| rev |
line source |
|
meillo@39
|
1 .RN 1
|
|
meillo@39
|
2
|
|
meillo@0
|
3 .H0 "Introduction
|
|
meillo@0
|
4 .P
|
|
meillo@53
|
5 MH is a set of mail handling tools with a common concept, similar to
|
|
meillo@53
|
6 the Unix tool chest, which is a set of file handling tools with a common
|
|
meillo@53
|
7 concept. \fInmh\fP is the currently most popular implementation of an
|
|
meillo@53
|
8 MH-like mail handling system.
|
|
meillo@53
|
9 This thesis describes an experimental version of nmh, named \fImmh\fP.
|
|
meillo@53
|
10 .P
|
|
meillo@32
|
11 This chapter introduces MH, its history, concepts and how it is used.
|
|
meillo@47
|
12 It describes nmh's code base and community to give the reader
|
|
meillo@32
|
13 a better understanding of the state from which mmh started off.
|
|
meillo@47
|
14 Further more, this chapter outlines the mmh project itself,
|
|
meillo@47
|
15 describing the motivation for it and its goals.
|
|
meillo@8
|
16
|
|
meillo@0
|
17
|
|
meillo@28
|
18 .H1 "MH \(en the Mail Handler
|
|
meillo@0
|
19 .P
|
|
meillo@47
|
20 MH is a conceptual email system design and its concrete implementation.
|
|
meillo@47
|
21 Notably, MH had started as a design proposal at RAND Corporation,
|
|
meillo@47
|
22 where the first implementation followed later.
|
|
meillo@47
|
23 In spirit, MH is similar to Unix, which
|
|
meillo@42
|
24 influenced the world more in being a set of system design concepts
|
|
meillo@32
|
25 than in being a specific software product.
|
|
meillo@47
|
26 The ideas behind Unix are summarized in the \fIUnix philosophy\fP.
|
|
meillo@42
|
27 MH follows this philosophy.
|
|
meillo@2
|
28
|
|
meillo@11
|
29 .U2 "History
|
|
meillo@2
|
30 .P
|
|
meillo@32
|
31 In 1977 at RAND Corporation, Norman Shapiro and Stockton Gaines
|
|
meillo@32
|
32 had proposed the design
|
|
meillo@32
|
33 of a new mail handling system, called ``Mail Handler'' (MH),
|
|
meillo@32
|
34 to superseed RAND's old monolithic ``Mail System'' (MS).
|
|
meillo@27
|
35 Two years later, in 1979, Bruce Borden took the proposal and implemented a
|
|
meillo@32
|
36 prototype of MH.
|
|
meillo@32
|
37 Before the prototype had been available, the concept was
|
|
meillo@47
|
38 believed to be practically unusable.
|
|
meillo@47
|
39 But the prototype had proven successful and replaced MS thereafter.
|
|
meillo@47
|
40 In replacing MS, MH grew to an all-in-one mail system.
|
|
meillo@2
|
41 .P
|
|
meillo@47
|
42 In the early Eighties,
|
|
meillo@47
|
43 the University of California at Irvine (UCI) had started to use MH.
|
|
meillo@2
|
44 They also took over its development and pushed MH forward.
|
|
meillo@47
|
45 Marshall T. Rose and John L. Romine became the driving force then.
|
|
meillo@47
|
46 This was the time when the Internet appeared, when UCB implemented
|
|
meillo@47
|
47 the TCP/IP stack, and when Allman wrote Sendmail.
|
|
meillo@47
|
48 MH was extended as emailing became more featured.
|
|
meillo@32
|
49 The development of MH was closely related to the development of email
|
|
meillo@32
|
50 RFCs. In the advent of MIME, MH was the first implementation of this new
|
|
meillo@32
|
51 email standard.
|
|
meillo@2
|
52 .P
|
|
meillo@47
|
53 In the Nineties, MH had been moved into the public domain, making it
|
|
meillo@32
|
54 attractive to Free Software developers.
