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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 This general difference in the view on the character of nmh
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41 strongly supported the development of mmh.
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42 Removing the mail transfer facilities had been the first work task
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43 for the mmh project.
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44 .P
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45 The MSA is called \fIMessage Transfer Service\fP (MTS) in nmh.
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46 The facility establishes TCP/IP connections and speaks SMTP to submit
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47 messages for relay to the outside world.
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48 This part is implemented in the
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49 .Pn post
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50 command.
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51 Demanded by the changes in
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52 emailing, this part of nmh required changes in the last years.
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53 Encrypted connections needed to be supported, hence SASL was introduced
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54 into nmh. This added complexity to the nmh without improving it in
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55 its core functions. Also, keeping up with recent developments in
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56 this field needs requires development power and specialists.
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57 Mmh cuts this whole facility off and depends on an external MTA instead.
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58 The only outgoing interface available to mmh is the
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59 .Pn sendmail
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60 command.
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61 Almost any MTA provides a
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62 .Pn sendmail
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63 command.
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64 It not, any program can be substituted if it reads the
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65 message from the standard input, extracts the recipient addresses
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66 from the message header and does not conflict
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67 with sendmail-specific command line arguments.
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68 .P
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69 To retrieve mail, the
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70 .Pn inc
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71 command in nmh has the ability to establish TCP/IP connections
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72 and speaks POP3 to retrieve mail from remote servers.
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73 As with mail submission, here encrypted connections are required
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74 today, thus SASL support was added.
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75 As POP3 is superseded by IMAP more and more, support for message
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76 retrieval through IMAP will become necessary to be added soon.
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77 Mmh has no support for retrieving mail from remote locations.
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78 It depends on an external tool to cover this task.
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79 There are two ways for messages to enter mmh's mail storage:
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80 Incorporate them with
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81 .Pn inc
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82 from the system maildrop, or with
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83 .Pn rcvstore
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84 from the standard input.
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85 In consequence, mmh has not any longer networking code
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86 and thus does no more need to do transfer encryption and authentication.
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87 Two large functional units are removed.
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88 .P
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89 With the removal of the MSA and MRA, mmh converted from an all-in-one
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90 mail system to being only a MUA.
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91 Following the Unix philosophy, it focuses on one job and to do that well.
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92 Now, of course, mmh depends on third-party software.
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93 An external MTA/MSA is required to transfer mail to the outside world;
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94 an external MRA is required to retrieve mail from remote machines.
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95 There exist excellent implementations of such software,
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96 which do this specific task likely much better than the internal
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97 versions of nmh do it. Also, this provides the choice for the best
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98 suiting one of the available implementation.
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99 .P
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100 As it had already been possible to use an external MSA or MRA,
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101 why not keep the internal version for convenience?
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102 If this would question the sense in having a fall-back pager in all
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103 the command line tools, in case
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104 .Pn more
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105 or
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106 .Pn less
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107 wouldn't be available, the answer is intuitively seen.
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108 Now, an MSA or MRA is clearly more complex than a text pager, but
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109 still the concept holds: If programs become complex, split them;
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110 if projects become complex, split them.
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111 Complexity is demanded by the problem to solve. Decades ago,
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112 emailing had been small and simple.
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113 (Remember,
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114 .Pn /bin/mail
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115 had once covered anything there was to email and still had been small.)
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116 As the complexity in emailing increased, MH remainded mostly unchanged.
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117 Nontheless, in nmh the POP server, which the original MH had included,
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118 was removed. Now is the time to take one step further and remove
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119 the MSA and MRA.
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120 Not only does it decrease the code amount of the project,
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121 but more important, it removes the whole field of message transfer
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122 with all its implications from the project.
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123 .P
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124 If a project needs some kind of function, there's always the choice
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125 between implementing the the function in the project directly or
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126 depending on a library that provides the function or depending on
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127 a program that provides the function.
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128 Whereas adding the function directly to the project increases the
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129 code size most, it makes the project most independent.
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130 On the other end, interfacing external programs keeps the interface
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131 smallest, but the depencency highest.
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132 Using a library is in the middle.
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133 Adding the function directly to the project is a bad choice for
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134 any function of higher complexity, unless it's not available in other ways.
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135 Hence, the dependencies only change in kind, not in their existence.
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136 In mmh, library dependencies on
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137 .Pn libsasl2
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138 and
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139 .Pn libcrypto /\c
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140 .Pn libssl
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141 were treated against program dependencies on an MSA and an MRA.
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142 Besides program dependencies providing the stronger separation
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143 and being more flexible, they also allowed
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144 over 6\|000 lines of code to be removed from mmh.
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145 This made mmh's code base about 12\|% smaller.
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146 Reducing the projects code size by such an amount without actually
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147 losing function is a convincing argument.
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148 .P
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149 Users of MH should have not problem to set up an external MSA and MRA.
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150 Also, the popular MSAs and MRAs have large communities and a lot
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151 of documentation available.
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152 .P
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153 Choices for MSAs range from the full-featured
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154 .I Postfix
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155 over mid-size solutions like
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156 .I masqmail
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157 and
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158 .I dma
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159 to small forwarders like
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160 .I ssmtp
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161 and
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162 .I nullmailer .
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163 Choices for MRAs include
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164 .I fetchmail ,
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165 .I getmail ,
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166 .I mpop
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167 and
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168 .I fdm .
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169
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170
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171 .H2 "Removal of non-MUA Tools
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172 .P
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173 Some of nmh's tools were removed from mmh because they didn't
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174 match the main focus of adding to the MUA's task.
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175 .BU
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176 .Pn conflict
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177 was removed because it is a mail system maintenance tool.
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178 Besides, it even checks
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179 .Fn /etc/passwd
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180 and
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181 .Fn /etc/group
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182 for consistency, which has nothing at all to do with emailing.
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183 The tool might be useful, but it should not be shipped with mmh.
