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annotate intro.roff @ 200:c299ed65d015

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author markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de>
date Thu, 12 Jul 2012 01:18:02 +0200
parents 5360f5fdb118
children e417f510aaca
rev   line source
meillo@39 1 .RN 1
meillo@197 2 .H0 "Introduction
meillo@197 3 .Id introduction
meillo@39 4
meillo@0 5 .P
meillo@53 6 MH is a set of mail handling tools with a common concept, similar to
meillo@53 7 the Unix tool chest, which is a set of file handling tools with a common
meillo@53 8 concept. \fInmh\fP is the currently most popular implementation of an
meillo@53 9 MH-like mail handling system.
meillo@53 10 This thesis describes an experimental version of nmh, named \fImmh\fP.
meillo@53 11 .P
meillo@32 12 This chapter introduces MH, its history, concepts and how it is used.
meillo@47 13 It describes nmh's code base and community to give the reader
meillo@106 14 a better understanding of the state of mmh when it started off.
meillo@181 15 Furthermore, this chapter outlines the mmh project itself,
meillo@47 16 describing the motivation for it and its goals.
meillo@8 17
meillo@0 18
meillo@28 19 .H1 "MH \(en the Mail Handler
meillo@197 20 .Id mh
meillo@0 21 .P
meillo@47 22 MH is a conceptual email system design and its concrete implementation.
meillo@47 23 Notably, MH had started as a design proposal at RAND Corporation,
meillo@47 24 where the first implementation followed later.
meillo@47 25 In spirit, MH is similar to Unix, which
meillo@42 26 influenced the world more in being a set of system design concepts
meillo@32 27 than in being a specific software product.
meillo@47 28 The ideas behind Unix are summarized in the \fIUnix philosophy\fP.
meillo@42 29 MH follows this philosophy.
meillo@2 30
meillo@11 31 .U2 "History
meillo@2 32 .P
meillo@32 33 In 1977 at RAND Corporation, Norman Shapiro and Stockton Gaines
meillo@106 34 proposed the design
meillo@181 35 of a new mail handling system, called \fIMail Handler\fP (MH),
meillo@181 36 to superseed RAND's old monolithic \fIMail System\fP (MS).
meillo@27 37 Two years later, in 1979, Bruce Borden took the proposal and implemented a
meillo@32 38 prototype of MH.
meillo@106 39 Before the prototype's existence, the concept was
meillo@47 40 believed to be practically unusable.
meillo@106 41 But the prototype proved successful and replaced MS thereafter.
meillo@164 42 In replacing MS, MH grew to provide anything necessary for emailing.
meillo@2 43 .P
meillo@106 44 In the early eighties,
meillo@106 45 the University of California at Irvine (UCI) started to use MH.
meillo@106 46 Marshall T. Rose and John L. Romine then became the driving force.
meillo@57 47 They took over the development and pushed MH forward.
meillo@57 48 RAND had put the code into the public domain by then.
meillo@57 49 MH was developed at UCI at the time when the Internet appeared,
meillo@57 50 when UCB implemented the TCP/IP stack, and when Allman wrote Sendmail.
meillo@47 51 MH was extended as emailing became more featured.
meillo@32 52 The development of MH was closely related to the development of email
meillo@32 53 RFCs. In the advent of MIME, MH was the first implementation of this new
meillo@32 54 email standard.
meillo@2 55 .P
meillo@117 56 In the nineties, the Internet became popular and in December 1996,
meillo@181 57 Richard Coleman initiated the \fINew Mail Handler\fP (nmh) project.
meillo@57 58 Nmh is a fork of MH 6.8.3 and bases strongly on the
meillo@47 59 \fILBL changes\fP by Van Jacobson, Mike Karels and Craig Leres.
meillo@32 60 Colman intended to modernize MH and improve its portability and
meillo@32 61 MIME handling capabilities.
meillo@32 62 This should be done openly within the Internet community.
meillo@47 63 The development of MH at UCI stopped after the 6.8.4 release in
meillo@47 64 February 1996, soon after the development of nmh had started.
meillo@57 65 Today, nmh has almost completely replaced the original MH.
meillo@47 66 Some systems might still provide old MH, but mainly for historical reasons.
meillo@47 67 .P
meillo@171 68 In the last years, the changes in nmh were mostly maintenance work.
meillo@117 69 However, the development was revived in December 2011
meillo@57 70 and stayed busy since then.
meillo@0 71
meillo@197 72
meillo@11 73 .U2 "Concepts
meillo@0 74 .P
meillo@53 75 MH consists of a set of tools, each covering a specific task of
meillo@53 76 email handling, like composing a message, replying to a message,
meillo@53 77 refiling a message to a different folder, listing the messages in a folder.
