| rev |
line source |
|
meillo@58
|
1 .H0 "Discussion
|
|
meillo@0
|
2 .P
|
|
meillo@58
|
3 This main chapter discusses the practical work done in the mmh project.
|
|
meillo@58
|
4 It is structured along the goals to achieve. The concrete work done
|
|
meillo@58
|
5 is described in the examples of how the general goals were achieved.
|
|
meillo@58
|
6
|
|
meillo@58
|
7
|
|
meillo@58
|
8
|
|
meillo@58
|
9
|
|
meillo@58
|
10 .H1 "Stream-lining
|
|
meillo@58
|
11
|
|
meillo@0
|
12 .P
|
|
meillo@58
|
13 MH had been considered an all-in-one system for mail handling.
|
|
meillo@58
|
14 The community around nmh has a similar understanding.
|
|
meillo@58
|
15 In fundamental difference, I believe that mmh should be a MUA but
|
|
meillo@58
|
16 nothing more. I believe that all-in-one mail systems are not the way
|
|
meillo@58
|
17 to go. There are excellent specialized MTAs, like Postfix;
|
|
meillo@58
|
18 there are specialized MDAs, like Procmail; there are specialized
|
|
meillo@58
|
19 MRAs, like Fetchmail. I believe it's best to use them instead of
|
|
meillo@58
|
20 providing the same function ourselves. Doing something well requires to
|
|
meillo@58
|
21 focus on this particular aspect or a small set of aspects. The more
|
|
meillo@58
|
22 it is possible to focus, the better the result in this particular
|
|
meillo@58
|
23 area will be. The limiting resource in Free Software community development
|
|
meillo@58
|
24 usually is human power. If the low development power is even parted
|
|
meillo@58
|
25 into multiple development areas, it will hardly be possible to
|
|
meillo@58
|
26 compete with the specialists in the various fields. This is even
|
|
meillo@58
|
27 increased, given the small community \(en developers and users \(en
|
|
meillo@58
|
28 that MH-based mail systems have. In consequence, I believe that the
|
|
meillo@58
|
29 available resources should be concentrated at the point where MH is
|
|
meillo@58
|
30 most unique. This is clearly the MUA part.
|
|
meillo@58
|
31 .P
|
|
meillo@60
|
32 The goal for mmh was to remove peripheral parts and stream-line
|
|
meillo@60
|
33 it for the MUA task.
|
|
meillo@60
|
34
|
|
meillo@60
|
35
|
|
meillo@60
|
36 .H2 "Removal of Mail Transfer Facilities
|
|
meillo@60
|
37 .P
|
|
meillo@60
|
38 In contrast to nmh, which also provides mail submission and mail retrieval
|
|
meillo@60
|
39 facilities, mmh is a MUA only.
|
|
meillo@60
|
40 .P
|
|
meillo@60
|
41 The MSA is called ``Message Transfer Service'' (MTS) in nmh.
|
|
meillo@60
|
42 The facility establishes TCP/IP connections and speaks SMTP to submit
|
|
meillo@60
|
43 messages for relay to the outside world.
|
|
meillo@60
|
44 This part is implemented in the
|
|
meillo@60
|
45 .Pn post
|
|
meillo@60
|
46 command.
|
|
meillo@60
|
47 Demanded by the changes in
|
|
meillo@60
|
48 emailing, this part of nmh required changes in the last years.
|
|
meillo@60
|
49 Encrypted connections needed to be supported, hence SASL was introduced
|
|
meillo@60
|
50 into nmh. This added complexity to the nmh without improving it in
|
|
meillo@60
|
51 its core functions. Also, keeping up with recent developments in
|
|
meillo@60
|
52 this field needs requires development power and specialists.
|
|
meillo@60
|
53 Mmh cuts this whole facility off and depends on an external MTA instead.
|
|
meillo@60
|
54 The only outgoing interface available to mmh is the
|
|
meillo@60
|
55 .Pn sendmail
|
|
meillo@60
|
56 command.
|
|
meillo@60
|
57 Almost any MTA provides a
|
|
meillo@60
|
58 .Pn sendmail
|
|
meillo@60
|
59 command.
|
|
meillo@60
|
60 It not, any program can be substituted if it reads the
|
|
meillo@60
|
61 message from the standard input, extracts the recipient addresses
|
|
meillo@60
|
62 from the message header and does not conflict
|
|
meillo@60
|
63 with sendmail-specific command line arguments.
|
|
meillo@60
|
64 .P
|
|
meillo@60
|
65 To retrieve mail, the
|
|
meillo@60
|
66 .Pn inc
|
|
meillo@60
|
67 command in nmh has the ability to establish TCP/IP connections
|
|
meillo@60
|
68 and speaks POP3 to retrieve mail from remote servers.
|
|
meillo@60
|
69 As with mail submission, here encrypted connections are required
|
|
meillo@60
|
70 today, thus SASL support was added.
|
|
meillo@60
|
71 As POP3 is superseded by IMAP more and more, support for message
|
|
meillo@60
|
72 retrieval through IMAP will become necessary to be added soon.
|
|
meillo@60
|
73 Mmh has no support for retrieving mail from remote locations.
|
|
meillo@60
|
74 It depends on an external tool to cover this task.
|
|
meillo@60
|
75 There are two ways for messages to enter mmh's mail storage:
|
|
meillo@60
|
76 Incorporate them with
|
|
meillo@60
|
77 .Pn inc
|
|
meillo@60
|
78 from the system maildrop, or with
|
|
meillo@60
|
79 .Pn rcvstore
|
|
meillo@60
|
80 from the standard input.
|
|
meillo@60
|
81 .P
|
|
meillo@60
|
82 In consequence, mmh includes neither networking nor SASL code anymore.
|
|
meillo@60
|
83 Two large separate functional units are removed.
|
|
meillo@60
|
84 They account for about XXX lines of code and XXX libraries.
|
|
meillo@60
|
85 .P
|
|
meillo@60
|
86 With the removal of the MSA and MRA, mmh converted from an all-in-one
|
|
meillo@60
|
87 mail system to the core: the MUA.
|
|
meillo@60
|
88 Following the Unix philosophy, it focuses on one job and to do that well.
|
|
meillo@60
|
89 Now, of course, mmh depends on third-party software.
|
|
meillo@60
|
90 An external MTA/MSA is required to transfer mail to the outside world;
|
|
meillo@60
|
91 an external MRA is required to retrieve mail from remote machines.
|
|
meillo@60
|
92 There exist excellent implementations of such software,
|
|
meillo@60
|
93 which do this specific task likely much better than the internal
|
|
meillo@60
|
94 versions of nmh do it. Also, this provides the choice for the best
|
|
meillo@60
|
95 suiting one of the available implementation.