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184 .BU
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185 .Pn rcvtty
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186 was removed because its usecase of writing to the user's terminal
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187 on receiving of mail is hardly wanted today. If users like to be
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188 informed of new mail, then using the shell's
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189 .Ev MAILPATH
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190 variable or graphical notifications are likely more
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191 appealing.
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192 Writing directly to a terminals is hardly ever wanted today.
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193 If though one wants to have it this way, the standard tool
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194 .Pn write
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195 can be used in a way similar to:
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196 .DS
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197 scan -file - | write `id -un`
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198 .DE
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199 .BU
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200 .Pn viamail
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201 was removed when the new attachment system was introduced, because
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202 .Pn forw
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203 could can now the task itself.
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204 The program
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205 .Pn sendfiles
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206 was rewritten as a shell script wrapper around
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207 .Pn forw .
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208 .BU
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209 .Pn msgchk
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210 was removed, because it lost its usefulness when POP support was removed.
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211 .Pn msgchk
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212 provides hardly more information than:
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213 .DS
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214 ls -l /var/mail/meillo
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215 .DE
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216 It does separate between old and new mail, but that's merely a detail
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217 and can be done with
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218 .Pn stat (1)
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219 too.
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220 A very small shell script could be written to output the information
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221 in a convenient way, if truly necessary.
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222 As mmh's inc only incorporates mail from the user's local maildrop
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223 and thus no data transfers over slow networks are involved,
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224 there's hardly need to check for new mail before incorporating it.
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225 .BU
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226 .Pn msh
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227 was removed because the tool was in conflict with the
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228 philosophy of MH. It provided an interactive shell to access the
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229 features of MH. One major feature of MH is being a tool chest.
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230 .Pn msh
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231 wouldn't be just another shell, tailored to the needs of mail
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232 handling, but one large program to have the MH tools built in.
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233 It's main use was for accessing Bulletin Boards, which have seized to
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234 be popular.
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235 .P
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236 Removing
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237 .Pn msh ,
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238 together with the truly obsolete code relicts
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239 .Pn vmh
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240 and
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241 .Pn wmh ,
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242 saved more than 7\|000 lines of C code \(en
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243 about 15\|% of the project's original source code amount.
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244 Having the same functionality in less code (with equal readability,
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245 of course) is an advantage.
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246 Less code means less bugs and less maintenance work.
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247 If
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248 .Pn rcvtty
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249 and
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250 .Pn msgchk
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251 are rarely used and can be implemented in different ways,
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252 then why should one keep them?
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253 .Pn viamail 's
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254 use case is now partly obsolete and partly covered by
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255 .Pn forw ,
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256 hence there's no reason to still have
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257 .Pn viamail
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258 around.
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259 .Pn conflict
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260 is not related with the mail client, and
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261 .Pn msh
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262 conflicts with the basic concept of MH.
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263 Both tools could still be useful, but not as part of mmh.
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264 .P
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265 It is a design goal of mmh to remove those parts that are rarely used.
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266 The project shall become more stream-lined.
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267 Rarely used and loosely related tools distract from the lean appearance.
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268 They require maintenance cost without adding to the core task.
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269 Therefore they were removed.
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270
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271
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272 .H2 "Merge of \f(CWshow\fP and \f(CWmhshow\fP
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273 .P
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274 Since the very beginning \(en already in the first concept paper \(en
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275 .Pn show
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276 had been MH's message display program.
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277 .Pn show
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278 found out which pathnames the relevant messages had and invoked
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279 .Pn mhl
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280 then to have the content formated.
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281 With the advent of MIME, this approach wasn't sufficient anymore.
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282 MIME messages can consist of multiple parts, some of which aren't
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283 directly displayable, and text content might be encoded in
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284 foreign charsets.
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285 .Pn show 's
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286 simple approach and
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287 .Pn mhl 's
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288 limited display facilities couldn't cope with the task any longer.
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289 .P
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290 Instead of extending these tools, additional ones were written from scratch
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291 and then added to the MH tool chest. Doing so is encouraged by the
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292 tool chest approach. The new tools could be added without interfering
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293 with the existing ones. This is great. The ease of adding new tools
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294 even made MH the first MUA to implement MIME.
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295 .P
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296 First, the new MIME features were added in form of the single program
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297 .Pn mhn .
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298 The command
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299 .Cl "mhn \-show 42
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300 would show the MIME message numbered 42.
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301 With the 1.0 release of nmh in February 1999, Richard Coleman finished
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302 the split of
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303 .Pn mhn
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304 into a set of specialized programs, which together covered the
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305 multiple aspects of MIME. One of these resulting tools was
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306 .Pn mhshow ,
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307 which replaced the
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308 .Cl "mhn \-show
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309 call.
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310 .P
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311 From then on, two message display tools were part of nmh.
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312 Because it should not require user actions to invoke the right tool
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313 whether the message uses MIME or not,
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314 .Pn show
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315 was extended to automatically hand the job over to
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316 .Pn mhshow
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317 if displaying the message would be beyond
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318 .Pn show 's
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319 abilities.
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320 For convenience,
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321 .Pn show
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322 would still display MIME messages if they contained only a single text
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323 part.
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324 In consequence, the user would invoke
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325 .Pn show
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326 (possibly through
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327 .Pn next
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328 or
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329 .Pn prev )
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330 and get the message printed with either
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331 .Pn show
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332 or
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333 .Pn mhshow ,
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334 whatever was more appropriate.
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335 (There was also a switch for
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336 .Pn show
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337 to never invoke
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338 .Pn mhshow .)
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339 .P
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340 Having two similar tools for essentially the same task is redundant.
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341 Both programs needed to be developed syncronously as they were
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342 used as a single tool by the user. Thus they needed to act in a
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343 similar way to not distract the user.
