docs/master: discussion.roff annotate

docs/master

annotate discussion.roff @ 225:d83ab437e3a6

Removed FIXMEs (XXX) in the sources, those that I won't fix.

author	markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de>
date	Sun, 15 Jul 2012 20:00:14 +0200
parents	b0e83cfde2bf
children	27c28990b844

rev	line source
meillo@58	1 .H0 "Discussion
meillo@0	2 .P
meillo@169	3 This main chapter discusses the practical work accomplished in the
meillo@169	4 mmh project.
meillo@217	5 It is structured along the goals chosen for the project.
meillo@217	6 A selection of the work undertaken
meillo@217	7 is described.
meillo@217	8 .P
meillo@217	9 This discussion compares the present version of mmh with the state of
meillo@217	10 nmh at the time when the mmh project had started, i.e. fall 2011.
meillo@224	11 Recent changes in nmh are rarely part of the discussion.
meillo@187	12 .P
meillo@187	13 For the reader's convenience, the structure of modern email systems
meillo@217	14 is depicted in the following figure.
meillo@187	15 It illustrates the path a message takes from sender to recipient.
meillo@217	16
meillo@217	17 .sp 1.5
meillo@187	18 .KS
meillo@187	19 .in 2c
meillo@187	20 .so input/mail-agents.pic
meillo@187	21 .KE
meillo@217	22 .sp 1.5
meillo@217	23
meillo@187	24 .LP
meillo@217	25 The ellipses denote mail agents, i.e. different jobs in email processing.
meillo@217	26 These are:
meillo@187	27 .IP "Mail User Agent (MUA)
meillo@217	28 The only program users directly interact with.
meillo@187	29 It includes functions to compose new mail, display received mail,
meillo@187	30 and to manage the mail storage.
meillo@217	31 It is called a \fImail client\fP as well.
meillo@187	32 .IP "Mail Submission Agent (MSA)
meillo@187	33 A special kind of Mail Transfer Agent, used to submit mail into the
meillo@187	34 mail transport system.
meillo@217	35 Often it is also called an MTA.
meillo@187	36 .IP "Mail Transfer Agent (MTA)
meillo@187	37 A node in the mail transport system.
meillo@217	38 It transfers incoming mail to a transport node nearer to the
meillo@217	39 final destination.
meillo@217	40 An MTA may be the final destination itself.
meillo@187	41 .IP "Mail Delivery Agent (MDA)
meillo@217	42 Delivers mail according to a set of rules.
meillo@217	43 Usually, the messages are stored to disk.
meillo@187	44 .IP "Mail Retrieval Agent (MRA)
meillo@217	45 Initiates the transfer of mail from a remote location to the local machine.
meillo@217	46 (The dashed arrow in the figure represents the pull request.)
meillo@217	47 .LP
meillo@217	48 The dashed boxes represent entities that usually reside on single machines.
meillo@217	49 The box on the lower left represents the sender's system.
meillo@187	50 The box on the upper left represents the first mail transfer node.
meillo@224	51 The box on the upper right represents the transfer node responsible
meillo@224	52 for the destination address.
meillo@217	53 The box on the lower right represents the recipient's system.
meillo@187	54 Often, the boxes above the dotted line are servers on the Internet.
meillo@217	55 Many mail clients, including nmh, include all of the components below
meillo@217	56 the dotted line.
meillo@217	57 This is not the case for mmh; it implements the MUA only.
meillo@187	58
meillo@187	59
meillo@187	60
meillo@58	61
meillo@58	62
meillo@58	63
meillo@133	64 .\" --------------------------------------------------------------
meillo@125	65 .H1 "Streamlining
meillo@58	66
meillo@0	67 .P
meillo@217	68 MH once provided a complete email system.
meillo@217	69 The community around nmh tries to keep nmh in similar shape.
meillo@178	70 In fundamental contrast, mmh shall be an MUA only.
meillo@87	71 I believe that the development of all-in-one mail systems is obsolete.
meillo@173	72 Today, email is too complex to be fully covered by a single project.
meillo@173	73 Such a project will not be able to excel in all aspects.
meillo@159	74 Instead, the aspects of email should be covered by multiple projects,
meillo@87	75 which then can be combined to form a complete system.
meillo@169	76 Excellent implementations for the various aspects of email already exist.
meillo@223	77 Just to name three examples: Postfix is a specialized MTA, Procmail
meillo@223	78 is a specialized MDA, and Fetchmail is a specialized MRA.
meillo@89	79 I believe that it is best to use such specialized tools instead of
meillo@217	80 providing the same function once more as a side component.
meillo@58	81 .P
meillo@169	82 Doing something well requires focusing on a small set of specific aspects.
meillo@217	83 Under the assumption that development which is focussed on a particular
meillo@217	84 area produces better results there, specialized projects will be superior
meillo@87	85 in their field of focus.
meillo@87	86 Hence, all-in-one mail system projects \(en no matter if monolithic
meillo@87	87 or modular \(en will never be the best choice in any of the fields.
meillo@217	88 Even in providing the most consistent all-in-one system, they are likely
meillo@217	89 to be beaten by projects that focus exclusively on the creation
meillo@217	90 of a homogeneous system by integrating existing mail components.
meillo@87	91 .P
meillo@217	92 Usually, the limiting resource in the community development of
meillo@217	93 free software is man power.