meillo@47 78 All of the programs operate on a common mail storage.
meillo@42 79 .P
meillo@32 80 The mail storage consists of \fImail folders\fP (directories) and
meillo@32 81 \fPmessages\fP (regular files).
meillo@106 82 Each message is stored in a separate file in the format it was
meillo@47 83 received (i.e. transfer format).
meillo@47 84 The files are named with ascending numbers in each folder.
meillo@47 85 The specific format of the mail storage characterizes MH in the same way
meillo@106 86 as the format of the file system characterizes Unix.
meillo@42 87 .P
meillo@164 88 MH tools maintain a \fIcontext\fP, which includes for instance the
meillo@164 89 current mail folder.
meillo@32 90 Processes in Unix have a similar context, containing the current working
meillo@32 91 directory, for instance. In contrast, the process context is maintained
meillo@32 92 by the Unix kernel automatically, whereas MH tools need to maintain the MH
meillo@32 93 context themselves.
meillo@106 94 The user can have one MH context or multiple ones; he can even share it
meillo@106 95 with others.
meillo@42 96 .P
meillo@164 97 Messages are named by their numeric filename,
meillo@164 98 but they can have symbolic names, too.
meillo@164 99 These are either automatically updated
meillo@106 100 position names such as the next or the last message,
meillo@32 101 or user-settable group names for arbitrary sets of messages.
meillo@32 102 These names are called sequences.
meillo@47 103 Sequences can be bound to the containing folder or to the context.
meillo@2 104 .P
meillo@47 105 The user's \fIprofile\fP is a file that contains his MH configuration.
meillo@47 106 Default switches for the individual tools can be specified to
meillo@47 107 adjust them to the user's personal preferences.
meillo@164 108 Additionally, a single command can be linked under different names
meillo@164 109 with different default values easily.
meillo@51 110 Form templates for new messages or for replies are easily changeable,
meillo@47 111 and output is adjustable with format files.
meillo@47 112 Almost every part of the system can be adjusted to personal preference.
meillo@42 113 .P
meillo@51 114 The system is well scriptable and extensible.
meillo@47 115 New MH tools are built out of or on top of existing ones quickly.
meillo@181 116 Furthermore, MH encourages the user to tailor, extend and automate the system.
meillo@51 117 As the MH tool chest was modeled after the Unix tool chest, the
meillo@32 118 properties of the latter apply to the former as well.
meillo@8 119
meillo@102 120
meillo@102 121 .ig \"XXX
meillo@102 122
meillo@102 123 .P
meillo@102 124 To ease typing, the switches can be abbreviated as much as the remaining
meillo@102 125 prefix remains unambiguous.
meillo@102 126 If in our example no other switch would start with the letter `t', then
meillo@102 127 .Cl "-truncate" ,
meillo@102 128 .Cl "-trunc" ,
meillo@102 129 .Cl "-tr" ,
meillo@102 130 and
meillo@102 131 .Cl "-t
meillo@102 132 would all be the same.
meillo@102 133 As a result, switches can neither be grouped (as in
meillo@102 134 .Cl "ls -ltr" )
meillo@102 135 nor can switch arguments be appended directly to the switch (as in
meillo@102 136 .Cl "sendmail -q30m" ).
meillo@102 137 .P
meillo@102 138 Many switches have negating counter-parts, which start with `no'.
meillo@102 139 For example
meillo@102 140 .Cl "-notruncate
meillo@102 141 inverts the
meillo@102 142 .Cl "-truncate
meillo@102 143 switch.
meillo@102 144 They exist to undo the effect of default switches in the profile.
meillo@102 145 If the user has chosen to change the default behavior of some tool
meillo@102 146 by adding a default switch to the profile,
meillo@102 147 he can still undo this change in behavior by specifying the inverse
meillo@102 148 switch on the command line.
meillo@102 149
meillo@102 150 ..
meillo@102 151
meillo@102 152
meillo@54 153 .U2 "Using MH
meillo@53 154 .P
meillo@54 155 It is strongly recommended to have a look at the MH Book,
meillo@106 156 which offers a thorough introduction to using MH.
meillo@54 157 .[ [
meillo@54 158 peek mh book
meillo@54 159 .], Part II]
meillo@54 160 Rose and Romine provide a deeper and more technical
meillo@159 161 though slightly outdated introduction in only about two dozen pages.
meillo@54 162 .[
meillo@54 163 rose romine real work
meillo@54 164 .]
meillo@27 165 .P
meillo@53 166 Following is an example mail handling session.