|
|
meillo@47
|
55 The Internet had became popular and in December 1996,
|
|
meillo@47
|
56 Richard Coleman initiated the ``New Mail Handler'' (nmh) project.
|
|
meillo@47
|
57 The project is a fork of MH 6.8.3 and bases strongly on the
|
|
meillo@47
|
58 \fILBL changes\fP by Van Jacobson, Mike Karels and Craig Leres.
|
|
meillo@32
|
59 Colman intended to modernize MH and improve its portability and
|
|
meillo@32
|
60 MIME handling capabilities.
|
|
meillo@32
|
61 This should be done openly within the Internet community.
|
|
meillo@47
|
62 The development of MH at UCI stopped after the 6.8.4 release in
|
|
meillo@47
|
63 February 1996, soon after the development of nmh had started.
|
|
meillo@53
|
64 Today, nmh almost completely replaces the original MH.
|
|
meillo@47
|
65 Some systems might still provide old MH, but mainly for historical reasons.
|
|
meillo@47
|
66 .P
|
|
meillo@47
|
67 In the last years, the work on nmh was mostly maintenance work.
|
|
meillo@47
|
68 However, the development revived in December 2011 and stayed busy since then.
|
|
meillo@0
|
69
|
|
meillo@11
|
70 .U2 "Concepts
|
|
meillo@0
|
71 .P
|
|
meillo@53
|
72 MH consists of a set of tools, each covering a specific task of
|
|
meillo@53
|
73 email handling, like composing a message, replying to a message,
|
|
meillo@53
|
74 refiling a message to a different folder, listing the messages in a folder.
|
|
meillo@47
|
75 All of the programs operate on a common mail storage.
|
|
meillo@42
|
76 .P
|
|
meillo@32
|
77 The mail storage consists of \fImail folders\fP (directories) and
|
|
meillo@32
|
78 \fPmessages\fP (regular files).
|
|
meillo@32
|
79 Each message is stored in a separate file in the format it had been
|
|
meillo@47
|
80 received (i.e. transfer format).
|
|
meillo@47
|
81 The files are named with ascending numbers in each folder.
|
|
meillo@47
|
82 The specific format of the mail storage characterizes MH in the same way
|
|
meillo@47
|
83 like the format of the file system characterizes Unix.
|
|
meillo@42
|
84 .P
|
|
meillo@47
|
85 MH tools maintain a \fIcontext\fP, which includes the current mail folder.
|
|
meillo@32
|
86 Processes in Unix have a similar context, containing the current working
|
|
meillo@32
|
87 directory, for instance. In contrast, the process context is maintained
|
|
meillo@32
|
88 by the Unix kernel automatically, whereas MH tools need to maintain the MH
|
|
meillo@32
|
89 context themselves.
|
|
meillo@32
|
90 The user can have one MH context or multiple ones, he can even share it
|
|
meillo@32
|
91 with other users.
|
|
meillo@42
|
92 .P
|
|
meillo@47
|
93 Messages are named by their numeric filename, but they can have symbolic names,
|
|
meillo@47
|
94 too. These are either automatically updated
|
|
meillo@32
|
95 position names like being the next or the last message,
|
|
meillo@32
|
96 or user-settable group names for arbitrary sets of messages.
|
|
meillo@32
|
97 These names are called sequences.
|
|
meillo@47
|
98 Sequences can be bound to the containing folder or to the context.
|
|
meillo@2
|
99 .P
|
|
meillo@47
|
100 The user's \fIprofile\fP is a file that contains his MH configuration.
|
|
meillo@47
|
101 Default switches for the individual tools can be specified to
|
|
meillo@47
|
102 adjust them to the user's personal preferences.
|
|
meillo@47
|
103 Multiple versions of the same command with different
|
|
meillo@47
|
104 default values can also be created very easily.