meillo@217	94 If the development effort is spread over a large development area,
meillo@217	95 it becomes more difficult to compete with the specialists in the
meillo@87	96 various fields.
meillo@87	97 The concrete situation for MH-based mail systems is even tougher,
meillo@169	98 given their small and aged community, concerning both developers and users.
meillo@87	99 .P
meillo@87	100 In consequence, I believe that the available development resources
meillo@100	101 should focus on the point where MH is most unique.
meillo@87	102 This is clearly the user interface \(en the MUA.
meillo@125	103 Peripheral parts should be removed to streamline mmh for the MUA task.
meillo@60	104
meillo@60	105
meillo@100	106 .H2 "Mail Transfer Facilities
meillo@154	107 .Id mail-transfer-facilities
meillo@60	108 .P
meillo@217	109 The removal of the mail transfer facilities, effectively dropping the
meillo@217	110 MSA and MRA, had been the first work task in the mmh project.
meillo@217	111 The desire for this change initiated the creation of the mmh project.
meillo@60	112 .P
meillo@169	113 Focusing on one mail agent role only, is motivated by Eric Allman's
meillo@105	114 experience with Sendmail.
meillo@217	115 He identified the limitation of Sendmail
meillo@217	116 to the MTA task as one reason for its success:
meillo@105	117 .[ [
meillo@105	118 costales sendmail
meillo@105	119 .], p. xviii]
meillo@105	120 .QS
meillo@105	121 Second, I limited myself to the routing function \(en
meillo@110	122 I wouldn't write user agents or delivery back-ends.
meillo@217	123 This was a departure of the dominant thought of the time,
meillo@105	124 in which routing logic, local delivery, and often the network code
meillo@105	125 were incorporated directly into the user agents.
meillo@105	126 .QE
meillo@105	127 .P
meillo@187	128 In nmh, the MSA is called \fIMessage Transfer Service\fP (MTS).
meillo@105	129 This facility, implemented by the
meillo@105	130 .Pn post
meillo@217	131 command, establishes network connections and spoke SMTP to submit
meillo@159	132 messages to be relayed to the outside world.
meillo@217	133 When email transfer changed, this part needed to be changed as well.
meillo@89	134 Encryption and authentication for network connections
meillo@87	135 needed to be supported, hence TLS and SASL were introduced into nmh.
meillo@217	136 This added complexity without improving the core functions.
meillo@217	137 Furthermore, keeping up with recent developments in the field of
meillo@87	138 mail transfer requires development power and specialists.
meillo@217	139 In mmh, this whole facility was simply cut off
meillo@76	140 .Ci f6aa95b724fd8c791164abe7ee5468bf5c34f226
meillo@76	141 .Ci fecd5d34f65597a4dfa16aeabea7d74b191532c3
meillo@217	142 .Ci 156d35f6425bea4c1ed3c4c79783dc613379c65b .
meillo@87	143 Instead, mmh depends on an external MSA.
meillo@217	144 All outgoing mail in mmh goes through the
meillo@60	145 .Pn sendmail
meillo@87	146 command, which almost any MSA provides.
meillo@87	147 If not, a wrapper program can be written.
meillo@87	148 It must read the message from the standard input, extract the
meillo@87	149 recipient addresses from the message header, and hand the message
meillo@87	150 over to the MSA.
meillo@223	151 For example, a wrapper script for qmail would be:
meillo@87	152 .VS
meillo@87	153 #!/bin/sh
meillo@138	154 exec qmail-inject # ignore command line arguments
meillo@87	155 VE
meillo@87	156 The requirement to parse the recipient addresses out of the message header
meillo@217	157 may be removed in the future.
meillo@217	158 Mmh could pass the recipient addresses as command line arguments.
meillo@100	159 This appears to be the better interface.
meillo@60	160 .P
meillo@60	161 To retrieve mail, the
meillo@60	162 .Pn inc
meillo@217	163 command in nmh acts as MRA.
meillo@217	164 It establishes network connections
meillo@217	165 and speaks POP3 to retrieve mail from remote servers.
meillo@76	166 As with mail submission, the network connections required encryption and
meillo@217	167 authentication, thus TLS and SASL were added to nmh.
meillo@169	168 Support for message retrieval through IMAP will soon become necessary
meillo@169	169 additions, too, and likewise for any other changes in mail transfer.
meillo@217	170 But not in mmh because it has dropped the support for retrieving mail
meillo@217	171 from remote locations
meillo@217	172 .Ci ab7b48411962d26439f92f35ed084d3d6275459c .
meillo@76	173 Instead, it depends on an external tool to cover this task.
meillo@169	174 Mmh has two paths for messages to enter mmh's mail storage:
meillo@100	175 (1) Mail can be incorporated with
meillo@60	176 .Pn inc
meillo@87	177 from the system maildrop, or (2) with
meillo@60	178 .Pn rcvstore
meillo@87	179 by reading them, one at a time, from the standard input.
meillo@60	180 .P
meillo@217	181 With the removal of the MSA and MRA, mmh converted from a complete
meillo@217	182 mail system to only an MUA.
meillo@60	183 Now, of course, mmh depends on third-party software.
meillo@87	184 An external MSA is required to transfer mail to the outside world;
meillo@60	185 an external MRA is required to retrieve mail from remote machines.
meillo@217	186 Excellent implementations of such software exist.