|
|
meillo@60
|
96 .P
|
|
meillo@60
|
97 As it had already been possible to use an external MSA or MRA,
|
|
meillo@60
|
98 why not keep the internal version for convenience?
|
|
meillo@60
|
99 If this would question the sense in having a fall-back pager in all
|
|
meillo@60
|
100 the command line tools, in case
|
|
meillo@60
|
101 .Pn more
|
|
meillo@60
|
102 or
|
|
meillo@60
|
103 .Pn less
|
|
meillo@60
|
104 wouldn't be available, the answer is intuitively seen.
|
|
meillo@60
|
105 Now, an MSA or MRA is clearly more complex than a text pager, but
|
|
meillo@60
|
106 still the concept holds: If programs become complex, split them;
|
|
meillo@60
|
107 if projects become complex, split them.
|
|
meillo@60
|
108 Complexity is demanded by the problem to solve. Decades ago,
|
|
meillo@60
|
109 emailing had been small and simple.
|
|
meillo@60
|
110 (Remember,
|
|
meillo@60
|
111 .Pn /bin/mail
|
|
meillo@60
|
112 had once covered anything there was to email.)
|
|
meillo@60
|
113 As the complexity in emailing increased, MH remainded mostly unchanged.
|
|
meillo@60
|
114 Nontheless, in nmh the POP server, which the original MH had included,
|
|
meillo@60
|
115 was removed. Now is the time to take one step further and remove
|
|
meillo@60
|
116 the MSA and MRA.
|
|
meillo@60
|
117 Not only does it decrease the code amount of the project,
|
|
meillo@60
|
118 but more important, it removes the whole field of message transfer
|
|
meillo@60
|
119 with all its implications from the project.
|
|
meillo@60
|
120 .P
|
|
meillo@60
|
121 Users of MH are usually able to set up an external MSA and MRA.
|
|
meillo@60
|
122 Also, the popular MSAs and MRAs have large communities and a lot
|
|
meillo@60
|
123 of documentation available.
|
|
meillo@60
|
124 .P
|
|
meillo@60
|
125 Choices for MSAs range from the full-featured
|
|
meillo@60
|
126 .I Postfix
|
|
meillo@60
|
127 over mid-size solutions like
|
|
meillo@60
|
128 .I masqmail
|
|
meillo@60
|
129 and
|
|
meillo@60
|
130 .I dma
|
|
meillo@60
|
131 to small forwarders like
|
|
meillo@60
|
132 .I ssmtp
|
|
meillo@60
|
133 and
|
|
meillo@60
|
134 .I nullmailer .
|
|
meillo@60
|
135 Choices for MRAs include
|
|
meillo@60
|
136 .I fetchmail ,
|
|
meillo@60
|
137 .I getmail ,
|
|
meillo@60
|
138 .I mpop
|
|
meillo@60
|
139 and
|
|
meillo@60
|
140 .I fdm .
|
|
meillo@60
|
141
|
|
meillo@60
|
142
|
|
meillo@60
|
143 .H2 "Removal of non-MUA Tools
|
|
meillo@60
|
144 .P
|
|
meillo@62
|
145 Some of nmh's tools were removed from mmh because they didn't
|
|
meillo@58
|
146 match the main focus of adding to the MUA's task.
|
|
meillo@62
|
147 .BU
|
|
meillo@58
|
148 .Pn conflict
|
|
meillo@58
|
149 was removed because it is a mail system maintenance tool.
|
|
meillo@62
|
150 Besides, it even checks
|
|
meillo@58
|
151 .Fn /etc/passwd
|
|
meillo@58
|
152 and
|
|
meillo@58
|
153 .Fn /etc/group
|
|
meillo@62
|
154 for consistency, which has nothing at all to do with emailing.
|
|
meillo@58
|
155 The tool might be useful, but it should not be shipped with mmh.
|
|
meillo@62
|
156 .BU
|
|
meillo@58
|
157 .Pn rcvtty
|
|
meillo@58
|
158 was removed because its usecase of writing to the user's terminal
|
|
meillo@58
|
159 on receiving of mail is hardly wanted today. If users like to be
|
|
meillo@58
|
160 informed of new mail, then using the shell's
|
|
meillo@58
|
161 .Ev MAILPATH
|
|
meillo@62
|
162 variable or graphical notifications are likely more
|
|
meillo@62
|
163 appealing.
|
|
meillo@62
|
164 Writing directly to a terminals is hardly ever wanted today.
|
|
meillo@62
|
165 If though one wants to have it this way, the standard tool
|
|
meillo@58
|
166 .Pn write
|
|
meillo@58
|
167 can be used in a way similar to:
|
|
meillo@58
|
168 .DS
|
|
meillo@58
|
169 scan -file - | write `id -un`
|
|
meillo@58
|
170 .DE
|
|
meillo@62
|
171 .BU
|
|
meillo@58
|
172 .Pn viamail
|
|
meillo@62
|
173 was removed when the new attachment system was introduced, because
|
|
meillo@58
|
174 .Pn forw
|
|
meillo@62
|
175 could can now the task itself.
|
|
meillo@62
|
176 The program
|
|
meillo@58
|
177 .Pn sendfiles
|
|
meillo@62
|
178 was rewritten as a shell script wrapper around
|
|
meillo@58
|
179 .Pn forw .
|
|
meillo@62
|
180 .BU
|
|
meillo@58
|
181 .Pn msgchk
|
|
meillo@62
|
182 was removed, because it lost its usefulness when POP support was removed.
|
|
meillo@58
|
183 .Pn msgchk
|
|
meillo@62
|
184 provides hardly more information than:
|
|
meillo@58
|
185 .DS
|
|
meillo@58
|
186 ls -l /var/mail/meillo
|
|
meillo@58
|
187 .DE
|
|
meillo@62
|
188 It does separate between old and new mail, but that's merely a detail
|
|
meillo@62
|
189 and can be done with
|
|
meillo@58
|
190 .Pn stat (1)
|
|
meillo@62
|
191 too.
|
|
meillo@62
|
192 A very small shell script could be written to output the information
|
|
meillo@62
|
193 in a convenient way, if truly necessary.
|
|
meillo@58
|
194 As mmh's inc only incorporates mail from the user's local maildrop
|
|
meillo@62
|
195 and thus no data transfers over slow networks are involved,
|
|
meillo@62
|
196 there's hardly need to check for new mail before incorporating it.