|
|
meillo@51
|
105 Form templates for new messages or for replies are easily changeable,
|
|
meillo@47
|
106 and output is adjustable with format files.
|
|
meillo@47
|
107 Almost every part of the system can be adjusted to personal preference.
|
|
meillo@42
|
108 .P
|
|
meillo@51
|
109 The system is well scriptable and extensible.
|
|
meillo@47
|
110 New MH tools are built out of or on top of existing ones quickly.
|
|
meillo@51
|
111 Further more, MH encourages the user to tailor, extend and automate the system.
|
|
meillo@51
|
112 As the MH tool chest was modeled after the Unix tool chest, the
|
|
meillo@32
|
113 properties of the latter apply to the former as well.
|
|
meillo@8
|
114
|
|
meillo@53
|
115 .U2 "A Tour through MH
|
|
meillo@53
|
116 .P
|
|
meillo@53
|
117 XXX cf. peek; why UP still matters; real work.
|
|
meillo@8
|
118
|
|
meillo@27
|
119 .U2 "Example Session
|
|
meillo@27
|
120 .P
|
|
meillo@53
|
121 Following is an example mail handling session.
|
|
meillo@53
|
122 It uses mmh but is mostly compatible with nmh and old MH.
|
|
meillo@32
|
123 Details might vary but the look'n'feel is the same.
|
|
meillo@42
|
124 .DS
|
|
meillo@42
|
125 $ \f(CBinc\fP
|
|
meillo@42
|
126 Incorporating new mail into inbox...
|
|
meillo@42
|
127
|
|
meillo@42
|
128 1+ 2012-05-16 11:16 meillo@dream.home Hello
|
|
meillo@42
|
129 2 2012-05-16 11:17 meillo@dream.home book
|
|
meillo@42
|
130
|
|
meillo@42
|
131 $ \f(CBshow\fP
|
|
meillo@42
|
132 Date: Wed, 16 May 2012 11:16:00 +0200
|
|
meillo@42
|
133 To: meillo
|
|
meillo@42
|
134 From: <meillo@dream.home.schnalke.org>
|
|
meillo@42
|
135 Subject: Hello
|
|
meillo@42
|
136
|
|
meillo@42
|
137 part text/plain 13
|
|
meillo@42
|
138 mmh is great
|
|
meillo@42
|
139
|
|
meillo@42
|
140 $ \f(CBnext\fP
|
|
meillo@42
|
141 Date: Wed, 16 May 2012 11:17:24 +0200
|
|
meillo@42
|
142 To: meillo
|
|
meillo@42
|
143 From: <meillo@dream.home.schnalke.org>
|
|
meillo@42
|
144 Subject: book
|
|
meillo@42
|
145
|
|
meillo@42
|
146 part text/plain 79
|
|
meillo@42
|
147 Hello meillo,
|
|
meillo@42
|
148
|
|
meillo@42
|
149 have a look at the ``Daemon book''. You need to read that!
|
|
meillo@42
|
150
|
|
meillo@42
|
151 foo
|
|
meillo@42
|
152
|
|
meillo@42
|
153 $ \f(CBrmm 1\fP
|
|
meillo@42
|
154
|
|
meillo@42
|
155 $ \f(CBscan\fP
|
|
meillo@42
|
156 2+ 2012-05-16 11:17 meillo@dream.home book
|
|
meillo@42
|
157
|
|
meillo@42
|
158 $
|
|
meillo@42
|
159 .DE
|
|
meillo@27
|
160
|
|
meillo@27
|
161
|
|
meillo@28
|
162 .H1 "nmh: Code and Community
|
|
meillo@2
|
163 .P
|
|
meillo@49
|
164 In order to understand the condition, goals and dynamics of a project,
|
|
meillo@49
|
165 one needs to know the reasons.
|
|
meillo@53
|
166 This section explains the background.
|
|
meillo@53
|
167 .P
|
|
meillo@49
|
168 MH predates the Internet, it comes from times before networking was universal,
|
|
meillo@49
|
169 it comes from times when emailing was small, short and simple.