meillo@217	187 They likely are superior to the internal versions that were removed.
meillo@217	188 Additionally, the best suiting programs can be chosen freely.
meillo@60	189 .P
meillo@217	190 As it had already been possible to use an external MSA and MRA,
meillo@217	191 why should the internal version not be kept for convenience?
meillo@224	192 Transfered to a different area, the question,
meillo@224	193 whether there is sense in having a fall-back pager in all
meillo@224	194 the command line tools for the cases when
meillo@60	195 .Pn more
meillo@60	196 or
meillo@60	197 .Pn less
meillo@173	198 are not available, appears to be ridiculous.
meillo@100	199 Of course, MSAs and MRAs are more complex than text pagers
meillo@87	200 and not necessarily available but still the concept of orthogonal
meillo@217	201 design holds: ``Write programs that do one thing and do it well''.
meillo@87	202 .[
meillo@87	203 mcilroy unix phil
meillo@87	204 p. 53
meillo@87	205 .]
meillo@87	206 .[
meillo@87	207 mcilroy bstj foreword
meillo@87	208 .]
meillo@87	209 Here, this part of the Unix philosophy was applied not only
meillo@87	210 to the programs but to the project itself.
meillo@87	211 In other words:
meillo@164	212 Develop projects that focus on one thing and do it well.
meillo@169	213 Projects which have grown complex should be split, for the same
meillo@169	214 reasons that programs which have grown complex should be split.
meillo@100	215 If it is conceptionally more elegant to have the MSA and MRA as
meillo@87	216 separate projects then they should be separated.
meillo@217	217 In my opinion, this is the case.
meillo@217	218 The RFCs suggest this separation by clearly distinguishing the
meillo@217	219 different mail handling tasks [RFC\\|821].
meillo@217	220 The small interfaces between the mail agents support the
meillo@217	221 separation as well.
meillo@76	222 .P
meillo@217	223 Once, email had been small and simple.
meillo@100	224 At that time,
meillo@60	225 .Pn /bin/mail
meillo@169	226 had covered everything there was to email and still was small and simple.
meillo@100	227 Later, the essential complexity of email increased.
meillo@224	228 (Essential complexity is the complexity defined by the problem itself
meillo@217	229 .[ [
meillo@87	230 brooks no silver bullet
meillo@224	231 .]].)
meillo@217	232 Consequently, email systems grew.
meillo@100	233 RFCs started to introduce the concept of mail agents to separate the
meillo@217	234 various roles because they became more extensive and because
meillo@217	235 new roles appeared.
meillo@217	236 As mail system implementations grew, parts of them were split off.
meillo@169	237 For instance, a POP server was included in the original MH;
meillo@169	238 it was removed in nmh.
meillo@217	239 Now is the time to go one step further and split off the MSA and MRA,
meillo@217	240 as well.
meillo@87	241 Not only does this decrease the code size of the project,
meillo@169	242 more importantly, it unburdens mmh of the whole field of
meillo@217	243 message transfer, with all its implications for the project.
meillo@169	244 There is no more need for concern with changes in network transfer.
meillo@217	245 This independence is gained by depending on external components
meillo@217	246 that cover the field.
meillo@60	247 .P
meillo@217	248 In general, functionality can be added in three different ways:
meillo@171	249 .LI 1
meillo@217	250 By implementing the function in the project itself.
meillo@171	251 .LI 2
meillo@217	252 By depending on a library that provides the function.
meillo@171	253 .LI 3
meillo@217	254 By depending on a program that provides the function.
meillo@171	255 .LP
meillo@169	256 While implementing the function in the project itself leads to the
meillo@169	257 largest increase in code size and requires the most maintenance
meillo@169	258 and development work,
meillo@217	259 it keeps the project's dependence on other software lowest.
meillo@169	260 Using libraries or external programs requires less maintenance work
meillo@217	261 but introduces dependencies on external projects.
meillo@169	262 Programs have the smallest interfaces and provide the best separation,
meillo@87	263 but possibly limit the information exchange.
meillo@169	264 External libraries are more strongly connected than external programs,
meillo@169	265 thus information can be exchanged in a more flexible manner.
meillo@87	266 Adding code to a project increases maintenance work.
meillo@217	267 As implementing complex functions in the project itself adds
meillo@217	268 a lot of code, this should be avoided if possible.
meillo@217	269 Thus, the dependencies only change in their character,
meillo@169	270 not in their existence.
meillo@66	271 In mmh, library dependencies on
meillo@66	272 .Pn libsasl2
meillo@66	273 and
meillo@66	274 .Pn libcrypto /\c
meillo@66	275 .Pn libssl
meillo@159	276 were traded against program dependencies on an MSA and an MRA.
meillo@159	277 This also meant trading build-time dependencies against run-time
meillo@87	278 dependencies.
meillo@169	279 Besides providing stronger separation and greater flexibility,
meillo@169	280 program dependencies also allowed
meillo@66	281 over 6\\|000 lines of code to be removed from mmh.
meillo@66	282 This made mmh's code base about 12\\|% smaller.
meillo@87	283 Reducing the project's code size by such an amount without actually
meillo@87	284 losing functionality is a convincing argument.
meillo@87	285 Actually, as external MSAs and MRAs are likely superior to the
meillo@87	286 project's internal versions, the common user even gains functionality.