|
|
meillo@62
|
197 .BU
|
|
meillo@58
|
198 .Pn msh
|
|
meillo@62
|
199 was removed because the tool was in conflict with the
|
|
meillo@58
|
200 philosophy of MH. It provided an interactive shell to access the
|
|
meillo@58
|
201 features of MH. One major feature of MH is being a tool chest.
|
|
meillo@58
|
202 .Pn msh
|
|
meillo@58
|
203 wouldn't be just another shell, tailored to the needs of mail
|
|
meillo@58
|
204 handling, but one large program to have the MH tools built in.
|
|
meillo@58
|
205 It's main use was for accessing Bulletin Boards, which have seized to
|
|
meillo@62
|
206 be popular.
|
|
meillo@62
|
207 .P
|
|
meillo@62
|
208 XXX discuss
|
|
meillo@62
|
209 .P
|
|
meillo@62
|
210 Removing
|
|
meillo@58
|
211 .Pn msh ,
|
|
meillo@62
|
212 together with the truly obsolete code relicts
|
|
meillo@58
|
213 .Pn vmh
|
|
meillo@58
|
214 and
|
|
meillo@58
|
215 .Pn wmh ,
|
|
meillo@62
|
216 saved more than 7\|000 lines of C code \(en
|
|
meillo@62
|
217 that's about 15\|% less code in the project.
|
|
meillo@0
|
218
|
|
meillo@58
|
219
|
|
meillo@62
|
220 .H2 "Merge of \f(CWshow\fP and \f(CWmhshow\fP
|
|
meillo@58
|
221 .P
|
|
meillo@58
|
222 Since the very beginning, already in the first concept paper,
|
|
meillo@58
|
223 .Pn show
|
|
meillo@62
|
224 had been MH's message display program.
|
|
meillo@58
|
225 .Pn show
|
|
meillo@58
|
226 found out which pathnames the relevant messages had and invoked
|
|
meillo@58
|
227 .Pn mhl
|
|
meillo@62
|
228 then to have the content formated.
|
|
meillo@58
|
229 With the advent of MIME, this approach wasn't sufficient anymore.
|
|
meillo@58
|
230 MIME messages can consist of multiple parts, some of which aren't
|
|
meillo@62
|
231 directly displayable, and text content might be encoded in
|
|
meillo@58
|
232 foreign charsets.
|
|
meillo@58
|
233 .Pn show 's
|
|
meillo@58
|
234 simple approach and
|
|
meillo@58
|
235 .Pn mhl 's
|
|
meillo@58
|
236 limited display facilities couldn't cope with the task any longer.
|
|
meillo@62
|
237 .P
|
|
meillo@58
|
238 Instead of extending these tools, new ones were written from scratch
|
|
meillo@58
|
239 and then added to the MH tool chest. Doing so is encouraged by the
|
|
meillo@58
|
240 tool chest approach. The new tools could be added without interfering
|
|
meillo@62
|
241 with the existing ones. This is great. The ease of adding new tools
|
|
meillo@62
|
242 even made MH the first MUA to implement MIME.
|
|
meillo@58
|
243 .P
|
|
meillo@62
|
244 First, the new MIME features were added in form of the single program
|
|
meillo@58
|
245 .Pn mhn .
|
|
meillo@58
|
246 The command
|
|
meillo@62
|
247 .Cl "mhn \-show 42
|
|
meillo@58
|
248 would show the MIME message numbered 42.
|
|
meillo@58
|
249 With the 1.0 release of nmh in February 1999, Richard Coleman finished
|
|
meillo@58
|
250 the split of
|
|
meillo@58
|
251 .Pn mhn
|
|
meillo@58
|
252 into a set of specialized programs, which together covered the
|
|
meillo@62
|
253 multiple aspects of MIME. One of these resulting tools was
|
|
meillo@58
|
254 .Pn mhshow .
|
|
meillo@62
|
255 .Pn mhshow
|
|
meillo@62
|
256 resembled the
|
|
meillo@62
|
257 .Cl "mhn \-show
|
|
meillo@62
|
258 call.
|
|
meillo@62
|
259 .P
|
|
meillo@58
|
260
|
|
meillo@58
|
261
|
|
meillo@58
|
262 .H2 "Removal of Configure Options
|
|
meillo@58
|
263 .P
|
|
meillo@58
|
264
|
|
meillo@58
|
265 .H2 "Removal of switches
|
|
meillo@58
|
266 .P
|
|
meillo@58
|
267
|
|
meillo@58
|
268
|
|
meillo@58
|
269
|
|
meillo@58
|
270
|
|
meillo@58
|
271 .H1 "Moderizing
|
|
meillo@58
|
272
|
|
meillo@58
|
273
|
|
meillo@58
|
274 .H2 "Removal of Code Relicts
|
|
meillo@0
|
275 .P
|
|
meillo@51
|
276 The code base of mmh originates from the late Seventies,
|
|
meillo@51
|
277 had been extensively
|
|
meillo@51
|
278 worked on in the mid Eighties, and had been partly reorganized and extended
|
|
meillo@51
|
279 in the Nineties. Relicts of all those times had gathered in the code base.
|
|
meillo@12
|
280 My goal was to remove any ancient code parts. One part of the task was
|
|
meillo@12
|
281 converting obsolete code constructs to standard constructs, the other part
|
|
meillo@12
|
282 was dropping obsolete functions.
|
|
meillo@12
|
283 .P
|
|
meillo@12
|
284 As I'm not even thirty years old and have no more than seven years of
|
|
meillo@51
|
285 Unix experience, I needed to learn about the history in retrospective.
|
|
meillo@51
|
286 Older people likely have used those ancient constructs themselves
|
|
meillo@51
|
287 and have suffered from their incompatibilities and have longed for
|
|
meillo@12
|
288 standardization. Unfortunately, I have only read that others had done so.
|
|
meillo@12
|
289 This put me in a much more difficult positions when working on the old
|
|
meillo@12
|
290 code. I needed to recherche what other would have known by heart from
|
|
meillo@12
|
291 experience. All my programming experience comes from a time past ANSI C
|
|
meillo@12
|
292 and past POSIX. Although I knew about the times before, I took the
|
|
meillo@51
|
293 current state implicitly for granted most of the time.
|
|
meillo@12
|
294 .P
|
|
meillo@12
|
295 Being aware of
|
|
meillo@12
|
296 these facts, I rather let people with more historic experience solve the
|
|
meillo@12
|
297 task of converting the ancient code constructs to standardized ones.
|
|
meillo@12
|
298 Luckily, Lyndon Nerenberg focused on this task at the nmh project.
|
|
meillo@12
|
299 He converted large parts of the code to POSIX constructs, removing
|
|
meillo@12
|
300 the conditionals compilation for now standardized features.