meillo@53 167 It uses mmh but is mostly compatible with nmh and old MH.
meillo@106 168 Details might vary but the look and feel is the same.
meillo@82 169
meillo@83 170 .VF input/mh-session
meillo@27 171
meillo@27 172
meillo@131 173 .H1 "nmh
meillo@2 174 .P
meillo@49 175 In order to understand the condition, goals and dynamics of a project,
meillo@106 176 one needs to know the reasons behind them.
meillo@53 177 This section explains the background.
meillo@53 178 .P
meillo@197 179 MH predates the Internet;
meillo@197 180 it comes from times before networking was universal,
meillo@49 181 it comes from times when emailing was small, short and simple.
meillo@106 182 Then it grew, spread and adapted to the changes email went through.
meillo@49 183 Its core-concepts, however, remained the same.
meillo@106 184 During the eighties, students at UCI actively worked on MH.
meillo@164 185 They added new features and optimized the code for the systems
meillo@164 186 popular at that time.
meillo@49 187 All this still was in times before POSIX and ANSI C.
meillo@49 188 As large parts of the code stem from this time, today's nmh source code
meillo@49 189 still contains many ancient parts.
meillo@51 190 BSD-specific code and constructs tailored for hardware of that time
meillo@49 191 are frequent.
meillo@2 192 .P
meillo@106 193 Nmh started about a decade after the POSIX and ANSI C standards were
meillo@49 194 established. A more modern coding style entered the code base, but still
meillo@49 195 a part of the developers came from ``the old days''. The developer
meillo@106 196 base became more diverse, thus broadening the range of different
meillo@106 197 coding styles.
meillo@49 198 Programming practices from different decades merged in the project.
meillo@51 199 As several peers added code, the system became more a conglomeration
meillo@51 200 of single tools rather than a homogeneous of-one-cast mail system.
meillo@49 201 Still, the existing basic concepts held it together.
meillo@8 202 They were mostly untouched throughout the years.
meillo@8 203 .P
meillo@106 204 Despite the separation of the tool chest approach at the surface
meillo@106 205 \(en a collection of small, separate programs \(en
meillo@171 206 on the source code level, it is much more interwoven.
meillo@49 207 Several separate components were compiled into one program
meillo@51 208 for efficiency reasons.
meillo@106 209 This led to intricate innards.
meillo@106 210 While clearly separated on the outside,
meillo@171 211 the programs turned out to be fairly interwoven inside.
meillo@106 212 .\" XXX FIXME rewrite...
meillo@171 213 .\" nicht zweimal ``interwoven''
meillo@106 214 .\" Unfortunately, the clear separation on the outside turned out to be
meillo@171 215 .\" fairly interwoven inside.
meillo@8 216 .P
meillo@106 217 The advent of MIME raised the complexity of email by a magnitude.
meillo@49 218 This is visible in nmh. The MIME-related parts are the most complex ones.
meillo@106 219 It is also visible that MIME support was added on top of the old MH core.
meillo@51 220 MH's tool chest style made this easily possible and encourages
meillo@106 221 such approaches, but unfortunately, it led to duplicated functions
meillo@49 222 and half-hearted implementation of the concepts.
meillo@49 223 .P
meillo@159 224 To provide backward-compatibility, it is a common understanding not to
meillo@49 225 change the default settings.
meillo@51 226 In consequence, the user needs to activate modern features explicitly
meillo@47 227 to be able to use them.
meillo@49 228 This puts a burden on new users, because out-of-the-box nmh remains
meillo@49 229 in the same ancient style.
meillo@171 230 If nmh is seen to be a back-end,
meillo@171 231 then this compatibility surely is important.
meillo@171 232 However, at the same time, new users have difficulties using nmh for
meillo@171 233 modern emailing.
meillo@173 234 The small but mature community around nmh needs little change
meillo@106 235 as they have had their convenient setups for decades.
meillo@159 236 .\" XXX Explain more
meillo@8 237
meillo@8 238
meillo@27 239 .H1 "mmh
meillo@28 240 .P
meillo@49 241 I started to work on my experimental version in October 2011,
meillo@197 242 basing my work on nmh version \fInmh-1.3-dev\fP.
meillo@197 243 At that time no more than three commits were made to nmh
meillo@197 244 since the beginning of the year, the latest one being
meillo@197 245 .Ci a01a41d031c796b526329a4170eb23f0ac93b949
meillo@197 246 on 2011-04-13.
meillo@53 247 In December, when I announced my work in progress on the
meillo@53 248 nmh-workers mailing list,
meillo@42 249 .[
meillo@51 250 nmh-workers mmh announce December
meillo@42 251 .]