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344 .P
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345 Today, non-MIME messages are rather seen to be a special case of
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346 MIME messages, than MIME messages are seen to be an extension to
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347 original mail.
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348 As
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349 .Pn mhshow
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350 had already be able to display non-MIME messages, it was natural
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351 to drop
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352 .Pn show
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353 in favor of using
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|
354 .Pn mhshow
|
meillo@69
|
355 exclusively.
|
meillo@69
|
356 .Ci 4c1efdd
|
meillo@69
|
357 This decision follows the idea of orthogonal design.
|
meillo@69
|
358 .P
|
meillo@69
|
359 To allow this replacement,
|
meillo@69
|
360 .Pn mhshow
|
meillo@69
|
361 was reworked to behave more like
|
meillo@69
|
362 .Pn show
|
meillo@69
|
363 first.
|
meillo@69
|
364 Section XXX describes this rework from a different perspective.
|
meillo@69
|
365 Once the tools behaved similar, the replacing became a natural decision.
|
meillo@69
|
366 In mmh,
|
meillo@69
|
367 .Pn show
|
meillo@69
|
368 is the one single message display program again, but it handles
|
meillo@69
|
369 MIME messages as well as non-MIME messages.
|
meillo@69
|
370 There's only one program to maintain and users don't need to deal
|
meillo@69
|
371 with the existance of two display programs.
|
meillo@69
|
372 .P
|
meillo@69
|
373 Though, there's one reason why removing the old
|
meillo@69
|
374 .Pn show
|
meillo@69
|
375 hurts: It had been such a simple program.
|
meillo@69
|
376 Its lean elegance is missing to
|
meillo@69
|
377 .Pn mhshow ,
|
meillo@69
|
378 i.e. the new
|
meillo@69
|
379 .Pn show .
|
meillo@69
|
380 But there is no chance, because supporting MIME causes essentially
|
meillo@69
|
381 higher complexity.
|
meillo@58
|
382
|
meillo@58
|
383
|
meillo@58
|
384 .H2 "Removal of Configure Options
|
meillo@58
|
385 .P
|
meillo@58
|
386
|
meillo@63
|
387
|
meillo@58
|
388 .H2 "Removal of switches
|
meillo@58
|
389 .P
|
meillo@58
|
390
|
meillo@58
|
391
|
meillo@58
|
392
|
meillo@58
|
393
|
meillo@58
|
394 .H1 "Moderizing
|
meillo@58
|
395
|
meillo@58
|
396
|
meillo@58
|
397 .H2 "Removal of Code Relicts
|
meillo@0
|
398 .P
|
meillo@51
|
399 The code base of mmh originates from the late Seventies,
|
meillo@51
|
400 had been extensively
|
meillo@51
|
401 worked on in the mid Eighties, and had been partly reorganized and extended
|
meillo@51
|
402 in the Nineties. Relicts of all those times had gathered in the code base.
|
meillo@12
|
403 My goal was to remove any ancient code parts. One part of the task was
|
meillo@12
|
404 converting obsolete code constructs to standard constructs, the other part
|
meillo@12
|
405 was dropping obsolete functions.
|
meillo@12
|
406 .P
|
meillo@12
|
407 As I'm not even thirty years old and have no more than seven years of
|
meillo@51
|
408 Unix experience, I needed to learn about the history in retrospective.
|
meillo@51
|
409 Older people likely have used those ancient constructs themselves
|
meillo@51
|
410 and have suffered from their incompatibilities and have longed for
|
meillo@12
|
411 standardization. Unfortunately, I have only read that others had done so.
|
meillo@12
|
412 This put me in a much more difficult positions when working on the old
|
meillo@12
|
413 code. I needed to recherche what other would have known by heart from
|
meillo@12
|
414 experience. All my programming experience comes from a time past ANSI C
|
meillo@12
|
415 and past POSIX. Although I knew about the times before, I took the
|
meillo@51
|
416 current state implicitly for granted most of the time.
|
meillo@12
|
417 .P
|
meillo@12
|
418 Being aware of
|
meillo@12
|
419 these facts, I rather let people with more historic experience solve the
|
meillo@12
|
420 task of converting the ancient code constructs to standardized ones.
|
meillo@12
|
421 Luckily, Lyndon Nerenberg focused on this task at the nmh project.
|
meillo@12
|
422 He converted large parts of the code to POSIX constructs, removing
|
meillo@12
|
423 the conditionals compilation for now standardized features.
|
meillo@12
|
424 I'm thankful for this task being solved. I only pulled the changes into
|
meillo@12
|
425 mmh.
|
meillo@12
|
426 .P
|
meillo@20
|
427 The other task \(en dropping ancient functionality to remove old code \(en
|
meillo@12
|
428 I did myself, though. My position to strip mmh to the bare minimum of
|
meillo@12
|
429 frequently used features is much more revolutional than the nmh community
|
meillo@20
|
430 likes it. Without the need to justify my decisions, I was able to quickly
|
meillo@20
|
431 remove functionality I considered ancient.
|
meillo@20
|
432 The need to discuss my decisions with
|
meillo@20
|
433 peers likely would have slowed this process down. Of course, I researched
|
meillo@12
|
434 if a particular feature really should be dropped. Having not had any
|
meillo@12
|
435 contact to this feature within my computer life was a first indicator to
|
meillo@12
|
436 drop it, but I also asked others and searched the literature for modern
|
meillo@12
|
437 usage of the feature. If it appeared to be truly ancient, I dropped it.
|
meillo@12
|
438 The reason for dropping is always part of the commit message in the
|
meillo@12
|
439 version control system. Thus, it is easy for others to check their
|
meillo@12
|
440 view on the topic with mine and possibly to argue for reinclusion.