|
|
meillo@12
|
301 I'm thankful for this task being solved. I only pulled the changes into
|
|
meillo@12
|
302 mmh.
|
|
meillo@12
|
303 .P
|
|
meillo@20
|
304 The other task \(en dropping ancient functionality to remove old code \(en
|
|
meillo@12
|
305 I did myself, though. My position to strip mmh to the bare minimum of
|
|
meillo@12
|
306 frequently used features is much more revolutional than the nmh community
|
|
meillo@20
|
307 likes it. Without the need to justify my decisions, I was able to quickly
|
|
meillo@20
|
308 remove functionality I considered ancient.
|
|
meillo@20
|
309 The need to discuss my decisions with
|
|
meillo@20
|
310 peers likely would have slowed this process down. Of course, I researched
|
|
meillo@12
|
311 if a particular feature really should be dropped. Having not had any
|
|
meillo@12
|
312 contact to this feature within my computer life was a first indicator to
|
|
meillo@12
|
313 drop it, but I also asked others and searched the literature for modern
|
|
meillo@12
|
314 usage of the feature. If it appeared to be truly ancient, I dropped it.
|
|
meillo@12
|
315 The reason for dropping is always part of the commit message in the
|
|
meillo@12
|
316 version control system. Thus, it is easy for others to check their
|
|
meillo@12
|
317 view on the topic with mine and possibly to argue for reinclusion.
|
|
meillo@12
|
318
|
|
meillo@12
|
319 .U2 "MMDF maildrop support
|
|
meillo@12
|
320 .P
|
|
meillo@12
|
321 I did drop any support for the MMDF maildrop format. This type of format
|
|
meillo@12
|
322 is conceptionally similar to the mbox format, but uses four bytes with
|
|
meillo@12
|
323 value 1 (\fL^A^A^A^A\fP) as message delimiter,
|
|
meillo@18
|
324 instead of the string ``\fLFrom\ \fP''.
|
|
meillo@12
|
325 Due to the similarity and mbox being the de-facto standard maildrop
|
|
meillo@12
|
326 format on Unix, but also due to the larger influence of Sendmail than MMDF,
|
|
meillo@12
|
327 the MMDF maildrop format had vanished.
|
|
meillo@12
|
328 .P
|
|
meillo@12
|
329 The simplifications within the code were only moderate. Switches could
|
|
meillo@12
|
330 be removed from tools like
|
|
meillo@12
|
331 .L packf ,
|
|
meillo@12
|
332 which generate packed mailboxes. Only one packed mailbox format remained:
|
|
meillo@12
|
333 mbox.
|
|
meillo@12
|
334 The most important changes affect the equally named mail parsing routine in
|
|
meillo@12
|
335 .L sbr/m_getfld.c .
|
|
meillo@12
|
336 The direct MMDF code had been removed, but as now only one packed mailbox
|
|
meillo@12
|
337 format is left, code structure simplifications are likely possible.
|
|
meillo@12
|
338 The reason why they are still outstanding is the heavily optimized code
|
|
meillo@18
|
339 of
|
|
meillo@18
|
340 .Fu m_getfld() .
|
|
meillo@18
|
341 Changes beyond a small local scope \(en
|
|
meillo@12
|
342 which restructuring in its core is \(en cause a high risk of damaging
|
|
meillo@12
|
343 the intricate workings of the optimized code. This problem is know
|
|
meillo@12
|
344 to the developers of nmh, too. They also avoid touching this minefield
|
|
meillo@12
|
345 if possible.
|
|
meillo@12
|
346
|
|
meillo@12
|
347 .U2 "UUCP Bang Paths
|
|
meillo@12
|
348 .P
|
|
meillo@12
|
349 More questionably than the former topic is the removal of support for the
|
|
meillo@12
|
350 UUCP bang path address style. However, the user may translate the bang
|
|
meillo@12
|
351 paths on retrieval to Internet addresses and the other way on posting
|
|
meillo@12
|
352 messages. The former can be done my an MDA like procmail; the latter
|
|
meillo@12
|
353 by a sendmail wrapper. This would ensure that any address handling would
|
|
meillo@12
|
354 work as expected. However, it might just work well without any
|
|
meillo@12
|
355 such modifications, as mmh does not touch addresses much, in general.
|
|
meillo@12
|
356 But I can't ensure as I have never used an environment with bang paths.
|
|
meillo@12
|
357 Also, the behavior might break at any point in further development.
|
|
meillo@12
|
358
|
|
meillo@12
|
359 .U2 "Hardcopy terminal support
|
|
meillo@12
|
360 .P
|
|
meillo@12
|
361 More of a funny anecdote is the remaining of a check for printing to a
|
|
meillo@12
|
362 hardcopy terminal until Spring 2012, when I finally removed it.
|
|
meillo@12
|
363 I surely would be very happy to see such a terminal in action, maybe
|
|
meillo@12
|
364 actually being able to work on it, but I fear my chances are null.
|
|
meillo@12
|
365 .P
|
|
meillo@12
|
366 The check only prevented a pager to be placed between the outputting
|
|
meillo@18
|
367 program (\c
|
|
meillo@18
|
368 .Pn mhl )
|
|
meillo@18
|
369 and the terminal. This could have been ensured with
|
|
meillo@18
|
370 the
|
|
meillo@18
|
371 .Sw \-nomoreproc
|
|
meillo@18
|
372 at the command line statically, too.
|
|
meillo@12
|
373
|
|
meillo@12
|
374 .U2 "Removed support for header fields
|
|
meillo@12
|
375 .P
|
|
meillo@12
|
376 The `Encrypted' header had been introduced by RFC\^822, but already
|
|
meillo@12
|
377 marked legacy in RFC 2822. It was superseded by FIXME.
|
|
meillo@12
|
378 Mmh does no more support this header.
|
|
meillo@12
|
379 .P
|
|
meillo@21
|
380 Native support for `Face' headers
|
|
meillo@21
|
381 had been removed, as well.
|
|
meillo@21
|
382 The feature is similar to the `X-Face' header in its intent,
|
|
meillo@21
|
383 but takes a different approach to store the image.
|
|
meillo@21
|
384 Instead of encoding the image data directly into the header,
|
|
meillo@21
|
385 the the header contains the hostname and UDP port where the image
|
|
meillo@21
|
386 date could be retrieved.
|
|
meillo@21
|
387 Neither `X-Face' nor the here described `Face' system
|
|
meillo@21
|
388 \**
|
|
meillo@21
|
389 .FS
|
|
meillo@21
|
390 There is also a newer but different system, invented 2005,
|
|
meillo@21
|
391 using `Face' headers.