|
|
meillo@42
|
170 Then it grew, spread and adopted to the changes email went through.
|
|
meillo@49
|
171 Its core-concepts, however, remained the same.
|
|
meillo@49
|
172 During the Eighties students at UCI actively worked on MH.
|
|
meillo@49
|
173 They added new features and optimized the code for the then popular systems.
|
|
meillo@49
|
174 All this still was in times before POSIX and ANSI C.
|
|
meillo@49
|
175 As large parts of the code stem from this time, today's nmh source code
|
|
meillo@49
|
176 still contains many ancient parts.
|
|
meillo@51
|
177 BSD-specific code and constructs tailored for hardware of that time
|
|
meillo@49
|
178 are frequent.
|
|
meillo@2
|
179 .P
|
|
meillo@49
|
180 Nmh started about a decade after the POSIX and ANSI C standards had been
|
|
meillo@49
|
181 established. A more modern coding style entered the code base, but still
|
|
meillo@49
|
182 a part of the developers came from ``the old days''. The developer
|
|
meillo@49
|
183 base became more diverse and thus resulted in code of different style.
|
|
meillo@49
|
184 Programming practices from different decades merged in the project.
|
|
meillo@51
|
185 As several peers added code, the system became more a conglomeration
|
|
meillo@51
|
186 of single tools rather than a homogeneous of-one-cast mail system.
|
|
meillo@49
|
187 Still, the existing basic concepts held it together.
|
|
meillo@8
|
188 They were mostly untouched throughout the years.
|
|
meillo@8
|
189 .P
|
|
meillo@51
|
190 Despite the tool chest approach at the surface \(en a collection
|
|
meillo@49
|
191 of separate small programs \(en on the source code level
|
|
meillo@49
|
192 it is much more interweaved.
|
|
meillo@49
|
193 Several separate components were compiled into one program
|
|
meillo@51
|
194 for efficiency reasons.
|
|
meillo@8
|
195 This lead to intricate innards.
|
|
meillo@49
|
196 Unfortunately, the clear separation on the outside appeared as being
|
|
meillo@49
|
197 pretty interweaved inside.
|
|
meillo@8
|
198 .P
|
|
meillo@49
|
199 The advent of MIME rose the complexity of email by a magnitude.
|
|
meillo@49
|
200 This is visible in nmh. The MIME-related parts are the most complex ones.
|
|
meillo@49
|
201 It's also visible that MIME support had been added on top of the old MH core.
|
|
meillo@51
|
202 MH's tool chest style made this easily possible and encourages
|
|
meillo@49
|
203 such approaches, but unfortunately, it lead to duplicated functions
|
|
meillo@49
|
204 and half-hearted implementation of the concepts.
|
|
meillo@49
|
205 .P
|
|
meillo@49
|
206 To provide backward-compatibility, it is a common understanding to not
|
|
meillo@49
|
207 change the default settings.
|
|
meillo@51
|
208 In consequence, the user needs to activate modern features explicitly
|
|
meillo@47
|
209 to be able to use them.
|
|
meillo@49
|
210 This puts a burden on new users, because out-of-the-box nmh remains
|
|
meillo@49
|
211 in the same ancient style.
|
|
meillo@49
|
212 If nmh is seen to be a back-end, then this compatibility surely is important.
|
|
meillo@49
|
213 However, in the same go, new users have difficulties to use nmh for modern
|
|
meillo@49
|
214 emailing.
|
|
meillo@49
|
215 The small but matured community around nmh hardly needs much change
|
|
meillo@49
|
216 as they have their convenient setups since decades.
|
|
meillo@8
|
217
|
|
meillo@8
|
218
|
|
meillo@27
|
219 .H1 "mmh
|
|
meillo@28
|
220 .P
|
|
meillo@49
|
221 I started to work on my experimental version in October 2011,
|
|
meillo@53
|
222 at a time when there were no more than three commits to nmh
|
|
meillo@53
|
223 since the beginning of the year.
