docs/master: ch01.roff annotate

annotate ch01.roff @ 7:7497062adc82

style: Need a bit less space for a heading.

author	markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de>
date	Wed, 07 Mar 2012 16:03:36 +0100
parents	f3425905d7d1
children	3ef5449c1175

rev	line source
0 dc2bfef4cda7 Initial commit: Basic structure, macros and fonts. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: diff changeset	1 .H0 "Introduction
dc2bfef4cda7 Initial commit: Basic structure, macros and fonts. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: diff changeset	2 .P
2 65e4327aa9f8 Added some introduction text. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 0 diff changeset	3 This chapter describes the background of the topics in this thesis.
65e4327aa9f8 Added some introduction text. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 0 diff changeset	4 General knowledge of electronic mail is assumed.
0 dc2bfef4cda7 Initial commit: Basic structure, macros and fonts. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: diff changeset	5
dc2bfef4cda7 Initial commit: Basic structure, macros and fonts. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: diff changeset	6 .H1 "What is MH?
dc2bfef4cda7 Initial commit: Basic structure, macros and fonts. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: diff changeset	7 .P
2 65e4327aa9f8 Added some introduction text. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 0 diff changeset	8 MH is an electronic mail system, originating in the RAND Corporation.
65e4327aa9f8 Added some introduction text. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 0 diff changeset	9 Historically, it had been a all-in-one mail system, with Mail Transfer
65e4327aa9f8 Added some introduction text. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 0 diff changeset	10 Agent (MTA) and Mail User Agent (MUA).
65e4327aa9f8 Added some introduction text. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 0 diff changeset	11 Later, when electronic mail systems changed, Mail Submission Agent (MSA)
65e4327aa9f8 Added some introduction text. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 0 diff changeset	12 and Mail Retrieval Agent (MRA) facilities were added.
65e4327aa9f8 Added some introduction text. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 0 diff changeset	13 The MTA became less important, whereas the MUA became even more the
65e4327aa9f8 Added some introduction text. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 0 diff changeset	14 central part.
65e4327aa9f8 Added some introduction text. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 0 diff changeset	15 .P
65e4327aa9f8 Added some introduction text. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 0 diff changeset	16 First of all, MH is a style of a mail handling system.
65e4327aa9f8 Added some introduction text. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 0 diff changeset	17 It had started as a design proposal, not as an implementation, and
65e4327aa9f8 Added some introduction text. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 0 diff changeset	18 had in spirit remained so. This is similar to Unix, which much less
65e4327aa9f8 Added some introduction text. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 0 diff changeset	19 is a specific software product, as it is a style of system design.
65e4327aa9f8 Added some introduction text. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 0 diff changeset	20 MH is a toolchest of programs, modelled after the Unix toolchest,
65e4327aa9f8 Added some introduction text. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 0 diff changeset	21 and it is a specific mail storage format, like Unix has its file system
65e4327aa9f8 Added some introduction text. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 0 diff changeset	22 formats.
65e4327aa9f8 Added some introduction text. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 0 diff changeset	23
3 f3425905d7d1 Some minor rework. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 2 diff changeset	24 .H2 "Concepts of MH" no
f3425905d7d1 Some minor rework. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 2 diff changeset	25 .P
f3425905d7d1 Some minor rework. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 2 diff changeset	26 FIXME
f3425905d7d1 Some minor rework. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 2 diff changeset	27
f3425905d7d1 Some minor rework. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 2 diff changeset	28 .H2 "History of MH" no
2 65e4327aa9f8 Added some introduction text. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 0 diff changeset	29 .P
65e4327aa9f8 Added some introduction text. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 0 diff changeset	30 MH is an electronic mail system, originating in the RAND Corporation.
65e4327aa9f8 Added some introduction text. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 0 diff changeset	31 In 1977, Norman Shapiro and Stockton Gaines had proposed the design
65e4327aa9f8 Added some introduction text. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 0 diff changeset	32 of a new mail handling system, called ``Mail Handler'' (MH) for RAND,
65e4327aa9f8 Added some introduction text. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 0 diff changeset	33 to superseed their ``Mail System'' (MS).
65e4327aa9f8 Added some introduction text. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 0 diff changeset	34 Two years later, in 1979, XXX took the proposal and implemented a
65e4327aa9f8 Added some introduction text. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 0 diff changeset	35 prototype of MH. It proved successful and replaced MS thereafter.
65e4327aa9f8 Added some introduction text. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 0 diff changeset	36 .P
65e4327aa9f8 Added some introduction text. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 0 diff changeset	37 A decade later, the University of California had started to use MH.
65e4327aa9f8 Added some introduction text. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 0 diff changeset	38 They also took over its development and pushed MH forward.
