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annotate preface.roff @ 23:1e4afeb34da7
Rework in the preface.
| author | markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> |
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| date | Tue, 08 May 2012 17:23:02 +0200 |
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1 .H0 "Preface" no |
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2 |
| 23 | 3 .P |
| 4 MH is a set of mail handling tools with a common concept, like | |
| 5 the Unix toolchest is a set of file handling tools with a common | |
| 6 concept. nmh is the currently most popular implementation of an | |
| 7 MH-like mail handling system. | |
| 8 | |
| 9 | |
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10 .H1 "How the Fun Began" no |
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11 .P |
| 23 | 12 I have discovered nmh in September 2009. At that time I used to use mutt, |
| 13 like many command line-attracted Unix users do. | |
| 14 Conceptually nmh had convinced me at once and learning | |
| 15 its different model of email handling had been relatively easy. | |
| 16 The change was like | |
| 17 managing files in the Unix shell when you are used to graphical file | |
| 18 managers, or like learning vi when you are used to modeless editors. | |
| 19 The change was not trivial but as I was convinced by the concepts and | |
| 20 already managed my files with shell tools and edited with vi, not to | |
| 21 difficult either. | |
| 22 In contrast, setting nmh up to a convenient state became a tendious task | |
| 23 that took several months. | |
| 24 .P | |
| 25 Once having nmh arranged as wished, using it was joy because of its | |
| 26 conceptional elegance and scripting capabilities. | |
| 27 On the other hand, however, it still was | |
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28 inconvenient in handling attachments, non-ASCII character encodings, |
| 23 | 29 and similar features of modern emailing. |
| 30 My setup required more and more scripts and additional configuration | |
| 31 to have nmh act the way I expected it to behave, where my | |
| 32 expectations were rather common to modern emailing than exceptionel. | |
| 33 In being a software developer, I wanted to improve the situation. | |
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34 .P |
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35 In Spring 2010, I asked on the nmh-workers mailing list for the |
| 23 | 36 possibility to offer a Google Summer of Code project on nmh. |
| 37 Participating in the development this way appeared attractive to me, | |
| 38 especially as it would have been possible to have the project | |
| 39 accepted at university. Although the nmh community | |
| 40 generally had been positive on the | |
| 41 suggestion, eventually it had not been possible to manage the | |
| 42 administrative work. Though my proposal had started the nmh community | |
| 43 to move. In the following weeks, goals for nmh's future were discussed | |
| 44 on the list. During the discussions, I became involved in the | |
| 45 question whether nmh should be an MTA. (Thread subject: | |
| 46 ``should nmh be an MTA or an MUA?''.) | |
| 47 In this point, my opinion differed from the opinion of most others | |
| 48 as I voted for the MTA facility of nmh to be removed. | |
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49 .P |
| 23 | 50 Being not able to work on nmh in a way that would be |
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51 accepted as part of my official studies, I needed to get my credit |
| 23 | 52 points with some other project. |
| 53 Half a year later, starting in August 2010, | |
| 54 I took one semester off to travel through Latin America. | |
| 55 Within this time, I had to do practical computer work for three | |
| 56 months. | |
| 57 This brought me back to nmh. | |
| 58 Richard Sandelman, an active nmh user, made it possible for | |
| 59 me to work on nmh. Juan Granda, living in Santiago del | |
| 60 Estero in Argentina, provided a computer and Internet connection for | |
| 61 my work. | |
| 62 Within the three month, I became familiar with nmh's code base and | |
| 63 its community. I learned how things work. Quickly it became obvious that | |
| 64 I wouldn't succeed with my main goal, to improve the character | |
| 65 encoding handling within the project. One obvious problem is the missing | |
| 66 transfer decoding of the quoted text in replies. | |
| 67 As this is one of the most intricate parts of the system, the goal | |
| 68 was simply too difficult to reach. | |
| 69 Instead I improved the code as I read through it. I found minor bugs | |
| 70 for which I proposed fixes to the community. Also I | |
| 71 could improve the documentation. When I started with | |
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72 larger code changes, I had to discover that the community's wish for |
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73 compatibility was stronger than its wish for convenient |
| 23 | 74 out-of-the-box setups \(en in contrast with my opinion. |
| 75 This lead to long discussions, again. | |
| 76 I came to understand their point of view, but it simply is not mine. | |
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77 .P |
| 23 | 78 At the end of my three-month project, I had become familiar with |
| 79 nmh's code base and its community. I had improved the project a bit | |
| 80 and I still was convinced that I wanted to go on with that. | |
| 81 .P | |
| 82 Another half a year later, the end of my studies came within reach. | |
| 83 I needed a topic for my master's thesis. | |
| 84 There was no question: I wanted to work on nmh. | |
| 85 But well, not exactly on nmh, | |
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86 because I had accepted that the nmh community has different goals |
| 23 | 87 than I have. This would result in long discussions and thus few progress. |
| 88 After careful thought, I decided to start an experimental version of nmh. | |
| 89 I wanted to follow my own ideas of how nmh should look like. I wanted | |
| 90 to see where that would lead to. I wanted to compare the result of my | |
| 91 work to the present state of nmh. Time should prove me successful or | |
| 92 not. | |
| 93 Nmh would hardly be hurt by my work as I would not interfere with | |
| 94 them. But nmh could profit from my experiences. | |
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95 .P |
| 23 | 96 I started to work on my experimental version, which I call |
| 97 \fImmh\fP (for \fImeillo's mail handler\fP), in Fall 2011. | |
| 98 In December, when I announced that I would work on an experimental | |
| 99 version, the activity in nmh suddenly rose. Suddently the community | |
| 100 started to move. | |
| 101 After long years of mostly idling, nmh became actively developed again. | |
| 102 What a great result! | |
| 103 Hence, while I was working on mmh, the community was working on nmh | |
| 104 too. My own work went in parallel and mostly unrelated. | |
| 105 .P | |
| 106 Because of several circumstances, my experimental version is rather | |
| 107 a fork today, although this may change again in the future. | |
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108 |
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109 |
| 23 | 110 .H1 "Organization" no |
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111 .P |
| 23 | 112 foo |
| 113 | |
| 114 .H1 "Conventions" no | |
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115 .P |
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116 .B "Mail client" . |
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117 Synonym for MUA. The part of the mail software the user directly |
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118 interacts with. |
| 23 | 119 .P |
| 120 | |
| 121 .H1 "Acknowledgments" no | |
| 122 .P | |
| 123 foo | |
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124 |
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125 |
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126 .\" End or Preface. Start of the normal text. |
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127 .\" Switch to arabic page numbers and start on a right page. |
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128 .if e \{ |
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129 . pn 1 |
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130 . af PN 1 |
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131 .\} |
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132 .if o \{ |
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133 . pn 0 |
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134 . af PN 0 |
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135 . bp |
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136 .\} |