|
|
meillo@21
|
392 It is the successor of `X-Face' providing colored PNG images.
|
|
meillo@21
|
393 .FE
|
|
meillo@21
|
394 became well used in the large scale.
|
|
meillo@21
|
395 It's still possible to use a Face systems,
|
|
meillo@21
|
396 although mmh does not provide support for any of the different systems
|
|
meillo@21
|
397 anymore. It's fairly easy to write a small shell script to
|
|
meillo@21
|
398 extract the embedded or fetch the external Face data and display the image.
|
|
meillo@21
|
399 Own Face headers can be added into the draft template files.
|
|
meillo@21
|
400 .P
|
|
meillo@12
|
401 `Content-MD5' headers were introduced by RFC\^1864. They provide only
|
|
meillo@12
|
402 a verification of data corruption during the transfer. By no means can
|
|
meillo@12
|
403 they ensure verbatim end-to-end delivery of the contents. This is clearly
|
|
meillo@12
|
404 stated in the RFC. The proper approach to provide verificationability
|
|
meillo@12
|
405 of content in an end-to-end relationship is the use of digital cryptography
|
|
meillo@12
|
406 (RFCs FIXME). On the other hand, transfer protocols should ensure the
|
|
meillo@12
|
407 integrity of the transmission. In combinations these two approaches
|
|
meillo@12
|
408 make the `Content-MD5' header field useless. In consequence, I removed
|
|
meillo@12
|
409 the support for it. By this removal, MD5 computation is not needed
|
|
meillo@12
|
410 anywhere in mmh. Hence, over 500 lines of code were removed by this one
|
|
meillo@12
|
411 change. Even if the `Content-MD5' header field is useful sometimes,
|
|
meillo@12
|
412 I value its usefulnes less than the improvement in maintainability, caused
|
|
meillo@12
|
413 by the removal.
|
|
meillo@12
|
414
|
|
meillo@20
|
415 .U2 "Prompter's Control Keys
|
|
meillo@20
|
416 .P
|
|
meillo@20
|
417 The program
|
|
meillo@20
|
418 .Pn prompter
|
|
meillo@20
|
419 queries the user to fill in a message form. When used by
|
|
meillo@20
|
420 .Pn comp
|
|
meillo@20
|
421 as:
|
|
meillo@20
|
422 .DS
|
|
meillo@20
|
423 comp \-editor prompter
|
|
meillo@20
|
424 .DE
|
|
meillo@20
|
425 the resulting behavior is similar to
|
|
meillo@20
|
426 .Pn mailx .
|
|
meillo@51
|
427 Apparently,
|
|
meillo@20
|
428 .Pn prompter
|
|
meillo@20
|
429 hadn't been touched lately. Otherwise it's hardly explainable why it
|
|
meillo@20
|
430 still offered the switches
|
|
meillo@20
|
431 .Sn \-erase \fUchr\fP
|
|
meillo@20
|
432 and
|
|
meillo@20
|
433 .Sn \-kill \fUchr\fP
|
|
meillo@20
|
434 to name the characters for command line editing.
|
|
meillo@21
|
435 The times when this had been necessary are long time gone.
|
|
meillo@20
|
436 Today these things work out-of-the-box, and if not, are configured
|
|
meillo@20
|
437 with the standard tool
|
|
meillo@20
|
438 .Pn stty .
|
|
meillo@20
|
439
|
|
meillo@21
|
440 .U2 "Vfork and Retry Loops
|
|
meillo@21
|
441 .P
|
|
meillo@51
|
442 MH creates many processes, which is a consequence of the tool chest approach.
|
|
meillo@21
|
443 In earlier times
|
|
meillo@21
|
444 .Fu fork()
|
|
meillo@21
|
445 had been an expensive system call, as the process's whole image needed
|
|
meillo@21
|
446 to be duplicated. One common case is replacing the image with
|
|
meillo@21
|
447 .Fu exec()
|
|
meillo@21
|
448 right after having forked the child process.
|
|
meillo@21
|
449 To speed up this case, the
|
|
meillo@21
|
450 .Fu vfork()
|
|
meillo@21
|
451 system call was invented at Berkeley. It completely omits copying the
|
|
meillo@21
|
452 image. If the image gets replaced right afterwards then unnecessary
|
|
meillo@21
|
453 work is omited. On old systems this results in large speed ups.
|
|
meillo@21
|
454 MH uses
|
|
meillo@21
|
455 .Fu vfork()
|
|
meillo@21
|
456 whenever possible.
|
|
meillo@21
|
457 .P
|
|
meillo@21
|
458 Memory management units that support copy-on-write semantics make
|
|
meillo@21
|
459 .Fu fork()
|
|
meillo@21
|
460 almost as fast as
|
|
meillo@21
|
461 .Fu vfork()
|
|
meillo@21
|
462 in the cases when they can be exchanged.
|
|
meillo@21
|
463 With
|
|
meillo@21
|
464 .Fu vfork()
|
|
meillo@51
|
465 being more error-prone and hardly faster, it's preferable to simply
|
|
meillo@21
|
466 use
|
|
meillo@21
|
467 .Fu fork()
|
|
meillo@21
|
468 instead.
|
|
meillo@21
|
469 .P
|
|
meillo@21
|
470 Related to the costs of
|
|
meillo@21
|
471 .Fu fork()
|
|
meillo@21
|
472 is the probability of its success.
|
|
meillo@21
|
473 Today on modern systems, the system call will succeed almost always.
|
|
meillo@51
|
474 In the Eighties on heavy loaded systems, as they were common at
|
|
meillo@21
|
475 universities, this had been different. Thus, many of the
|
|
meillo@21
|
476 .Fu fork()
|
|
meillo@21
|
477 calls were wrapped into loops to retry to fork several times in
|
|
meillo@21
|
478 short intervals, in case of previous failure.
|
|
meillo@21
|
479 In mmh, the program aborts at once if the fork failed.
|
|
meillo@21
|
480 The user can reexecute the command then. This is expected to be a
|
|
meillo@21
|
481 very rare case on modern systems, especially personal ones, which are
|
|
meillo@21
|
482 common today.