meillo@66	287 .P
meillo@169	288 Users of MH should not have problems setting up an external MSA and MRA.
meillo@60	289 Also, the popular MSAs and MRAs have large communities and a lot
meillo@169	290 of available documentation.
meillo@217	291
meillo@223	292 Choices for MSAs range from small forwarders such as \fIssmtp\fP and
meillo@223	293 \fInullmailer\fP, over mid-size MTAs including \fImasqmail\fP and
meillo@223	294 \fIdma\fP, up to full-featured MTAs as for instance \fIPostfix\fP.
meillo@223	295 MRAs are provided for example by \fIfetchmail\fP, \fIgetmail\fP,
meillo@223	296 \fImpop\fP, and \fIfdm\fP.
meillo@60	297
meillo@60	298
meillo@100	299 .H2 "Non-MUA Tools
meillo@60	300 .P
meillo@217	301 One goal of mmh is to remove the tools that do not significantly
meillo@217	302 contribute to the MUA's job.
meillo@217	303 Loosely related and rarely used tools distract from a lean appearance,
meillo@217	304 and require maintenance work without adding much to the core task.
meillo@217	305 By removing these tools, mmh became more streamlined and focused.
meillo@62	306 .BU
meillo@58	307 .Pn conflict
meillo@87	308 was removed
meillo@76	309 .Ci 8b235097cbd11d728c07b966cf131aa7133ce5a9
meillo@217	310 because it is a mail system maintenance tool and not MUA-related.
meillo@87	311 It even checked
meillo@58	312 .Fn /etc/passwd
meillo@58	313 and
meillo@58	314 .Fn /etc/group
meillo@87	315 for consistency, which is completely unrelated to email.
meillo@87	316 A tool like
meillo@87	317 .Pn conflict
meillo@87	318 is surely useful, but it should not be shipped with mmh.
meillo@62	319 .BU
meillo@58	320 .Pn rcvtty
meillo@87	321 was removed
meillo@87	322 .Ci 14767c94b3827be7c867196467ed7aea5f6f49b0
meillo@89	323 because its use case of writing to the user's terminal
meillo@200	324 on reception of mail is obsolete.
meillo@87	325 If users like to be informed of new mail, the shell's
meillo@58	326 .Ev MAILPATH
meillo@87	327 variable or graphical notifications are technically more appealing.
meillo@217	328 Writing to terminals directly is hardly ever desired today.
meillo@169	329 If, though, one prefers this approach, the standard tool
meillo@58	330 .Pn write
meillo@58	331 can be used in a way similar to:
meillo@82	332 .VS
meillo@58	333 scan -file - \| write `id -un`
meillo@82	334 VE
meillo@62	335 .BU
meillo@58	336 .Pn viamail
meillo@87	337 was removed
meillo@87	338 .Ci eda72d6a7a7c20ff123043fb7f19c509ea01f932
meillo@87	339 when the new attachment system was activated, because
meillo@58	340 .Pn forw
meillo@76	341 could then cover the task itself.
meillo@62	342 The program
meillo@58	343 .Pn sendfiles
meillo@62	344 was rewritten as a shell script wrapper around
meillo@58	345 .Pn forw .
meillo@76	346 .Ci 0e82199cf3c991a173e0ac8aa776efdb3ded61e6
meillo@62	347 .BU
meillo@58	348 .Pn msgchk
meillo@87	349 was removed
meillo@87	350 .Ci bb9360ead7eb7a3fedcce2eeedfc660014e41dbe ,
meillo@87	351 because it lost its use case when POP support was removed.
meillo@76	352 A call to
meillo@58	353 .Pn msgchk
meillo@87	354 provided hardly more information than:
meillo@82	355 .VS
meillo@58	356 ls -l /var/mail/meillo
meillo@82	357 VE
meillo@217	358 Yet, it distinguished between old and new mail, but
meillo@169	359 these details can be retrieved with
meillo@76	360 .Pn stat (1),
meillo@62	361 too.
meillo@100	362 A small shell script could be written to print the information
meillo@76	363 in a similar way, if truly necessary.
meillo@76	364 As mmh's
meillo@76	365 .Pn inc
meillo@87	366 only incorporates mail from the user's local maildrop,
meillo@62	367 and thus no data transfers over slow networks are involved,
meillo@169	368 there is hardly any need to check for new mail before incorporating it.
meillo@62	369 .BU
meillo@58	370 .Pn msh
meillo@87	371 was removed
meillo@76	372 .Ci 916690191222433a6923a4be54b0d8f6ac01bd02
meillo@87	373 because the tool was in conflict with the philosophy of MH.
meillo@217	374 It provided an interactive shell to access the features of MH.
meillo@217	375 However, it was not just a shell tailored to the needs of mail handling,
meillo@217	376 but one large program that had several MH tools built in.
meillo@217	377 This conflicted with the major feature of MH of being a tool chest.
meillo@76	378 .Pn msh 's
meillo@159	379 main use case had been accessing Bulletin Boards, which have ceased to
meillo@62	380 be popular.
meillo@62	381 .P
meillo@62	382 Removing
meillo@169	383 .Pn msh
meillo@212	384 together with the truly archaic code relics
meillo@58	385 .Pn vmh
meillo@58	386 and
meillo@169	387 .Pn wmh
meillo@62	388 saved more than 7\\|000 lines of C code \(en
meillo@66	389 about 15\\|% of the project's original source code amount.