|
meillo@12
|
441
|
meillo@12
|
442 .U2 "MMDF maildrop support
|
meillo@12
|
443 .P
|
meillo@12
|
444 I did drop any support for the MMDF maildrop format. This type of format
|
meillo@12
|
445 is conceptionally similar to the mbox format, but uses four bytes with
|
meillo@12
|
446 value 1 (\fL^A^A^A^A\fP) as message delimiter,
|
meillo@18
|
447 instead of the string ``\fLFrom\ \fP''.
|
meillo@12
|
448 Due to the similarity and mbox being the de-facto standard maildrop
|
meillo@12
|
449 format on Unix, but also due to the larger influence of Sendmail than MMDF,
|
meillo@12
|
450 the MMDF maildrop format had vanished.
|
meillo@12
|
451 .P
|
meillo@12
|
452 The simplifications within the code were only moderate. Switches could
|
meillo@12
|
453 be removed from tools like
|
meillo@12
|
454 .L packf ,
|
meillo@12
|
455 which generate packed mailboxes. Only one packed mailbox format remained:
|
meillo@12
|
456 mbox.
|
meillo@12
|
457 The most important changes affect the equally named mail parsing routine in
|
meillo@12
|
458 .L sbr/m_getfld.c .
|
meillo@12
|
459 The direct MMDF code had been removed, but as now only one packed mailbox
|
meillo@12
|
460 format is left, code structure simplifications are likely possible.
|
meillo@12
|
461 The reason why they are still outstanding is the heavily optimized code
|
meillo@18
|
462 of
|
meillo@18
|
463 .Fu m_getfld() .
|
meillo@18
|
464 Changes beyond a small local scope \(en
|
meillo@12
|
465 which restructuring in its core is \(en cause a high risk of damaging
|
meillo@12
|
466 the intricate workings of the optimized code. This problem is know
|
meillo@12
|
467 to the developers of nmh, too. They also avoid touching this minefield
|
meillo@12
|
468 if possible.
|
meillo@12
|
469
|
meillo@12
|
470 .U2 "UUCP Bang Paths
|
meillo@12
|
471 .P
|
meillo@12
|
472 More questionably than the former topic is the removal of support for the
|
meillo@12
|
473 UUCP bang path address style. However, the user may translate the bang
|
meillo@12
|
474 paths on retrieval to Internet addresses and the other way on posting
|
meillo@12
|
475 messages. The former can be done my an MDA like procmail; the latter
|
meillo@12
|
476 by a sendmail wrapper. This would ensure that any address handling would
|
meillo@12
|
477 work as expected. However, it might just work well without any
|
meillo@12
|
478 such modifications, as mmh does not touch addresses much, in general.
|
meillo@12
|
479 But I can't ensure as I have never used an environment with bang paths.
|
meillo@12
|
480 Also, the behavior might break at any point in further development.
|
meillo@12
|
481
|
meillo@12
|
482 .U2 "Hardcopy terminal support
|
meillo@12
|
483 .P
|
meillo@12
|
484 More of a funny anecdote is the remaining of a check for printing to a
|
meillo@12
|
485 hardcopy terminal until Spring 2012, when I finally removed it.
|
meillo@12
|
486 I surely would be very happy to see such a terminal in action, maybe
|
meillo@12
|
487 actually being able to work on it, but I fear my chances are null.
|
meillo@12
|
488 .P
|
meillo@12
|
489 The check only prevented a pager to be placed between the outputting
|
meillo@18
|
490 program (\c
|
meillo@18
|
491 .Pn mhl )
|
meillo@18
|
492 and the terminal. This could have been ensured with
|
meillo@18
|
493 the
|
meillo@18
|
494 .Sw \-nomoreproc
|
meillo@18
|
495 at the command line statically, too.
|
meillo@12
|
496
|
meillo@12
|
497 .U2 "Removed support for header fields
|
meillo@12
|
498 .P
|
meillo@12
|
499 The `Encrypted' header had been introduced by RFC\^822, but already
|
meillo@12
|
500 marked legacy in RFC 2822. It was superseded by FIXME.
|
meillo@12
|
501 Mmh does no more support this header.
|
meillo@12
|
502 .P
|
meillo@21
|
503 Native support for `Face' headers
|
meillo@21
|
504 had been removed, as well.
|
meillo@21
|
505 The feature is similar to the `X-Face' header in its intent,
|
meillo@21
|
506 but takes a different approach to store the image.
|
meillo@21
|
507 Instead of encoding the image data directly into the header,
|
meillo@21
|
508 the the header contains the hostname and UDP port where the image
|
meillo@21
|
509 date could be retrieved.
|
meillo@21
|
510 Neither `X-Face' nor the here described `Face' system
|
meillo@21
|
511 \**
|
meillo@21
|
512 .FS
|
meillo@21
|
513 There is also a newer but different system, invented 2005,
|
meillo@21
|
514 using `Face' headers.
|
meillo@21
|
515 It is the successor of `X-Face' providing colored PNG images.
|
meillo@21
|
516 .FE
|
meillo@21
|
517 became well used in the large scale.
|
meillo@21
|
518 It's still possible to use a Face systems,
|
meillo@21
|
519 although mmh does not provide support for any of the different systems
|
meillo@21
|
520 anymore. It's fairly easy to write a small shell script to
|
meillo@21
|
521 extract the embedded or fetch the external Face data and display the image.
|
meillo@21
|
522 Own Face headers can be added into the draft template files.
|
meillo@21
|
523 .P
|
meillo@12
|
524 `Content-MD5' headers were introduced by RFC\^1864. They provide only
|
meillo@12
|
525 a verification of data corruption during the transfer. By no means can
|
meillo@12
|
526 they ensure verbatim end-to-end delivery of the contents. This is clearly
|
meillo@12
|
527 stated in the RFC. The proper approach to provide verificationability
|
meillo@12
|
528 of content in an end-to-end relationship is the use of digital cryptography
|
meillo@12
|
529 (RFCs FIXME). On the other hand, transfer protocols should ensure the
|
meillo@12
|
530 integrity of the transmission. In combinations these two approaches
|
meillo@12
|
531 make the `Content-MD5' header field useless. In consequence, I removed
|
meillo@12
|
532 the support for it. By this removal, MD5 computation is not needed
|
meillo@12
|
533 anywhere in mmh. Hence, over 500 lines of code were removed by this one
|
meillo@12
|
534 change. Even if the `Content-MD5' header field is useful sometimes,
|
meillo@12
|
535 I value its usefulnes less than the improvement in maintainability, caused
|
meillo@12
|
536 by the removal.
