Re: automatic decode mime in repl

[Philipp Takacs]

[2022-02-13 13:09] David Levine <levinedl@acm.org>
> Thank you for submitting your patch, Philipp.  I have these
> reservations with it:
>
> 2. For existing users, it may require changes to their existing nmh
>    environments.

As I explained, for most cases this is not true, even if this is enabled
by default. For users with the convertargs workaround this don't affect
them because they use mhl.replywithoutbody. For other workarounds this
will akt like a mail with no Content-Transfer-Encodin. So I don't see a
risk of breaking good workarounds. Some may break, but then I would
suspect the workaround will also break in some cases without my patch.

If you still have conserns, the switch can also be disabled by default.
I still belive there is no requirement for a switch at all, but I don't
realy care.

> 3. It does not add new functionality to nmh.  Its functionality is a
>    proper subset of a pre-existing feature.
>
> 4. Given 3, if implemented within nmh, an alternative could be to
>    internally simply wrap a suitable use of the pre-existing feature.
>    From the user point of view, the result would be the same.

I think you miss the point of my patch[0]. The functionality is there it
has just no easy way to use it. My patch adds the easy way to use it.
Think the idea forward this could allow to remove the convertargs switch
of repl and the convert interface of mhbuild. Because all convertargs
can do, can also be done by mhshow. As you said it so beautiful: From
the user point of view, the result would be the same.

> I have additional though lesser concerns, such as the name of the
> switch

The name of the switch is not importend to me, it was just the first
think that come in my mind. So feel free to suggest a better name.

> and the support effort required,

In order to reduce the overall support effort required you could drop
convertargs and the convert interface. This would reduce the overall
code size, make the codeflow better to understand and help users and
developers to better understand how repl works.

And before you acuse me of want to break user setup, I realy don't care
if you want to keep convertargs. This is only how I see what would be
the best way to reduce support effort.

Philipp

[0] Aktuall I belive you full understand this and the implication