meillo@100	390 Having less code \(en with equal readability, of course \(en
meillo@76	391 for the same functionality is an advantage.
meillo@63	392 Less code means less bugs and less maintenance work.
meillo@76	393 As
meillo@63	394 .Pn rcvtty
meillo@63	395 and
meillo@63	396 .Pn msgchk
meillo@87	397 are assumed to be rarely used and can be implemented in different ways,
meillo@87	398 why should one keep them?
meillo@217	399 Removing them streamlined mmh.
meillo@63	400 .Pn viamail 's
meillo@63	401 use case is now partly obsolete and partly covered by
meillo@63	402 .Pn forw ,
meillo@217	403 hence there is no reason to still maintain it.
meillo@63	404 .Pn conflict
meillo@76	405 is not related to the mail client, and
meillo@63	406 .Pn msh
meillo@63	407 conflicts with the basic concept of MH.
meillo@169	408 These two tools might still be useful, but they should not be part of mmh.
meillo@63	409 .P
meillo@220	410 .Id slocal
meillo@169	411 Finally, there is
meillo@217	412 .Pn slocal ,
meillo@217	413 which is an MDA and thus not directly MUA-related.
meillo@217	414 It should be removed from mmh because including it conflicts with
meillo@178	415 the idea that mmh is an MUA only.
meillo@87	416 However,
meillo@76	417 .Pn slocal
meillo@76	418 provides rule-based processing of messages, like filing them into
meillo@76	419 different folders, which is otherwise not available in mmh.
meillo@87	420 Although
meillo@76	421 .Pn slocal
meillo@169	422 neither pulls in dependencies, nor does it include a separate
meillo@154	423 technical area (cf. Sec.
meillo@154	424 .Cf mail-transfer-facilities ),
meillo@169	425 it still accounts for about 1\\|000 lines of code that need to be maintained.
meillo@76	426 As
meillo@76	427 .Pn slocal
meillo@76	428 is almost self-standing, it should be split off into a separate project.
meillo@76	429 This would cut the strong connection between the MUA mmh and the MDA
meillo@76	430 .Pn slocal .
meillo@87	431 For anyone not using MH,
meillo@87	432 .Pn slocal
meillo@87	433 would become yet another independent MDA, like
meillo@87	434 .I procmail .
meillo@100	435 Then
meillo@87	436 .Pn slocal
meillo@217	437 could be installed without a complete MH system.
meillo@76	438 Likewise, mmh users could decide to use
meillo@76	439 .I procmail
meillo@217	440 without having a second, unused MDA, i.e.
meillo@87	441 .Pn slocal ,
meillo@76	442 installed.
meillo@100	443 That appears to be conceptionally the best solution.
meillo@76	444 Yet,
meillo@76	445 .Pn slocal
meillo@87	446 is not split off.
meillo@100	447 I defer the decision over
meillo@78	448 .Pn slocal
meillo@169	449 out of a need for deeper investigation.
meillo@217	450 In the meanwhile, it remains part of mmh
meillo@217	451 as its continued existence is not significant;
meillo@100	452 .Pn slocal
meillo@100	453 is unrelated to the rest of the project.
meillo@0	454
meillo@58	455
meillo@133	456
meillo@134	457 .H2 "Displaying Messages
meillo@155	458 .Id mhshow
meillo@131	459 .P
meillo@133	460 Since the very beginning, already in the first concept paper,
meillo@58	461 .Pn show
meillo@62	462 had been MH's message display program.
meillo@58	463 .Pn show
meillo@76	464 mapped message numbers and sequences to files and invoked
meillo@58	465 .Pn mhl
meillo@89	466 to have the files formatted.
meillo@173	467 With MIME, this approach was not sufficient anymore.
meillo@217	468 MIME messages can consist of multiple parts.
meillo@217	469 Some parts, like binary attachments or text content in foreign charsets,
meillo@217	470 are not directly displayable.
meillo@58	471 .Pn show 's
meillo@76	472 understanding of messages and
meillo@58	473 .Pn mhl 's
meillo@173	474 display capabilities could not cope with the task any longer.
meillo@62	475 .P
meillo@88	476 Instead of extending these tools, additional tools were written from
meillo@217	477 scratch and were added to the MH tool chest.
meillo@88	478 Doing so is encouraged by the tool chest approach.
meillo@88	479 Modular design is a great advantage for extending a system,
meillo@88	480 as new tools can be added without interfering with existing ones.
meillo@62	481 First, the new MIME features were added in form of the single program
meillo@58	482 .Pn mhn .
meillo@58	483 The command
meillo@82	484 .Cl "mhn -show 42
meillo@217	485 had then shown the message number
meillo@217	486 .Fn 42 ,
meillo@217	487 interpreting MIME.
meillo@58	488 With the 1.0 release of nmh in February 1999, Richard Coleman finished
meillo@58	489 the split of
meillo@58	490 .Pn mhn
meillo@88	491 into a set of specialized tools, which together covered the
meillo@88	492 multiple aspects of MIME.
meillo@88	493 One of them was
meillo@69	494 .Pn mhshow ,
meillo@88	495 which replaced
meillo@88	496 .Cl "mhn -show" .
meillo@88	497 It was capable of displaying MIME messages appropriately.
