maybe?  Ugh.
>
> This is SO confusing.  Again, the weird handling of the special "draft"
> file is such a mess; if it was just a regular nmh folder/message it would
> be much simpler.

I know this would be a (very low) priority fix, but I would not
object to it.  (I'm also fine with it the way it is.  B-)

                                Bob