Re: mh-format incantation for non-empty body?

[Ken Hornstein]

>As for fmttest -- yes, I looked at it, but the overhead of learning a
>new debugging tool must be extremely low to make me change my
>approach mid-stream.  In this case, fmttest has the typical (of MH
>programs) rich-but-very-dense man page format, and by the time I got
>half way through partially understanding what it offered me, I decided
>it didn't look much better than what I was already doing:  I had three
>windows open:  one running "scan -form test.form", another editing
>"test.form", and a third editing changes to a test message.

Well, I do appreciate the feedback ... and since I also wrote the man
page, clearly I need to do some improvement there (I was hoping specifically
the -trace option would be useful to would-be format script writers).

I am not sure if fmttest is to be used more in message mode or other modes;
I personally use it in raw mode a lot.  But that's probably just me.  That's
convenient (with -dump) to understand the actual instructions being generated.

>(Anticipating your next "how would you improve the man page?" question: 
>Unless I misunderstand, I suspect fmttest is far more likely to be
>used in message mode than in address, raw, or date modes, and
>therefore it should be the first one discussed, rather than the
>last.  In addition, an example or two of how to use each of the modes
>would be useful.  Having working command lines to start with would
>reduce the amount of yak-shaving necessary to get back to debugging
>my actual problem.)

So sounds like some examples sure would have helped.  Alright, noted!  And
I'll look on reshuffling things around so message mode is first.

>But really:  it's not actually the debugging that's hard with mh-format. 
>It's the language itself :-)

I mean ... yes?  There's a whole bunch of weird side effects and you're
stuck with only two variables.  But replacing it would be a huge job.

--Ken