|
|
meillo@21
|
483
|
|
meillo@12
|
484
|
|
meillo@58
|
485 .H2 "Attachments
|
|
meillo@22
|
486 .P
|
|
meillo@58
|
487 MIME
|
|
meillo@58
|
488
|
|
meillo@58
|
489
|
|
meillo@58
|
490 .H2 "Digital Cryptography
|
|
meillo@22
|
491 .P
|
|
meillo@58
|
492 Signing and encryption.
|
|
meillo@58
|
493
|
|
meillo@58
|
494
|
|
meillo@58
|
495 .H2 "Good Defaults
|
|
meillo@22
|
496 .P
|
|
meillo@58
|
497 foo
|
|
meillo@58
|
498
|
|
meillo@58
|
499
|
|
meillo@58
|
500
|
|
meillo@58
|
501
|
|
meillo@58
|
502 .H1 "Code style
|
|
meillo@22
|
503 .P
|
|
meillo@58
|
504 foo
|
|
meillo@58
|
505
|
|
meillo@58
|
506
|
|
meillo@58
|
507 .H2 "Standard Code
|
|
meillo@22
|
508 .P
|
|
meillo@58
|
509 POSIX
|
|
meillo@22
|
510
|
|
meillo@22
|
511
|
|
meillo@58
|
512 .H2 "Separation
|
|
meillo@14
|
513
|
|
meillo@58
|
514 .U2 "MH Directory Split
|
|
meillo@0
|
515 .P
|
|
meillo@19
|
516 In MH and nmh, a personal setup had consisted of two parts:
|
|
meillo@19
|
517 The MH profile, named
|
|
meillo@19
|
518 .Fn \&.mh_profile
|
|
meillo@19
|
519 and being located directly in the user's home directory.
|
|
meillo@19
|
520 And the MH directory, where all his mail messages and also his personal
|
|
meillo@19
|
521 forms, scan formats, other configuration files are stored. The location
|
|
meillo@19
|
522 of this directory could be user-chosen. The default was to name it
|
|
meillo@19
|
523 .Fn Mail
|
|
meillo@19
|
524 and have it directly in the home directory.
|
|
meillo@19
|
525 .P
|
|
meillo@19
|
526 I've never liked the data storage and the configuration to be intermixed.
|
|
meillo@19
|
527 They are different kinds of data. One part, are the messages,
|
|
meillo@19
|
528 which are the data to operate on. The other part, are the personal
|
|
meillo@19
|
529 configuration files, which are able to change the behavior of the operations.
|
|
meillo@19
|
530 The actual operations are defined in the profile, however.
|
|
meillo@19
|
531 .P
|
|
meillo@19
|
532 When storing data, one should try to group data by its type.
|
|
meillo@19
|
533 There's sense in the Unix file system hierarchy, where configuration
|
|
meillo@19
|
534 file are stored separate (\c
|
|
meillo@19
|
535 .Fn /etc )
|
|
meillo@19
|
536 to the programs (\c
|
|
meillo@19
|
537 .Fn /bin
|
|
meillo@19
|
538 and
|
|
meillo@19
|
539 .Fn /usr/bin )
|
|
meillo@19
|
540 to their sources (\c
|
|
meillo@19
|
541 .Fn /usr/src ).
|
|
meillo@19
|
542 Such separation eases the backup management, for instance.
|
|
meillo@19
|
543 .P
|
|
meillo@19
|
544 In mmh, I've reorganized the file locations.
|
|
meillo@19
|
545 Still there are two places:
|
|
meillo@19
|
546 There's the mail storage directory, which, like in MH, contains all the
|
|
meillo@19
|
547 messages, but, unlike in MH, nothing else.
|
|
meillo@19
|
548 Its location still is user-chosen, with the default name
|
|
meillo@19
|
549 .Fn Mail ,
|
|
meillo@19
|
550 in the user's home directory. This is much similar to the case in nmh.
|
|
meillo@19
|
551 The configuration files, however, are grouped together in the new directory
|
|
meillo@19
|
552 .Fn \&.mmh
|
|
meillo@19
|
553 in the user's home directory.
|
|
meillo@19
|
554 The user's profile now is a file, named
|
|
meillo@19
|
555 .Fn profile ,
|
|
meillo@19
|
556 in this mmh directory.
|
|
meillo@19
|
557 Consistently, the context file and all the personal forms, scan formats,
|
|
meillo@19
|
558 and the like, are also there.
|
|
meillo@19
|
559 .P
|
|
meillo@19
|
560 The naming changed with the relocation.
|
|
meillo@19
|
561 The directory where everything, except the profile, had been stored (\c
|
|
meillo@19
|
562 .Fn $HOME/Mail ),
|
|
meillo@19
|
563 used to be called \fIMH directory\fP. Now, this directory is called the
|
|
meillo@19
|
564 user's \fImail storage\fP. The name \fImmh directory\fP is now given to
|
|
meillo@19
|
565 the new directory
|
|
meillo@19
|
566 (\c
|
|
meillo@19
|
567 .Fn $HOME/.mmh ),
|
|
meillo@19
|
568 containing all the personal configuration files.
|
|
meillo@19
|
569 .P
|
|
meillo@19
|
570 The separation of the files by type of content is logical and convenient.
|
|
meillo@19
|
571 There are no functional differences as any possible setup known to me
|
|
meillo@19
|
572 can be implemented with both approaches, although likely a bit easier
|
|
meillo@19
|
573 with the new approach. The main goal of the change had been to provide
|
|
meillo@19
|
574 sensible storage locations for any type of personal mmh file.
|
|
meillo@19
|
575 .P
|
|
meillo@19
|
576 In order for one user to have multiple MH setups, he can use the
|
|
meillo@19
|
577 environment variable
|
|
meillo@19
|
578 .Ev MH
|
|
meillo@19
|
579 the point to a different profile file.
|
|
meillo@19
|
580 The MH directory (mail storage plus personal configuration files) is
|
|
meillo@19
|
581 defined by the
|
|
meillo@19
|
582 .Pe Path
|
|
meillo@19
|
583 profile entry.
|
|
meillo@19
|
584 The context file could be defined by the
|
|
meillo@19
|
585 .Pe context
|
|
meillo@19
|
586 profile entry or by the
|
|
meillo@19
|
587 .Ev MHCONTEXT
|
|
meillo@19
|
588 environment variable.
|
|
meillo@19
|
589 The latter is useful to have a distinct context (e.g. current folders)
|
|
meillo@19
|
590 in each terminal window, for instance.
|
|
meillo@19
|
591 In mmh, there are three environment variables now.
|
|
meillo@19
|
592 .Ev MMH
|
|
meillo@19
|
593 may be used to change the location of the mmh directory.
|
|
meillo@19
|
594 .Ev MMHP
|
|
meillo@19
|
595 and
|
|
meillo@19
|
596 .Ev MMHC
|
|
meillo@19
|
597 change the profile and context files, respectively.
|
|
meillo@19
|
598 Besides providing a more consistent feel (which simply is the result
|
|
meillo@19
|
599 of being designed anew), the set of personal configuration files can
|
|
meillo@19
|
600 be chosen independently from the profile (including mail storage location)
|
|
meillo@19
|
601 and context, now. Being it relevant for practical use or not, it
|
|
meillo@19
|
602 de-facto is an improvement. However, the main achievement is the
|
|
meillo@19
|
603 split between mail storage and personal configuration files.