65e4327aa9f8 Added some introduction text. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 0 diff changeset	39 This had been the time when the Internet appeared, Berkeley implemented
65e4327aa9f8 Added some introduction text. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 0 diff changeset	40 the TCP stack, and Sendmail was born. MH had often contained the first
65e4327aa9f8 Added some introduction text. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 0 diff changeset	41 implementation of new RFCs.
65e4327aa9f8 Added some introduction text. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 0 diff changeset	42 .P
65e4327aa9f8 Added some introduction text. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 0 diff changeset	43 In the nineties, MH had been moved into the public domain, making it
65e4327aa9f8 Added some introduction text. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 0 diff changeset	44 attractive to Free Software developers. The Internet had started to become
65e4327aa9f8 Added some introduction text. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 0 diff changeset	45 mainstream and in 1997, Richard Coleman initiated the ``New Mail Handler''
65e4327aa9f8 Added some introduction text. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 0 diff changeset	46 (nmh), a fork of MH. He intended to modernize MH, improve its MIME
65e4327aa9f8 Added some introduction text. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 0 diff changeset	47 capabilities, and this should be done openly within the Internet
65e4327aa9f8 Added some introduction text. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 0 diff changeset	48 community. Today, nmh almost completely replaced the original MH.
0 dc2bfef4cda7 Initial commit: Basic structure, macros and fonts. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: diff changeset	49
dc2bfef4cda7 Initial commit: Basic structure, macros and fonts. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: diff changeset	50 .H1 "How the Fun Began
dc2bfef4cda7 Initial commit: Basic structure, macros and fonts. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: diff changeset	51 .P
2 65e4327aa9f8 Added some introduction text. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 0 diff changeset	52 I have discovered nmh in XXX. I used to use mutt, like many
3 f3425905d7d1 Some minor rework. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 2 diff changeset	53 command line-attracted Unix users. Nmh had convinced me conceptually
2 65e4327aa9f8 Added some introduction text. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 0 diff changeset	54 at once. Unfortunately, setting it up to a convenient state became a
65e4327aa9f8 Added some introduction text. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 0 diff changeset	55 tendious task. Learning its different model of email handling had,
65e4327aa9f8 Added some introduction text. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 0 diff changeset	56 in contrast, been relatively easy. Learning to use MH if you are used
65e4327aa9f8 Added some introduction text. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 0 diff changeset	57 to monolithic mail clients is like learning vi if you are used to
65e4327aa9f8 Added some introduction text. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 0 diff changeset	58 modeless editors.
65e4327aa9f8 Added some introduction text. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 0 diff changeset	59 Once having nmh set up, using it was joy because of its conceptional
65e4327aa9f8 Added some introduction text. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 0 diff changeset	60 elegance and scripting capabilities, but on the other hand it was
65e4327aa9f8 Added some introduction text. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 0 diff changeset	61 inconvenient in handling attachments, non-ASCII character encodings,
65e4327aa9f8 Added some introduction text. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 0 diff changeset	62 and similar stuff. I found it wrong to require more and more scripts
65e4327aa9f8 Added some introduction text. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 0 diff changeset	63 and configuration to have it act the expected way. In being a
65e4327aa9f8 Added some introduction text. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 0 diff changeset	64 software developer, I wanted to improve the situation.
65e4327aa9f8 Added some introduction text. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 0 diff changeset	65 .P
65e4327aa9f8 Added some introduction text. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 0 diff changeset	66 In Spring 2010, I asked on the nmh-workers mailing list for the
65e4327aa9f8 Added some introduction text. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 0 diff changeset	67 possibility to have a Google Summer of Code project on nmh. Being a
65e4327aa9f8 Added some introduction text. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 0 diff changeset	68 student, this appeared attractive to me. Eventually, it had not been
65e4327aa9f8 Added some introduction text. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 0 diff changeset	69 possible, but the nmh community started to move. In these months
65e4327aa9f8 Added some introduction text. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 0 diff changeset	70 nmh's future was discussed and I became part of a ``Does nmh need an
65e4327aa9f8 Added some introduction text. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 0 diff changeset	71 MTA'' discussion. There, my opinion differed from the opinion of
65e4327aa9f8 Added some introduction text. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 0 diff changeset	72 most others.
65e4327aa9f8 Added some introduction text. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 0 diff changeset	73 .P
65e4327aa9f8 Added some introduction text. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 0 diff changeset	74 As it hadn't been possible to work on nmh in a way that would be
65e4327aa9f8 Added some introduction text. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 0 diff changeset	75 accepted as part of my official studies, I needed to get my credit
65e4327aa9f8 Added some introduction text. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 0 diff changeset	76 points in some other way. But half a year later I was back. Starting