meillo@62	498 .P
meillo@88	499 From then on, two message display tools were part of nmh,
meillo@76	500 .Pn show
meillo@76	501 and
meillo@76	502 .Pn mhshow .
meillo@88	503 To ease the life of users,
meillo@69	504 .Pn show
meillo@69	505 was extended to automatically hand the job over to
meillo@69	506 .Pn mhshow
meillo@69	507 if displaying the message would be beyond
meillo@69	508 .Pn show 's
meillo@69	509 abilities.
meillo@88	510 In consequence, the user would simply invoke
meillo@69	511 .Pn show
meillo@69	512 (possibly through
meillo@69	513 .Pn next
meillo@69	514 or
meillo@69	515 .Pn prev )
meillo@69	516 and get the message printed with either
meillo@69	517 .Pn show
meillo@69	518 or
meillo@69	519 .Pn mhshow ,
meillo@69	520 whatever was more appropriate.
meillo@69	521 .P
meillo@217	522 Having two similar tools for basically the same task is redundancy.
meillo@217	523 Usually, users do not distinguish between
meillo@88	524 .Pn show
meillo@88	525 and
meillo@88	526 .Pn mhshow
meillo@88	527 in their daily mail reading.
meillo@217	528 Having two separate display programs was therefore unnecessary
meillo@88	529 from a user's point of view.
meillo@88	530 Besides, the development of both programs needed to be in sync,
meillo@76	531 to ensure that the programs behaved in a similar way,
meillo@76	532 because they were used like a single tool.
meillo@76	533 Different behavior would have surprised the user.
meillo@69	534 .P
meillo@69	535 Today, non-MIME messages are rather seen to be a special case of
meillo@100	536 MIME messages, although it is the other way round.
meillo@69	537 As
meillo@69	538 .Pn mhshow
meillo@217	539 already had been able to display non-MIME messages, it appeared natural
meillo@69	540 to drop
meillo@69	541 .Pn show
meillo@69	542 in favor of using
meillo@69	543 .Pn mhshow
meillo@217	544 exclusively
meillo@217	545 .Ci 4c1efddfd499300c7e74263e57d8aa137e84c853 .
meillo@88	546 Removing
meillo@88	547 .Pn show
meillo@217	548 is no loss in function, because
meillo@88	549 .Pn mhshow
meillo@88	550 covers it completely.
meillo@217	551 Yet, the old behavior of
meillo@88	552 .Pn show
meillo@88	553 can still be emulated with the simple command line:
meillo@88	554 .VS
meillo@88	555 mhl `mhpath c`
meillo@88	556 VE
meillo@88	557 .P
meillo@76	558 For convenience,
meillo@76	559 .Pn mhshow
meillo@88	560 was renamed to
meillo@88	561 .Pn show
meillo@88	562 after
meillo@88	563 .Pn show
meillo@88	564 was gone.
meillo@88	565 It is clear that such a rename may confuse future developers when
meillo@88	566 trying to understand the history.
meillo@88	567 Nevertheless, I consider the convenience on the user's side,
meillo@217	568 to outweigh the inconvenience for understanding the evolution
meillo@217	569 of the tools.
meillo@69	570 .P
meillo@88	571 To prepare for the transition,
meillo@69	572 .Pn mhshow
meillo@69	573 was reworked to behave more like
meillo@69	574 .Pn show
meillo@217	575 first (cf. Sec.
meillo@217	576 .Cf mhshow ).
meillo@88	577 Once the tools behaved more alike, the replacing appeared to be
meillo@88	578 even more natural.
meillo@88	579 Today, mmh's new
meillo@69	580 .Pn show
meillo@217	581 has become the one single message display program once again,
meillo@159	582 with the difference
meillo@88	583 that today it handles MIME messages as well as non-MIME messages.
meillo@217	584 The outcomes of the transition are one program less to maintain,
meillo@88	585 no second display program for users to deal with,
meillo@88	586 and less system complexity.
meillo@69	587 .P
meillo@88	588 Still, removing the old
meillo@69	589 .Pn show
meillo@88	590 hurts in one regard: It had been such a simple program.
meillo@159	591 Its lean elegance is missing from the new
meillo@159	592 .Pn show ,
meillo@225	593 but there is no alternative;
meillo@159	594 supporting MIME demands higher essential complexity.
meillo@58	595
meillo@131	596
meillo@133	597
meillo@100	598 .H2 "Configure Options
meillo@58	599 .P
meillo@76	600 Customization is a double-edged sword.
meillo@76	601 It allows better suiting setups, but not for free.
meillo@76	602 There is the cost of code complexity to be able to customize.
meillo@76	603 There is the cost of less tested setups, because there are
meillo@171	604 more possible setups and especially corner cases.
meillo@159	605 Additionally, there is the cost of choice itself.
meillo@76	606 The code complexity directly affects the developers.
meillo@173	607 Less tested code affects both users and developers.
meillo@217	608 The problem of choice affects the users, for once by having to choose
meillo@159	609 but also by more complex interfaces that require more documentation.
meillo@159	610 Whenever options add few advantages but increase the complexity of the
meillo@159	611 system, they should be considered for removal.
meillo@72	612 I have reduced the number of project-specific configure options from
meillo@217	613 15 to 3.