|
|
meillo@17
|
604
|
|
meillo@0
|
605
|
|
meillo@58
|
606 .H2 "Modularization
|
|
meillo@0
|
607 .P
|
|
meillo@58
|
608 whatnowproc
|
|
meillo@0
|
609 .P
|
|
meillo@49
|
610 The \fIMH library\fP
|
|
meillo@49
|
611 .Fn libmh.a
|
|
meillo@49
|
612 collects a bunch of standard functions that many of the MH tools need,
|
|
meillo@49
|
613 like reading the profile or context files.
|
|
meillo@49
|
614 This doesn't hurt the separation.
|
|
meillo@49
|
615
|
|
meillo@58
|
616
|
|
meillo@58
|
617 .H2 "Style
|
|
meillo@58
|
618 .P
|
|
meillo@58
|
619 Code layout, goto, ...
|
|
meillo@58
|
620
|
|
meillo@58
|
621
|
|
meillo@58
|
622
|
|
meillo@58
|
623
|
|
meillo@58
|
624 .H1 "Concept Exploitation/Homogeniety
|
|
meillo@58
|
625
|
|
meillo@58
|
626
|
|
meillo@58
|
627 .H2 "Draft Folder
|
|
meillo@58
|
628 .P
|
|
meillo@58
|
629 Historically, MH provided exactly one draft message, named
|
|
meillo@58
|
630 .Fn draft
|
|
meillo@58
|
631 and
|
|
meillo@58
|
632 being located in the MH directory. When starting to compose another message
|
|
meillo@58
|
633 before the former one was sent, the user had been questioned whether to use,
|
|
meillo@58
|
634 refile or replace the old draft. Working on multiple drafts at the same time
|
|
meillo@58
|
635 was impossible. One could only work on them in alteration by refiling the
|
|
meillo@58
|
636 previous one to some directory and fetching some other one for reediting.
|
|
meillo@58
|
637 This manual draft management needed to be done each time the user wanted
|
|
meillo@58
|
638 to switch between editing one draft to editing another.
|
|
meillo@58
|
639 .P
|
|
meillo@58
|
640 To allow true parallel editing of drafts, in a straight forward way, the
|
|
meillo@58
|
641 draft folder facility exists. It had been introduced already in July 1984
|
|
meillo@58
|
642 by Marshall T. Rose. The facility was deactivated by default.
|
|
meillo@58
|
643 Even in nmh, the draft folder facility remained deactivated by default.
|
|
meillo@58
|
644 At least, Richard Coleman added the man page
|
|
meillo@58
|
645 .Mp mh-draft(5)
|
|
meillo@58
|
646 to document
|
|
meillo@58
|
647 the feature well.
|
|
meillo@58
|
648 .P
|
|
meillo@58
|
649 The only advantage of not using the draft folder facility is the static
|
|
meillo@58
|
650 name of the draft file. This could be an issue for MH frontends like mh-e.
|
|
meillo@58
|
651 But as they likely want to provide working on multiple drafts in parallel,
|
|
meillo@58
|
652 the issue is only concerning compatibility. The aim of nmh to stay compatible
|
|
meillo@58
|
653 prevented the default activation of the draft folder facility.
|
|
meillo@58
|
654 .P
|
|
meillo@58
|
655 On the other hand, a draft folder is the much more natural concept than
|
|
meillo@58
|
656 a draft message. MH's mail storage consists of folders and messages,
|
|
meillo@58
|
657 the messages named with ascending numbers. A draft message breaks with this
|
|
meillo@58
|
658 concept by introducing a message in a file named
|
|
meillo@58
|
659 .Fn draft .
|
|
meillo@58
|
660 This draft
|
|
meillo@58
|
661 message is special. It can not be simply listed with the available tools,
|
|
meillo@58
|
662 but instead requires special switches. I.e. corner-cases were
|
|
meillo@58
|
663 introduced. A draft folder, in contrast, does not introduce such
|
|
meillo@58
|
664 corner-cases. The available tools can operate on the messages within that
|
|
meillo@58
|
665 folder like on any messages within any mail folders. The only difference
|
|
meillo@58
|
666 is the fact that the default folder for
|
|
meillo@58
|
667 .Pn send
|
|
meillo@58
|
668 is the draft folder,
|
|
meillo@58
|
669 instead of the current folder, like for all other tools.
|
|
meillo@58
|
670 .P
|
|
meillo@58
|
671 The trivial part of the change was activating the draft folder facility
|
|
meillo@58
|
672 by default and setting a default name for this folder. Obviously, I chose
|
|
meillo@58
|
673 the name
|
|
meillo@58
|
674 .Fn +drafts .
|
|
meillo@58
|
675 This made the
|
|
meillo@58
|
676 .Sw \-draftfolder
|
|
meillo@58
|
677 and
|
|
meillo@58
|
678 .Sw \-draftmessage
|
|
meillo@58
|
679 switches useless, and I could remove them.
|
|
meillo@58
|
680 The more difficult but also the part that showed the real improvement,
|
|
meillo@58
|
681 was updating the tools to the new concept.
|
|
meillo@58
|
682 .Sw \-draft
|
|
meillo@58
|
683 switches could
|
|
meillo@58
|
684 be dropped, as operating on a draft message became indistinguishable to
|
|
meillo@58
|
685 operating on any other message for the tools.
|
|
meillo@58
|
686 .Pn comp
|
|
meillo@58
|
687 still has its
|
|
meillo@58
|
688 .Sw \-use
|
|
meillo@58
|
689 switch for switching between its two modes: (1) Compose a new
|
|
meillo@58
|
690 draft, possibly by taking some existing message as a form. (2) Modify
|
|
meillo@58
|
691 an existing draft. In either case, the behavior of
|
|
meillo@58
|
692 .Pn comp is
|
|
meillo@58
|
693 deterministic. There is no more need to query the user. I consider this
|
|
meillo@58
|
694 a major improvement. By making
|
|
meillo@58
|
695 .Pn send
|
|
meillo@58
|
696 simply operate on the current
|
|
meillo@58
|
697 message in the draft folder by default, with message and folder both
|
|
meillo@58
|
698 overridable by specifying them on the command line, it is now possible
|
|
meillo@58
|
699 to send a draft anywhere within the storage by simply specifying its folder
|
|
meillo@58
|
700 and name.
|
|
meillo@58
|
701 .P
|
|
meillo@58
|
702 All theses changes converted special cases to regular cases, thus
|
|
meillo@58
|
703 simplifying the tools and increasing the flexibility.