|
meillo@12
|
537
|
meillo@20
|
538 .U2 "Prompter's Control Keys
|
meillo@20
|
539 .P
|
meillo@20
|
540 The program
|
meillo@20
|
541 .Pn prompter
|
meillo@20
|
542 queries the user to fill in a message form. When used by
|
meillo@20
|
543 .Pn comp
|
meillo@20
|
544 as:
|
meillo@20
|
545 .DS
|
meillo@20
|
546 comp \-editor prompter
|
meillo@20
|
547 .DE
|
meillo@20
|
548 the resulting behavior is similar to
|
meillo@20
|
549 .Pn mailx .
|
meillo@51
|
550 Apparently,
|
meillo@20
|
551 .Pn prompter
|
meillo@20
|
552 hadn't been touched lately. Otherwise it's hardly explainable why it
|
meillo@20
|
553 still offered the switches
|
meillo@20
|
554 .Sn \-erase \fUchr\fP
|
meillo@20
|
555 and
|
meillo@20
|
556 .Sn \-kill \fUchr\fP
|
meillo@20
|
557 to name the characters for command line editing.
|
meillo@21
|
558 The times when this had been necessary are long time gone.
|
meillo@20
|
559 Today these things work out-of-the-box, and if not, are configured
|
meillo@20
|
560 with the standard tool
|
meillo@20
|
561 .Pn stty .
|
meillo@20
|
562
|
meillo@21
|
563 .U2 "Vfork and Retry Loops
|
meillo@21
|
564 .P
|
meillo@51
|
565 MH creates many processes, which is a consequence of the tool chest approach.
|
meillo@21
|
566 In earlier times
|
meillo@21
|
567 .Fu fork()
|
meillo@21
|
568 had been an expensive system call, as the process's whole image needed
|
meillo@21
|
569 to be duplicated. One common case is replacing the image with
|
meillo@21
|
570 .Fu exec()
|
meillo@21
|
571 right after having forked the child process.
|
meillo@21
|
572 To speed up this case, the
|
meillo@21
|
573 .Fu vfork()
|
meillo@21
|
574 system call was invented at Berkeley. It completely omits copying the
|
meillo@21
|
575 image. If the image gets replaced right afterwards then unnecessary
|
meillo@21
|
576 work is omited. On old systems this results in large speed ups.
|
meillo@21
|
577 MH uses
|
meillo@21
|
578 .Fu vfork()
|
meillo@21
|
579 whenever possible.
|
meillo@21
|
580 .P
|
meillo@21
|
581 Memory management units that support copy-on-write semantics make
|
meillo@21
|
582 .Fu fork()
|
meillo@21
|
583 almost as fast as
|
meillo@21
|
584 .Fu vfork()
|
meillo@21
|
585 in the cases when they can be exchanged.
|
meillo@21
|
586 With
|
meillo@21
|
587 .Fu vfork()
|
meillo@51
|
588 being more error-prone and hardly faster, it's preferable to simply
|
meillo@21
|
589 use
|
meillo@21
|
590 .Fu fork()
|
meillo@21
|
591 instead.
|
meillo@21
|
592 .P
|
meillo@21
|
593 Related to the costs of
|
meillo@21
|
594 .Fu fork()
|
meillo@21
|
595 is the probability of its success.
|
meillo@21
|
596 Today on modern systems, the system call will succeed almost always.
|
meillo@51
|
597 In the Eighties on heavy loaded systems, as they were common at
|
meillo@21
|
598 universities, this had been different. Thus, many of the
|
meillo@21
|
599 .Fu fork()
|
meillo@21
|
600 calls were wrapped into loops to retry to fork several times in
|
meillo@21
|
601 short intervals, in case of previous failure.
|
meillo@21
|
602 In mmh, the program aborts at once if the fork failed.
|
meillo@21
|
603 The user can reexecute the command then. This is expected to be a
|
meillo@21
|
604 very rare case on modern systems, especially personal ones, which are
|
meillo@21
|
605 common today.
|
meillo@21
|
606
|
meillo@12
|
607
|
meillo@58
|
608 .H2 "Attachments
|
meillo@22
|
609 .P
|
meillo@58
|
610 MIME
|
meillo@58
|
611
|
meillo@58
|
612
|
meillo@58
|
613 .H2 "Digital Cryptography
|
meillo@22
|
614 .P
|
meillo@58
|
615 Signing and encryption.
|
meillo@58
|
616
|
meillo@58
|
617
|
meillo@58
|
618 .H2 "Good Defaults
|
meillo@22
|
619 .P
|
meillo@58
|
620 foo
|
meillo@58
|
621
|
meillo@58
|
622
|
meillo@58
|
623
|
meillo@58
|
624
|
meillo@58
|
625 .H1 "Code style
|
meillo@22
|
626 .P
|
meillo@58
|
627 foo
|
meillo@58
|
628
|
meillo@58
|
629
|
meillo@58
|
630 .H2 "Standard Code
|
meillo@22
|
631 .P
|
meillo@58
|
632 POSIX
|
meillo@22
|
633
|
meillo@22
|
634
|
meillo@58
|
635 .H2 "Separation
|
meillo@14
|
636
|
meillo@58
|
637 .U2 "MH Directory Split
|
meillo@0
|
638 .P
|
meillo@19
|
639 In MH and nmh, a personal setup had consisted of two parts:
|
meillo@19
|
640 The MH profile, named
|
meillo@19
|
641 .Fn \&.mh_profile
|
meillo@19
|
642 and being located directly in the user's home directory.