meillo@197 252 nmh's community became active, all of a sudden.
meillo@49 253 This movement was heavily pushed by Paul Vixie's ``edginess'' comment.
meillo@42 254 .[
meillo@42 255 nmh-workers vixie edginess
meillo@42 256 .]
meillo@53 257 After long years of stagnation, nmh became actively developed again.
meillo@197 258 Hence, while I was working on mmh, the community was working on nmh,
meillo@197 259 in parallel.
meillo@28 260 .P
meillo@53 261 The name \fImmh\fP may stand for \fImodern mail handler\fP,
meillo@53 262 because the project tries to modernize nmh.
meillo@53 263 Personally however, I prefer to call mmh \fImeillo's mail handler\fP,
meillo@53 264 emphasizing that the project follows my visions and preferences.
meillo@42 265 (My login name is \fImeillo\fP.)
meillo@53 266 This project model was inspired by \fIdwm\fP,
meillo@159 267 .\" XXX Ref
meillo@42 268 which is Anselm Garbe's personal window manager \(en
meillo@42 269 targeted to satisfy Garbe's personal needs whenever conflicts appear.
meillo@53 270 Dwm had retained its lean elegance and its focused character, whereas
meillo@53 271 its community-driven predecessor \fIwmii\fP had grown fat over time.
meillo@159 272 .\" XXX ref
meillo@53 273 The development of mmh should remain focused.
meillo@27 274
meillo@45 275
meillo@27 276 .U2 "Motivation
meillo@27 277 .P
meillo@51 278 MH is the most important of very few command line tool chest email systems.
meillo@51 279 Tool chests are powerful because they can be perfectly automated and
meillo@53 280 extended. They allow arbitrary kinds of front-ends to be
meillo@53 281 implemented on top of them quickly and without internal knowledge.
meillo@106 282 Additionally, tool chests are easier to maintain than monolithic
meillo@43 283 programs.
meillo@53 284 As there are few tool chests for emailing and as MH-like ones are the most
meillo@106 285 popular among them, they should be developed further.
meillo@53 286 This keeps their
meillo@43 287 conceptional elegance and unique scripting qualities available to users.
meillo@106 288 Mmh creates a modern and convenient entry point to MH-like systems
meillo@53 289 for new and interested users.
meillo@43 290 .P
meillo@51 291 The mmh project is motivated by deficits of nmh and
meillo@45 292 my wish for general changes, combined
meillo@45 293 with the nmh community's reluctancy to change.
meillo@45 294 .P
meillo@106 295 At that time, nmh had not adjusted to modern emailing needs well enough.
meillo@45 296 The default setup was completely unusable for modern emailing.
meillo@45 297 Too much setup work was required.
meillo@45 298 Several modern features were already available but the community
meillo@106 299 did not want to have them as default.
meillo@106 300 Mmh is a way to change this.
meillo@45 301 .P
meillo@45 302 In my eyes, MH's concepts could be exploited even better and
meillo@45 303 the style of the tools could be improved. Both would simplify
meillo@45 304 and generalize the system, providing cleaner interfaces and more
meillo@53 305 software leverage at the same time.
meillo@106 306 Mmh is a way to demonstrate this.
meillo@45 307 .P
meillo@45 308 In providing several parts of an email system, nmh can hardly
meillo@45 309 compete with the large specialized projects that focus
meillo@45 310 on only one of the components.
meillo@45 311 The situation can be improved by concentrating the development power
meillo@51 312 on the most unique part of MH and letting the user pick his preferred
meillo@45 313 set of other mail components.
meillo@45 314 Today's pre-packaged software components encourage this model.
meillo@106 315 Mmh is a way to go for this approach.
meillo@45 316 .P
meillo@197 317 It is worthwhile to fork nmh for the development of mmh,
meillo@197 318 because the two projects focus on different goals and differ in
meillo@197 319 fundamental questions.
meillo@106 320 The nmh community's reluctance regarding change conflicts
meillo@106 321 with my strong desire for it.
meillo@43 322 In developing a separate experimental version new approaches can
meillo@43 323 easily be tried out without the need to discuss changes beforehand.
meillo@43 324 In fact, revolutionary changes are hardly possible otherwise.
meillo@43 325 .P
meillo@117 326 The mmh project provides the basis on which the aforementioned
meillo@117 327 ideas can be implemented and demonstrated,
meillo@164 328 without the need to change the nmh project or its community.
meillo@43 329 Of course, the results of the mmh project shall improve nmh, in the end.
meillo@159 330 By no means it is my intent to work against the nmh project.