|
|
meillo@53
|
224 In December, when I announced my work in progress on the
|
|
meillo@53
|
225 nmh-workers mailing list,
|
|
meillo@42
|
226 .[
|
|
meillo@51
|
227 nmh-workers mmh announce December
|
|
meillo@42
|
228 .]
|
|
meillo@53
|
229 nmh's community became active, too.
|
|
meillo@49
|
230 This movement was heavily pushed by Paul Vixie's ``edginess'' comment.
|
|
meillo@42
|
231 .[
|
|
meillo@42
|
232 nmh-workers vixie edginess
|
|
meillo@42
|
233 .]
|
|
meillo@53
|
234 After long years of stagnation, nmh became actively developed again.
|
|
meillo@42
|
235 Hence, while I was working on mmh, the community was working on nmh,
|
|
meillo@42
|
236 in parallel.
|
|
meillo@28
|
237 .P
|
|
meillo@53
|
238 The name \fImmh\fP may stand for \fImodern mail handler\fP,
|
|
meillo@53
|
239 because the project tries to modernize nmh.
|
|
meillo@53
|
240 Personally however, I prefer to call mmh \fImeillo's mail handler\fP,
|
|
meillo@53
|
241 emphasizing that the project follows my visions and preferences.
|
|
meillo@42
|
242 (My login name is \fImeillo\fP.)
|
|
meillo@53
|
243 This project model was inspired by \fIdwm\fP,
|
|
meillo@42
|
244 which is Anselm Garbe's personal window manager \(en
|
|
meillo@42
|
245 targeted to satisfy Garbe's personal needs whenever conflicts appear.
|
|
meillo@53
|
246 Dwm had retained its lean elegance and its focused character, whereas
|
|
meillo@53
|
247 its community-driven predecessor \fIwmii\fP had grown fat over time.
|
|
meillo@53
|
248 The development of mmh should remain focused.
|
|
meillo@27
|
249
|
|
meillo@45
|
250
|
|
meillo@27
|
251 .U2 "Motivation
|
|
meillo@27
|
252 .P
|
|
meillo@51
|
253 MH is the most important of very few command line tool chest email systems.
|
|
meillo@51
|
254 Tool chests are powerful because they can be perfectly automated and
|
|
meillo@53
|
255 extended. They allow arbitrary kinds of front-ends to be
|
|
meillo@53
|
256 implemented on top of them quickly and without internal knowledge.
|
|
meillo@53
|
257 Additionally, tool chests are much better to maintain than monolithic
|
|
meillo@43
|
258 programs.
|
|
meillo@53
|
259 As there are few tool chests for emailing and as MH-like ones are the most
|
|
meillo@53
|
260 popular among them they should be developed further.
|
|
meillo@53
|
261 This keeps their
|
|
meillo@43
|
262 conceptional elegance and unique scripting qualities available to users.
|
|
meillo@53
|
263 Mmh will create a modern and convenient entry point to MH-like systems
|
|
meillo@53
|
264 for new and interested users.
|
|
meillo@43
|
265 .P
|
|
meillo@51
|
266 The mmh project is motivated by deficits of nmh and
|
|
meillo@45
|
267 my wish for general changes, combined
|
|
meillo@45
|
268 with the nmh community's reluctancy to change.
|
|
meillo@45
|
269 .P
|
|
meillo@45
|
270 nmh hadn't adjusted to modern emailing needs well enough.
|
|
meillo@45
|
271 The default setup was completely unusable for modern emailing.
|
|
meillo@45
|
272 Too much setup work was required.
|
|
meillo@45
|
273 Several modern features were already available but the community
|
|
meillo@45
|
274 didn't wanted to have them as default.
|
|
meillo@45
|
275 mmh is a way to change this.