|
meillo@19
|
643 And the MH directory, where all his mail messages and also his personal
|
meillo@19
|
644 forms, scan formats, other configuration files are stored. The location
|
meillo@19
|
645 of this directory could be user-chosen. The default was to name it
|
meillo@19
|
646 .Fn Mail
|
meillo@19
|
647 and have it directly in the home directory.
|
meillo@19
|
648 .P
|
meillo@19
|
649 I've never liked the data storage and the configuration to be intermixed.
|
meillo@19
|
650 They are different kinds of data. One part, are the messages,
|
meillo@19
|
651 which are the data to operate on. The other part, are the personal
|
meillo@19
|
652 configuration files, which are able to change the behavior of the operations.
|
meillo@19
|
653 The actual operations are defined in the profile, however.
|
meillo@19
|
654 .P
|
meillo@19
|
655 When storing data, one should try to group data by its type.
|
meillo@19
|
656 There's sense in the Unix file system hierarchy, where configuration
|
meillo@19
|
657 file are stored separate (\c
|
meillo@19
|
658 .Fn /etc )
|
meillo@19
|
659 to the programs (\c
|
meillo@19
|
660 .Fn /bin
|
meillo@19
|
661 and
|
meillo@19
|
662 .Fn /usr/bin )
|
meillo@19
|
663 to their sources (\c
|
meillo@19
|
664 .Fn /usr/src ).
|
meillo@19
|
665 Such separation eases the backup management, for instance.
|
meillo@19
|
666 .P
|
meillo@19
|
667 In mmh, I've reorganized the file locations.
|
meillo@19
|
668 Still there are two places:
|
meillo@19
|
669 There's the mail storage directory, which, like in MH, contains all the
|
meillo@19
|
670 messages, but, unlike in MH, nothing else.
|
meillo@19
|
671 Its location still is user-chosen, with the default name
|
meillo@19
|
672 .Fn Mail ,
|
meillo@19
|
673 in the user's home directory. This is much similar to the case in nmh.
|
meillo@19
|
674 The configuration files, however, are grouped together in the new directory
|
meillo@19
|
675 .Fn \&.mmh
|
meillo@19
|
676 in the user's home directory.
|
meillo@19
|
677 The user's profile now is a file, named
|
meillo@19
|
678 .Fn profile ,
|
meillo@19
|
679 in this mmh directory.
|
meillo@19
|
680 Consistently, the context file and all the personal forms, scan formats,
|
meillo@19
|
681 and the like, are also there.
|
meillo@19
|
682 .P
|
meillo@19
|
683 The naming changed with the relocation.
|
meillo@19
|
684 The directory where everything, except the profile, had been stored (\c
|
meillo@19
|
685 .Fn $HOME/Mail ),
|
meillo@19
|
686 used to be called \fIMH directory\fP. Now, this directory is called the
|
meillo@19
|
687 user's \fImail storage\fP. The name \fImmh directory\fP is now given to
|
meillo@19
|
688 the new directory
|
meillo@19
|
689 (\c
|
meillo@19
|
690 .Fn $HOME/.mmh ),
|
meillo@19
|
691 containing all the personal configuration files.
|
meillo@19
|
692 .P
|
meillo@19
|
693 The separation of the files by type of content is logical and convenient.
|
meillo@19
|
694 There are no functional differences as any possible setup known to me
|
meillo@19
|
695 can be implemented with both approaches, although likely a bit easier
|
meillo@19
|
696 with the new approach. The main goal of the change had been to provide
|
meillo@19
|
697 sensible storage locations for any type of personal mmh file.
|
meillo@19
|
698 .P
|
meillo@19
|
699 In order for one user to have multiple MH setups, he can use the
|
meillo@19
|
700 environment variable
|
meillo@19
|
701 .Ev MH
|
meillo@19
|
702 the point to a different profile file.
|
meillo@19
|
703 The MH directory (mail storage plus personal configuration files) is
|
meillo@19
|
704 defined by the
|
meillo@19
|
705 .Pe Path
|
meillo@19
|
706 profile entry.
|
meillo@19
|
707 The context file could be defined by the
|
meillo@19
|
708 .Pe context
|
meillo@19
|
709 profile entry or by the
|
meillo@19
|
710 .Ev MHCONTEXT
|
meillo@19
|
711 environment variable.
|
meillo@19
|
712 The latter is useful to have a distinct context (e.g. current folders)
|
meillo@19
|
713 in each terminal window, for instance.
|
meillo@19
|
714 In mmh, there are three environment variables now.
|
meillo@19
|
715 .Ev MMH
|
meillo@19
|
716 may be used to change the location of the mmh directory.
|
meillo@19
|
717 .Ev MMHP
|
meillo@19
|
718 and
|
meillo@19
|
719 .Ev MMHC
|
meillo@19
|
720 change the profile and context files, respectively.
|
meillo@19
|
721 Besides providing a more consistent feel (which simply is the result
|
meillo@19
|
722 of being designed anew), the set of personal configuration files can
|
meillo@19
|
723 be chosen independently from the profile (including mail storage location)
|
meillo@19
|
724 and context, now. Being it relevant for practical use or not, it
|
meillo@19
|
725 de-facto is an improvement. However, the main achievement is the
|
meillo@19
|
726 split between mail storage and personal configuration files.
|
meillo@17
|
727
|
meillo@0
|
728
|
meillo@58
|
729 .H2 "Modularization
|
meillo@0
|
730 .P
|
meillo@58
|
731 whatnowproc
|
meillo@0
|
732 .P
|
meillo@49
|
733 The \fIMH library\fP
|
meillo@49
|
734 .Fn libmh.a
|
meillo@49
|
735 collects a bunch of standard functions that many of the MH tools need,
|
meillo@49
|
736 like reading the profile or context files.