65e4327aa9f8 Added some introduction text. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 0 diff changeset	77 in Summer 2010, I took one semester off to travel through Latin America.
65e4327aa9f8 Added some introduction text. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 0 diff changeset	78 Within this time, I needed to do practical computer work for three
65e4327aa9f8 Added some introduction text. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 0 diff changeset	79 months. Richard Sandelman, an active nmh user, made it possible for
65e4327aa9f8 Added some introduction text. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 0 diff changeset	80 me to work on nmh during this time. Juan Granda, from Santiago del
65e4327aa9f8 Added some introduction text. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 0 diff changeset	81 Estero in Argentina, provided a computer and Internet connection.
65e4327aa9f8 Added some introduction text. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 0 diff changeset	82 Within these three month, I became familiar with nmh's code base and
65e4327aa9f8 Added some introduction text. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 0 diff changeset	83 its community. I learned how things work. Quickly it was obvious that
65e4327aa9f8 Added some introduction text. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 0 diff changeset	84 I wouldn't succeed to improve on the non-ASCII character encoding
65e4327aa9f8 Added some introduction text. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 0 diff changeset	85 problems, as this is one of the most intricate parts of the system.
65e4327aa9f8 Added some introduction text. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 0 diff changeset	86 Instead I improved code as I read through it. I found minor bugs in
65e4327aa9f8 Added some introduction text. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 0 diff changeset	87 the code and could improve the documentation. When I started with
65e4327aa9f8 Added some introduction text. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 0 diff changeset	88 larger code changes, I had to discover that the community's wish for
65e4327aa9f8 Added some introduction text. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 0 diff changeset	89 compatibility was stronger than its wish for convenient
65e4327aa9f8 Added some introduction text. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 0 diff changeset	90 out-of-the-box setups. This lead to long discussions, again. Finally,
65e4327aa9f8 Added some introduction text. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 0 diff changeset	91 I understand their point of view, but it's not mine.
65e4327aa9f8 Added some introduction text. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 0 diff changeset	92 At the end of my three-month project, I had became familiar with
65e4327aa9f8 Added some introduction text. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 0 diff changeset	93 nmh's code base and community, I had improved both a bit, and I still
65e4327aa9f8 Added some introduction text. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 0 diff changeset	94 was convinced that I wanted to go on with it.
65e4327aa9f8 Added some introduction text. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 0 diff changeset	95 .P
65e4327aa9f8 Added some introduction text. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 0 diff changeset	96 Another half a year later, I needed a topic for my master's thesis.
65e4327aa9f8 Added some introduction text. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 0 diff changeset	97 Now it was clear: I wanted to work on nmh. No, not exactly nmh,
65e4327aa9f8 Added some introduction text. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 0 diff changeset	98 because I had accepted that the nmh community has different goals
65e4327aa9f8 Added some introduction text. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 0 diff changeset	99 than I have. The won't be much progress if generally different opinions
65e4327aa9f8 Added some introduction text. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 0 diff changeset	100 lead to long discussions. After careful thought, I had decided to
65e4327aa9f8 Added some introduction text. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 0 diff changeset	101 start an experimental version of nmh. I wanted to go my way and see
65e4327aa9f8 Added some introduction text. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 0 diff changeset	102 where it would lead to. Time would tell if it would prove successful.
65e4327aa9f8 Added some introduction text. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 0 diff changeset	103 Nmh would hardly be hurt by my work, but could profit from my
65e4327aa9f8 Added some introduction text. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 0 diff changeset	104 experiences later.
65e4327aa9f8 Added some introduction text. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 0 diff changeset	105 .P
65e4327aa9f8 Added some introduction text. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 0 diff changeset	106 When I started to work on mmh, my experimental version, in Fall 2011,
65e4327aa9f8 Added some introduction text. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 0 diff changeset	107 activity in nmh rose suddenly. While I was working on mmh, XXX were
65e4327aa9f8 Added some introduction text. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 0 diff changeset	108 working on nmh. After long years of idleing, nmh was actively
65e4327aa9f8 Added some introduction text. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 0 diff changeset	109 developed again. That was a good sign. My own work went in parallel
65e4327aa9f8 Added some introduction text. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 0 diff changeset	110 and unrelated. Today, my experimental version became de facto a fork.
65e4327aa9f8 Added some introduction text. markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de> parents: 0 diff changeset	111 The mail storage, however, is still compatible.

Mercurial > docs > master

annotate ch01.roff @ 7:7497062adc82