meillo@74	614
meillo@76	615 .U3 "Mail Transfer Facilities
meillo@74	616 .P
meillo@217	617 With the removal of the mail transfer facilities 5 configure
meillo@85	618 options vanished:
meillo@85	619 .P
meillo@85	620 The switches
meillo@85	621 .Sw --with-tls
meillo@85	622 and
meillo@85	623 .Sw --with-cyrus-sasl
meillo@89	624 had activated the support for transfer encryption and authentication.
meillo@159	625 .\" XXX cf
meillo@159	626 .\" XXX gruende kurz wiederholen
meillo@217	627 They are not needed anymore.
meillo@85	628 .Ci fecd5d34f65597a4dfa16aeabea7d74b191532c3
meillo@85	629 .Ci 156d35f6425bea4c1ed3c4c79783dc613379c65b
meillo@85	630 .P
meillo@159	631 .\" XXX cf
meillo@159	632 .\" XXX ``For the same reason ...''
meillo@85	633 The configure switch
meillo@85	634 .Sw --enable-pop
meillo@85	635 activated the message retrieval facility.
meillo@217	636 Whereas the code area that had been conditionally compiled in
meillo@217	637 for TLS and SASL support was small,
meillo@217	638 the conditionally compiled code area for POP support was much larger.
meillo@217	639 The code base had only changed slightly on toggling TLS or SASL
meillo@217	640 support but it had changed much on toggling POP support.
meillo@85	641 The changes in the code base could hardly be overviewed.
meillo@159	642 By having POP support togglable, a second code base had been created,
meillo@85	643 one that needed to be tested.
meillo@85	644 This situation is basically similar for the conditional TLS and SASL
meillo@85	645 code, but there the changes are minor and can yet be overviewed.
meillo@85	646 Still, conditional compilation of a code base creates variations
meillo@85	647 of the original program.
meillo@85	648 More variations require more testing and maintenance work.
meillo@85	649 .P
meillo@85	650 Two other options only specified default configuration values:
meillo@100	651 .Sw --with-mts
meillo@217	652 defined the default transport service
meillo@217	653 .Ci f6aa95b724fd8c791164abe7ee5468bf5c34f226 .
meillo@85	654 With
meillo@100	655 .Sw --with-smtpservers
meillo@217	656 default SMTP servers could be specified
meillo@217	657 .Ci 128545e06224233b7e91fc4c83f8830252fe16c9 .
meillo@164	658 Both of them became irrelevant when the SMTP transport service was removed.
meillo@164	659 In mmh, all messages are handed over to
meillo@164	660 .Pn sendmail
meillo@164	661 for transportation.
meillo@164	662
meillo@72	663
meillo@74	664 .U3 "Backup Prefix
meillo@74	665 .P
meillo@76	666 The backup prefix is the string that was prepended to message
meillo@76	667 filenames to tag them as deleted.
meillo@173	668 By default it had been the comma character (`\fL,\fP').
meillo@78	669 In July 2000, Kimmo Suominen introduced
meillo@78	670 the configure option
meillo@78	671 .Sw --with-hash-backup
meillo@173	672 to change the default to the hash character `\f(CW#\fP'.
meillo@217	673 This choice was probably personal preference, but,
meillo@217	674 being related or not, words that start with the hash character
meillo@78	675 introduce a comment in the Unix shell.
meillo@72	676 Thus, the command line
meillo@72	677 .Cl "rm #13 #15
meillo@72	678 calls
meillo@72	679 .Pn rm
meillo@217	680 without arguments because the first hash character starts a comment
meillo@72	681 that reaches until the end of the line.
meillo@72	682 To delete the backup files,
meillo@72	683 .Cl "rm ./#13 ./#15"
meillo@72	684 needs to be used.
meillo@217	685 Thus, using the hash as backup prefix may be seen as a precaution
meillo@217	686 against backup loss.
meillo@78	687 .P
meillo@159	688 First, I removed the configure option but added the profile entry
meillo@217	689 .Pe Backup-Prefix ,
meillo@217	690 which allowed to specify an arbitrary string as backup prefix
meillo@217	691 .Ci 6c40d481d661d532dd527eaf34cebb6d3f8ed086 .
meillo@76	692 This change did not remove the choice but moved it to a location where
meillo@217	693 it suited better, in my eyes.
meillo@76	694 .P
meillo@217	695 Eventually however, the new trash folder concept
meillo@154	696 (cf. Sec.
meillo@154	697 .Cf trash-folder )
meillo@164	698 removed the need for the backup prefix completely.
meillo@78	699 .Ci 8edc5aaf86f9f77124664f6801bc6c6cdf258173
meillo@133	700 .Ci ca0b3e830b86700d9e5e31b1784de2bdcaf58fc5
meillo@133	701
meillo@76	702
meillo@76	703 .U3 "Editor and Pager
meillo@74	704 .P
meillo@74	705 The two configure options
meillo@74	706 .CW --with-editor=EDITOR
meillo@74	707 .CW --with-pager=PAGER
meillo@74	708 were used to specify the default editor and pager at configure time.
meillo@109	709 Doing so at configure time made sense in the eighties,
meillo@76	710 when the set of available editors and pagers varied much across
meillo@76	711 different systems.
meillo@89	712 Today, the situation is more homogeneous.
meillo@74	713 The programs
meillo@74	714 .Pn vi
meillo@74	715 and
meillo@74	716 .Pn more
meillo@76	717 can be expected to be available on every Unix system,
meillo@74	718 as they are specified by POSIX since two decades.