|
meillo@49
|
737 This doesn't hurt the separation.
|
meillo@49
|
738
|
meillo@58
|
739
|
meillo@58
|
740 .H2 "Style
|
meillo@58
|
741 .P
|
meillo@58
|
742 Code layout, goto, ...
|
meillo@58
|
743
|
meillo@58
|
744
|
meillo@58
|
745
|
meillo@58
|
746
|
meillo@58
|
747 .H1 "Concept Exploitation/Homogeniety
|
meillo@58
|
748
|
meillo@58
|
749
|
meillo@58
|
750 .H2 "Draft Folder
|
meillo@58
|
751 .P
|
meillo@58
|
752 Historically, MH provided exactly one draft message, named
|
meillo@58
|
753 .Fn draft
|
meillo@58
|
754 and
|
meillo@58
|
755 being located in the MH directory. When starting to compose another message
|
meillo@58
|
756 before the former one was sent, the user had been questioned whether to use,
|
meillo@58
|
757 refile or replace the old draft. Working on multiple drafts at the same time
|
meillo@58
|
758 was impossible. One could only work on them in alteration by refiling the
|
meillo@58
|
759 previous one to some directory and fetching some other one for reediting.
|
meillo@58
|
760 This manual draft management needed to be done each time the user wanted
|
meillo@58
|
761 to switch between editing one draft to editing another.
|
meillo@58
|
762 .P
|
meillo@58
|
763 To allow true parallel editing of drafts, in a straight forward way, the
|
meillo@58
|
764 draft folder facility exists. It had been introduced already in July 1984
|
meillo@58
|
765 by Marshall T. Rose. The facility was deactivated by default.
|
meillo@58
|
766 Even in nmh, the draft folder facility remained deactivated by default.
|
meillo@58
|
767 At least, Richard Coleman added the man page
|
meillo@58
|
768 .Mp mh-draft(5)
|
meillo@58
|
769 to document
|
meillo@58
|
770 the feature well.
|
meillo@58
|
771 .P
|
meillo@58
|
772 The only advantage of not using the draft folder facility is the static
|
meillo@58
|
773 name of the draft file. This could be an issue for MH frontends like mh-e.
|
meillo@58
|
774 But as they likely want to provide working on multiple drafts in parallel,
|
meillo@58
|
775 the issue is only concerning compatibility. The aim of nmh to stay compatible
|
meillo@58
|
776 prevented the default activation of the draft folder facility.
|
meillo@58
|
777 .P
|
meillo@58
|
778 On the other hand, a draft folder is the much more natural concept than
|
meillo@58
|
779 a draft message. MH's mail storage consists of folders and messages,
|
meillo@58
|
780 the messages named with ascending numbers. A draft message breaks with this
|
meillo@58
|
781 concept by introducing a message in a file named
|
meillo@58
|
782 .Fn draft .
|
meillo@58
|
783 This draft
|
meillo@58
|
784 message is special. It can not be simply listed with the available tools,
|
meillo@58
|
785 but instead requires special switches. I.e. corner-cases were
|
meillo@58
|
786 introduced. A draft folder, in contrast, does not introduce such
|
meillo@58
|
787 corner-cases. The available tools can operate on the messages within that
|
meillo@58
|
788 folder like on any messages within any mail folders. The only difference
|
meillo@58
|
789 is the fact that the default folder for
|
meillo@58
|
790 .Pn send
|
meillo@58
|
791 is the draft folder,
|
meillo@58
|
792 instead of the current folder, like for all other tools.
|
meillo@58
|
793 .P
|
meillo@58
|
794 The trivial part of the change was activating the draft folder facility
|
meillo@58
|
795 by default and setting a default name for this folder. Obviously, I chose
|
meillo@58
|
796 the name
|
meillo@58
|
797 .Fn +drafts .
|
meillo@58
|
798 This made the
|
meillo@58
|
799 .Sw \-draftfolder
|
meillo@58
|
800 and
|
meillo@58
|
801 .Sw \-draftmessage
|
meillo@58
|
802 switches useless, and I could remove them.
|
meillo@58
|
803 The more difficult but also the part that showed the real improvement,
|
meillo@58
|
804 was updating the tools to the new concept.
|
meillo@58
|
805 .Sw \-draft
|
meillo@58
|
806 switches could
|
meillo@58
|
807 be dropped, as operating on a draft message became indistinguishable to
|
meillo@58
|
808 operating on any other message for the tools.
|
meillo@58
|
809 .Pn comp
|
meillo@58
|
810 still has its
|
meillo@58
|
811 .Sw \-use
|
meillo@58
|
812 switch for switching between its two modes: (1) Compose a new
|
meillo@58
|
813 draft, possibly by taking some existing message as a form. (2) Modify
|
meillo@58
|
814 an existing draft. In either case, the behavior of
|
meillo@58
|
815 .Pn comp is
|
meillo@58
|
816 deterministic. There is no more need to query the user. I consider this
|
meillo@58
|
817 a major improvement. By making
|
meillo@58
|
818 .Pn send
|
meillo@58
|
819 simply operate on the current
|
meillo@58
|
820 message in the draft folder by default, with message and folder both
|
meillo@58
|
821 overridable by specifying them on the command line, it is now possible
|
meillo@58
|
822 to send a draft anywhere within the storage by simply specifying its folder
|
meillo@58
|
823 and name.
|
meillo@58
|
824 .P
|
meillo@58
|
825 All theses changes converted special cases to regular cases, thus
|
meillo@58
|
826 simplifying the tools and increasing the flexibility.
