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