|
|
meillo@58
|
704
|
|
meillo@58
|
705
|
|
meillo@58
|
706 .H2 "Trash Folder
|
|
meillo@58
|
707 .P
|
|
meillo@58
|
708 Similar to the situation for drafts is the situation for removed messages.
|
|
meillo@58
|
709 Historically, a message was deleted by renaming. A specific
|
|
meillo@58
|
710 \fIbackup prefix\fP, often comma (\c
|
|
meillo@58
|
711 .Fn , )
|
|
meillo@58
|
712 or hash (\c
|
|
meillo@58
|
713 .Fn # ),
|
|
meillo@58
|
714 being prepended to the file name. Thus, MH wouldn't recognize the file
|
|
meillo@58
|
715 as a message anymore, as only files whose name consists of digits only
|
|
meillo@58
|
716 are treated as messages. The removed messages remained as files in the
|
|
meillo@58
|
717 same directory and needed some maintenance job to truly delete them after
|
|
meillo@58
|
718 some grace time. Usually, by running a command similar to
|
|
meillo@58
|
719 .DS
|
|
meillo@58
|
720 find /home/user/Mail \-ctime +7 \-name ',*' | xargs rm
|
|
meillo@58
|
721 .DE
|
|
meillo@58
|
722 in a cron job. Within the grace time interval
|
|
meillo@58
|
723 the original message could be restored by stripping the
|
|
meillo@58
|
724 the backup prefix from the file name. If however, the last message of
|
|
meillo@58
|
725 a folder is been removed \(en say message
|
|
meillo@58
|
726 .Fn 6
|
|
meillo@58
|
727 becomes file
|
|
meillo@58
|
728 .Fn ,6
|
|
meillo@58
|
729 \(en and a new message enters the same folder, thus the same
|
|
meillo@58
|
730 numbered being given again \(en in our case
|
|
meillo@58
|
731 .Fn 6
|
|
meillo@58
|
732 \(en, if that one
|
|
meillo@58
|
733 is removed too, then the backup of the former message gets overwritten.
|
|
meillo@58
|
734 Thus, the ability to restore removed messages does not only depend on
|
|
meillo@58
|
735 the ``sweeping cron job'' but also on the removing of further messages.
|
|
meillo@58
|
736 This is undesirable, because the real mechanism is hidden from the user
|
|
meillo@58
|
737 and the consequences of further removals are not always obvious.
|
|
meillo@58
|
738 Further more, the backup files are scattered within the whole mail
|
|
meillo@58
|
739 storage, instead of being collected at one place.
|
|
meillo@58
|
740 .P
|
|
meillo@58
|
741 To improve the situation, the profile entry
|
|
meillo@58
|
742 .Pe rmmproc
|
|
meillo@58
|
743 (previously named
|
|
meillo@58
|
744 .Pe Delete-Prog )
|
|
meillo@58
|
745 was introduced, very early.
|
|
meillo@58
|
746 It could be set to any command, which would care for the mail removal
|
|
meillo@58
|
747 instead of taking the default action, described above.
|
|
meillo@58
|
748 Refiling the to-be-removed files to some garbage folder was a common
|
|
meillo@58
|
749 example. Nmh's man page
|
|
meillo@58
|
750 .Mp rmm(1)
|
|
meillo@58
|
751 proposes
|
|
meillo@58
|
752 .Cl "refile +d
|
|
meillo@58
|
753 to move messages to the garbage folder and
|
|
meillo@58
|
754 .Cl "rm `mhpath +d all`
|
|
meillo@58
|
755 the empty the garbage folder.
|
|
meillo@58
|
756 Managing the message removal this way is a sane approach. It keeps
|
|
meillo@58
|
757 the removed messages in one place, makes it easy to remove the backup
|
|
meillo@58
|
758 files, and, most important, enables the user to use the tools of MH
|
|
meillo@58
|
759 itself to operate on the removed messages. One can
|
|
meillo@58
|
760 .Pn scan
|
|
meillo@58
|
761 them,
|
|
meillo@58
|
762 .Pn show
|
|
meillo@58
|
763 them, and restore them with
|
|
meillo@58
|
764 .Pn refile .
|
|
meillo@58
|
765 There's no more
|
|
meillo@58
|
766 need to use
|
|
meillo@58
|
767 .Pn mhpath
|
|
meillo@58
|
768 to switch over from MH tools to Unix tools \(en MH can do it all itself.
|
|
meillo@58
|
769 .P
|
|
meillo@58
|
770 This approach matches perfect with the concepts of MH, thus making
|
|
meillo@58
|
771 it powerful. Hence, I made it the default. And even more, I also
|
|
meillo@58
|
772 removed the old backup prefix approach, as it is clearly less powerful.
|
|
meillo@58
|
773 Keeping unused alternative in the code is a bad choice as they likely
|
|
meillo@58
|
774 gather bugs, by not being constantly tested. Also, the increased code
|
|
meillo@58
|
775 size and more conditions crease the maintenance costs. By strictly
|
|
meillo@58
|
776 converting to the trash folder approach, I simplified the code base.
|
|
meillo@58
|
777 .Pn rmm
|
|
meillo@58
|
778 calls
|
|
meillo@58
|
779 .Pn refile
|
|
meillo@58
|
780 internally to move the to-be-removed
|
|
meillo@58
|
781 message to the trash folder (\c
|
|
meillo@58
|
782 .Fn +trash
|
|
meillo@58
|
783 by default). Messages
|
|
meillo@58
|
784 there can be operated on like on any other message in the storage.
|
|
meillo@58
|
785 The sweep clean, one can use
|
|
meillo@58
|
786 .Cl "rmm \-unlink +trash a" ,
|
|
meillo@58
|
787 where the
|
|
meillo@58
|
788 .Sw \-unlink
|
|
meillo@58
|
789 switch causes the files to be truly unliked instead
|
|
meillo@58
|
790 of moved to the trash folder.
|
|
meillo@58
|
791
|
|
meillo@58
|
792
|
|
meillo@58
|
793 .H2 "Path Notations
|
|
meillo@58
|
794 .P
|
|
meillo@58
|
795 foo
|
|
meillo@58
|
796
|
|
meillo@58
|
797
|
|
meillo@58
|
798 .H2 "MIME Integration
|
|
meillo@58
|
799 .P
|
|
meillo@58
|
800 user-visible access to whole messages and MIME parts are inherently
|
|
meillo@58
|
801 different
|
|
meillo@58
|
802
|
|
meillo@58
|
803
|
|
meillo@58
|
804 .H2 "Of One Cast
|
|
meillo@58
|
805 .P
|