|
meillo@58
|
827
|
meillo@58
|
828
|
meillo@58
|
829 .H2 "Trash Folder
|
meillo@58
|
830 .P
|
meillo@58
|
831 Similar to the situation for drafts is the situation for removed messages.
|
meillo@58
|
832 Historically, a message was deleted by renaming. A specific
|
meillo@58
|
833 \fIbackup prefix\fP, often comma (\c
|
meillo@58
|
834 .Fn , )
|
meillo@58
|
835 or hash (\c
|
meillo@58
|
836 .Fn # ),
|
meillo@58
|
837 being prepended to the file name. Thus, MH wouldn't recognize the file
|
meillo@58
|
838 as a message anymore, as only files whose name consists of digits only
|
meillo@58
|
839 are treated as messages. The removed messages remained as files in the
|
meillo@58
|
840 same directory and needed some maintenance job to truly delete them after
|
meillo@58
|
841 some grace time. Usually, by running a command similar to
|
meillo@58
|
842 .DS
|
meillo@58
|
843 find /home/user/Mail \-ctime +7 \-name ',*' | xargs rm
|
meillo@58
|
844 .DE
|
meillo@58
|
845 in a cron job. Within the grace time interval
|
meillo@58
|
846 the original message could be restored by stripping the
|
meillo@58
|
847 the backup prefix from the file name. If however, the last message of
|
meillo@58
|
848 a folder is been removed \(en say message
|
meillo@58
|
849 .Fn 6
|
meillo@58
|
850 becomes file
|
meillo@58
|
851 .Fn ,6
|
meillo@58
|
852 \(en and a new message enters the same folder, thus the same
|
meillo@58
|
853 numbered being given again \(en in our case
|
meillo@58
|
854 .Fn 6
|
meillo@58
|
855 \(en, if that one
|
meillo@58
|
856 is removed too, then the backup of the former message gets overwritten.
|
meillo@58
|
857 Thus, the ability to restore removed messages does not only depend on
|
meillo@58
|
858 the ``sweeping cron job'' but also on the removing of further messages.
|
meillo@58
|
859 This is undesirable, because the real mechanism is hidden from the user
|
meillo@58
|
860 and the consequences of further removals are not always obvious.
|
meillo@58
|
861 Further more, the backup files are scattered within the whole mail
|
meillo@58
|
862 storage, instead of being collected at one place.
|
meillo@58
|
863 .P
|
meillo@58
|
864 To improve the situation, the profile entry
|
meillo@58
|
865 .Pe rmmproc
|
meillo@58
|
866 (previously named
|
meillo@58
|
867 .Pe Delete-Prog )
|
meillo@58
|
868 was introduced, very early.
|
meillo@58
|
869 It could be set to any command, which would care for the mail removal
|
meillo@58
|
870 instead of taking the default action, described above.
|
meillo@58
|
871 Refiling the to-be-removed files to some garbage folder was a common
|
meillo@58
|
872 example. Nmh's man page
|
meillo@58
|
873 .Mp rmm(1)
|
meillo@58
|
874 proposes
|
meillo@58
|
875 .Cl "refile +d
|
meillo@58
|
876 to move messages to the garbage folder and
|
meillo@58
|
877 .Cl "rm `mhpath +d all`
|
meillo@58
|
878 the empty the garbage folder.
|
meillo@58
|
879 Managing the message removal this way is a sane approach. It keeps
|
meillo@58
|
880 the removed messages in one place, makes it easy to remove the backup
|
meillo@58
|
881 files, and, most important, enables the user to use the tools of MH
|
meillo@58
|
882 itself to operate on the removed messages. One can
|
meillo@58
|
883 .Pn scan
|
meillo@58
|
884 them,
|
meillo@58
|
885 .Pn show
|
meillo@58
|
886 them, and restore them with
|
meillo@58
|
887 .Pn refile .
|
meillo@58
|
888 There's no more
|
meillo@58
|
889 need to use
|
meillo@58
|
890 .Pn mhpath
|
meillo@58
|
891 to switch over from MH tools to Unix tools \(en MH can do it all itself.
|
meillo@58
|
892 .P
|
meillo@58
|
893 This approach matches perfect with the concepts of MH, thus making
|
meillo@58
|
894 it powerful. Hence, I made it the default. And even more, I also
|
meillo@58
|
895 removed the old backup prefix approach, as it is clearly less powerful.
|
meillo@58
|
896 Keeping unused alternative in the code is a bad choice as they likely
|
meillo@58
|
897 gather bugs, by not being constantly tested. Also, the increased code
|
meillo@58
|
898 size and more conditions crease the maintenance costs. By strictly
|
meillo@58
|
899 converting to the trash folder approach, I simplified the code base.
|
meillo@58
|
900 .Pn rmm
|
meillo@58
|
901 calls
|
meillo@58
|
902 .Pn refile
|
meillo@58
|
903 internally to move the to-be-removed
|
meillo@58
|
904 message to the trash folder (\c
|
meillo@58
|
905 .Fn +trash
|
meillo@58
|
906 by default). Messages
|
meillo@58
|
907 there can be operated on like on any other message in the storage.
|
meillo@58
|
908 The sweep clean, one can use
|
meillo@58
|
909 .Cl "rmm \-unlink +trash a" ,
|
meillo@58
|
910 where the
|
meillo@58
|
911 .Sw \-unlink
|
meillo@58
|
912 switch causes the files to be truly unliked instead
|
meillo@58
|
913 of moved to the trash folder.
|
meillo@58
|
914
|
meillo@58
|
915
|
meillo@58
|
916 .H2 "Path Notations
|
meillo@58
|
917 .P
|
meillo@58
|
918 foo
|
meillo@58
|
919
|
meillo@58
|
920
|
meillo@58
|
921 .H2 "MIME Integration
|
meillo@58
|
922 .P
|
meillo@58
|
923 user-visible access to whole messages and MIME parts are inherently
|
meillo@58
|
924 different
|
meillo@58
|
925
|
meillo@58
|
926
|
meillo@58
|
927 .H2 "Of One Cast
|
meillo@58
|
928 .P
|