|
|
meillo@45
|
276 .P
|
|
meillo@45
|
277 In my eyes, MH's concepts could be exploited even better and
|
|
meillo@45
|
278 the style of the tools could be improved. Both would simplify
|
|
meillo@45
|
279 and generalize the system, providing cleaner interfaces and more
|
|
meillo@53
|
280 software leverage at the same time.
|
|
meillo@45
|
281 mmh is a way to demonstrate this.
|
|
meillo@45
|
282 .P
|
|
meillo@45
|
283 In providing several parts of an email system, nmh can hardly
|
|
meillo@45
|
284 compete with the large specialized projects that focus
|
|
meillo@45
|
285 on only one of the components.
|
|
meillo@45
|
286 The situation can be improved by concentrating the development power
|
|
meillo@51
|
287 on the most unique part of MH and letting the user pick his preferred
|
|
meillo@45
|
288 set of other mail components.
|
|
meillo@45
|
289 Today's pre-packaged software components encourage this model.
|
|
meillo@45
|
290 mmh is a way to go for this approach.
|
|
meillo@45
|
291 .P
|
|
meillo@43
|
292 It's worthwhile to fork nmh for the development of mmh, because
|
|
meillo@43
|
293 the two projects focus on different goals and differ in fundamental questions.
|
|
meillo@43
|
294 The nmh community's reluctance to change conflicts
|
|
meillo@43
|
295 with my strong will to change.
|
|
meillo@43
|
296 In developing a separate experimental version new approaches can
|
|
meillo@43
|
297 easily be tried out without the need to discuss changes beforehand.
|
|
meillo@43
|
298 In fact, revolutionary changes are hardly possible otherwise.
|
|
meillo@43
|
299 .P
|
|
meillo@45
|
300 The mmh project provides the basis to implemented and demonstrated
|
|
meillo@45
|
301 the listed ideas without the need to change nmh or its community.
|
|
meillo@43
|
302 Of course, the results of the mmh project shall improve nmh, in the end.
|
|
meillo@27
|
303
|
|
meillo@27
|
304 .U2 "Target Field
|
|
meillo@27
|
305 .P
|
|
meillo@45
|
306 Any effort needs to be targeted towards a specific goal
|
|
meillo@45
|
307 in order to be successful.
|
|
meillo@45
|
308 Following is a description of the imagined typical mmh user.
|
|
meillo@45
|
309 mmh should satisfy his needs.
|
|
meillo@53
|
310 .\" XXX Remove the next sentence?
|
|
meillo@48
|
311 Actually, as mmh is my personal version of MH, this is a description
|
|
meillo@48
|
312 of myself.
|
|
meillo@45
|
313 .P
|
|
meillo@43
|
314 The target user of mmh likes Unix and its philosophy.
|
|
meillo@27
|
315 He likes to use programs that are conceptionally appealing.
|
|
meillo@27
|
316 He's familiar with the command line and enjoys its power.
|
|
meillo@27
|
317 He is at least capable of shell scripting and wants to improve his
|
|
meillo@27
|
318 productivity by scripting the mail system.
|
|
meillo@43
|
319 He naturally uses modern email features, like attachments,
|
|
meillo@51
|
320 non-ASCII text, and digital cryptography.
|
|
meillo@43
|
321 He is able to setup email system components besides mmh,
|
|
meillo@51
|
322 and actually likes the choice to pick the ones he prefers.
|
|
meillo@43
|
323 He has a reasonably modern system that complies to standards,
|
|
meillo@43
|
324 like POSIX and ANSI C.
|
|
meillo@27
|
325 .P
|
|
meillo@48
|
326 The typical user invokes mmh commands directly in an interactive
|
|
meillo@48
|
327 shell session, but as well, he uses them to automate mail handling tasks.