meillo@117 331
meillo@27 332
meillo@27 333 .U2 "Target Field
meillo@27 334 .P
meillo@45 335 Any effort needs to be targeted towards a specific goal
meillo@45 336 in order to be successful.
meillo@197 337 Therefore, a description of an imagined typical mmh user follows.
meillo@197 338 Mmh should satisfy his needs.
meillo@48 339 Actually, as mmh is my personal version of MH, this is a description
meillo@48 340 of myself.
meillo@197 341 Writing software for oneself is a reliable way to produce software
meillo@197 342 that matches the user's desires.
meillo@45 343 .P
meillo@197 344 The target user of mmh likes Unix and its philosophy.
meillo@197 345 He appreciates to use programs that are conceptionally appealing.
meillo@197 346 He is familiar with the command line and enjoys its power.
meillo@197 347 He is capable of shell scripting and wants to improve his
meillo@27 348 productivity by scripting the mail system.
meillo@197 349 He uses modern email features, such as attachments,
meillo@169 350 non-ASCII text, digital signatures and message encryption in a natural way.
meillo@197 351 He is able to set up mail system components,
meillo@197 352 and like to have the choice to pick the ones he prefers.
meillo@197 353 He has a reasonably modern operating system that complies to the
meillo@164 354 POSIX and ANSI C standards.
meillo@27 355 .P
meillo@197 356 The typical user invokes mmh commands directly in an interactive
meillo@197 357 shell session, but he uses them to automate mail handling tasks as well.
meillo@197 358 Likely, he runs his mail setup on a server machine,
meillo@197 359 to which he connects via ssh.
meillo@197 360 He might also have a local mmh installation on his workstation.
meillo@197 361 Still, he tend to use mmh directly in the shell instead
meillo@117 362 of using graphical front-ends.
meillo@197 363 He definitely wants to be flexible and thus be able to change
meillo@197 364 his setup to suit his needs.
meillo@8 365 .P
meillo@197 366 The typical mmh user is a programmer.
meillo@197 367 He likes to, occasionally, take the opportunity of free software to put
meillo@197 368 hands on and get involved in the software he uses.
meillo@197 369 In consequence, he likes small and clean code bases and cares for
meillo@197 370 code quality.
meillo@197 371 In general, he believes that:
meillo@8 372 .BU
meillo@197 373 The elegance of source code is most important.
meillo@8 374 .BU
meillo@197 375 Concepts are more important than concrete implementations.
meillo@8 376 .BU
meillo@197 377 Code optimizations for anything but readability should be avoided.
meillo@8 378 .BU
meillo@45 379 Having a lot of choice is bad.
meillo@48 380 .BU
meillo@48 381 Removed code is debugged code.
meillo@8 382
meillo@197 383
meillo@48 384 .U2 "Goals
meillo@45 385 .P
meillo@45 386 The general goals for the mmh project are the following:
meillo@128 387 .IP "Streamlining
meillo@87 388 Mmh should be stripped down to its core, which is the user agent (MUA).
meillo@117 389 The feature set should be distilled to the indispensable ones,
meillo@171 390 effectively removing corner cases.
meillo@173 391 Parts that do not add to the main task of being a conceptionally
meillo@187 392 appealing user agent should be removed.
meillo@117 393 This includes the mail submission and mail retrieval facilities.
meillo@48 394 Choice should be reduced to the main options.
meillo@131 395 All tools should be tightly shaped.
meillo@48 396 .IP "Modernizing
meillo@48 397 Mmh's feature set needs to become more modern.
meillo@164 398 Better support for attachments, digital signatures and message encryption
meillo@164 399 should be added.
meillo@159 400 MIME support should be integrated deeper and more naturally.
meillo@48 401 The modern email features need to be readily available, out-of-the-box.
meillo@117 402 On the other hand,
meillo@117 403 bulletin board support and similar obsolete facilities can be dropped out.
meillo@131 404 Likewise, ancient technologies should not be supported any further.
meillo@131 405 The available concepts need to be expanded as far as possible.
meillo@131 406 A small set of concepts should recur consistently.
meillo@131 407 .IP "Styling
meillo@48 408 Mmh's source code needs to be updated to modern standards.
meillo@48 409 Standardized library functions should replace non-standard versions
meillo@48 410 whenever possible.
meillo@117 411 Code should be separated into distinct modules when feasible.
meillo@48 412 Time and space optimizations should to be replaced by
meillo@48 413 clear and readable code.
meillo@48 414 A uniform programming style should prevail.
meillo@117 415 The whole system should appear to be of-one-style;
meillo@117 416 it should feel like being cast as one.