|
|
meillo@48
|
328 Likely, he runs his mail setup on a server machine, to which he connects
|
|
meillo@48
|
329 via ssh. He might also have local mmh installations on his workstations,
|
|
meillo@51
|
330 but does rather not rely on graphical front-ends. He definitely wants
|
|
meillo@48
|
331 to be flexible and thus be able to change his setup to suite his needs.
|
|
meillo@8
|
332 .P
|
|
meillo@48
|
333 The typical mmh user is a programmer himself.
|
|
meillo@48
|
334 He likes to, occasionally, take the opportunity of Free Software to put
|
|
meillo@48
|
335 hands on and get involved in the software he uses.
|
|
meillo@48
|
336 Hence, he likes small and clean code bases and he cares for code quality.
|
|
meillo@48
|
337 In general, he believes that:
|
|
meillo@8
|
338 .BU
|
|
meillo@48
|
339 Elegance \(en i.e. simplicity, clarity and generality \(en
|
|
meillo@48
|
340 is most important.
|
|
meillo@8
|
341 .BU
|
|
meillo@48
|
342 Concepts are more important than the concrete implementation.
|
|
meillo@8
|
343 .BU
|
|
meillo@48
|
344 Code optimizations for anything but readability should be avoided
|
|
meillo@48
|
345 if possible.
|
|
meillo@8
|
346 .BU
|
|
meillo@45
|
347 Having a lot of choice is bad.
|
|
meillo@48
|
348 .BU
|
|
meillo@48
|
349 Removed code is debugged code.
|
|
meillo@8
|
350
|
|
meillo@48
|
351 .U2 "Goals
|
|
meillo@45
|
352 .P
|
|
meillo@45
|
353 The general goals for the mmh project are the following:
|
|
meillo@48
|
354 .IP "Stream-lining
|
|
meillo@48
|
355 Mmh should be stripped down to its core, which is the MUA part of emailing.
|
|
meillo@48
|
356 The feature set should be distilled to the ones really needed,
|
|
meillo@48
|
357 effectively removing corner-cases.
|
|
meillo@53
|
358 Parts that don't add to the main task of being a conceptionally
|
|
meillo@53
|
359 appealing MUA should be removed.
|
|
meillo@48
|
360 This includes, the MTA and MRA facilities.
|
|
meillo@48
|
361 Choice should be reduced to the main options.
|
|
meillo@48
|
362 .IP "Modernizing
|
|
meillo@48
|
363 Mmh's feature set needs to become more modern.
|
|
meillo@48
|
364 Better support for attachment and digital cryptography needs to be added.
|
|
meillo@48
|
365 MIME support needs to be integrated deeper and more naturally.
|
|
meillo@48
|
366 The modern email features need to be readily available, out-of-the-box.
|
|
meillo@48
|
367 And on the other hand,
|
|
meillo@48
|
368 bulletin board support and similar obsolete facilities need to be dropped
|
|
meillo@48
|
369 out.
|
|
meillo@48
|
370 Likewise, ancient technologies, like hardcopy terminals, should not
|
|
meillo@48
|
371 be supported any further.
|
|
meillo@48
|
372 .IP "Code style
|
|
meillo@48
|
373 Mmh's source code needs to be updated to modern standards.
|
|
meillo@48
|
374 Standardized library functions should replace non-standard versions
|
|
meillo@48
|
375 whenever possible.
|
|
meillo@48
|
376 Code should be separated into distinct modules when possible.
|
|
meillo@48
|
377 Time and space optimizations should to be replaced by
|
|
meillo@48
|
378 clear and readable code.
|
|
meillo@48
|
379 A uniform programming style should prevail.
|
|
meillo@51
|
380 .IP "Homogeneity
|
|
meillo@48
|
381 The available concepts need to be expanded as far as possible.
|
|
meillo@48
|
382 A small set of concepts should prevail thoroughly throughout the system.
|
|
meillo@48
|
383 The whole system should appear to be of-one-style.
|
|
meillo@48
|
384 It should feel like being cast as one.
|