meillo@74	719 (The specifications for
meillo@74	720 .Pn vi
meillo@74	721 and
meillo@74	722 .Pn more
meillo@74	723 appeared in
meillo@74	724 .[
meillo@74	725 posix 1987
meillo@74	726 .]
meillo@74	727 and,
meillo@74	728 .[
meillo@74	729 posix 1992
meillo@74	730 .]
meillo@74	731 respectively.)
meillo@217	732 As a first step, these two tools were hard-coded as defaults
meillo@217	733 .Ci 5d43a99db70c12a673028c7758c20cbe3e13ef5f .
meillo@74	734 Not changed were the
meillo@74	735 .Pe editor
meillo@74	736 and
meillo@74	737 .Pe moreproc
meillo@76	738 profile entries, which allowed the user to override the system defaults.
meillo@217	739 Later, the concept was reworked again to respect the standard
meillo@217	740 environment variables
meillo@74	741 .Ev VISUAL
meillo@74	742 and
meillo@74	743 .Ev PAGER
meillo@76	744 if they are set.
meillo@74	745 Today, mmh determines the editor to use in the following order,
meillo@217	746 taking the first available and non-empty item
meillo@217	747 .Ci f85f4b7ae62e3d05a945dcd46ead51f0a2a89a9b :
meillo@171	748 .LI 1
meillo@74	749 Environment variable
meillo@74	750 .Ev MMHEDITOR
meillo@171	751 .LI 2
meillo@74	752 Profile entry
meillo@74	753 .Pe Editor
meillo@171	754 .LI 3
meillo@74	755 Environment variable
meillo@74	756 .Ev VISUAL
meillo@171	757 .LI 4
meillo@74	758 Environment variable
meillo@74	759 .Ev EDITOR
meillo@171	760 .LI 5
meillo@74	761 Command
meillo@74	762 .Pn vi .
meillo@171	763 .LP
meillo@217	764 The pager to use is determined in a similar order
meillo@217	765 .Ci 0c4214ea2aec6497d0d67b436bbee9bc1d225f1e :
meillo@171	766 .LI 1
meillo@74	767 Environment variable
meillo@74	768 .Ev MMHPAGER
meillo@171	769 .LI 2
meillo@74	770 Profile entry
meillo@74	771 .Pe Pager
meillo@74	772 (replaces
meillo@74	773 .Pe moreproc )
meillo@171	774 .LI 3
meillo@74	775 Environment variable
meillo@74	776 .Ev PAGER
meillo@171	777 .LI 4
meillo@74	778 Command
meillo@74	779 .Pn more .
meillo@171	780 .LP
meillo@76	781 By respecting the
meillo@74	782 .Ev VISUAL /\c
meillo@74	783 .Ev EDITOR
meillo@74	784 and
meillo@74	785 .Ev PAGER
meillo@76	786 environment variables,
meillo@217	787 the new behavior complies with the common style on Unix systems.
meillo@217	788 It is more uniform and clearer for users.
meillo@72	789
meillo@72	790
meillo@76	791 .U3 "ndbm
meillo@72	792 .P
meillo@74	793 .Pn slocal
meillo@217	794 used to depend on the database library
meillo@217	795 .I ndbm .
meillo@217	796 The database is used to store the
meillo@217	797 .Hd Message-ID
meillo@217	798 header field values of all messages delivered.
meillo@217	799 This enabled
meillo@74	800 .Pn slocal
meillo@74	801 to suppress delivering the same message to the same user twice.
meillo@217	802 This features was enabled by the
meillo@74	803 .Sw -suppressdup
meillo@217	804 switch.
meillo@74	805 .P
meillo@217	806 As a variety of versions of the database library exist,
meillo@78	807 .[
meillo@78	808 wolter unix incompat notes dbm
meillo@78	809 .]
meillo@217	810 complicated autoconf code was needed to detect them correctly.
meillo@181	811 Furthermore, the configure switches
meillo@74	812 .Sw --with-ndbm=ARG
meillo@74	813 and
meillo@74	814 .Sw --with-ndbmheader=ARG
meillo@74	815 were added to help with difficult setups that would
meillo@217	816 not be detected automatically or not correctly.
meillo@74	817 .P
meillo@74	818 By removing the suppress duplicates feature of
meillo@74	819 .Pn slocal ,
meillo@74	820 the dependency on
meillo@74	821 .I ndbm
meillo@217	822 vanished and 120 lines of complex autoconf code could be saved
meillo@217	823 .Ci ecd6d6a20cb7a1507e3a20d6c4cb3a1cf14c6bbf .
meillo@217	824 The change removed functionality but that is considered minor to the
meillo@217	825 improvement of dropping the dependency and the complex autoconf code.
meillo@225	826
meillo@72	827
meillo@217	828 .U3 "MH-E Support
meillo@72	829 .P
meillo@74	830 The configure option
meillo@74	831 .Sw --disable-mhe
meillo@217	832 was removed when the MH-E support was reworked.
meillo@217	833 MH-E is the Emacs front-end to MH.
meillo@76	834 It requires MH to provide minor additional functions.
meillo@76	835 The
meillo@76	836 .Sw --disable-mhe
meillo@217	837 configure option had switched off these extensions.
meillo@217	838 After removing the support for old versions of MH-E,
meillo@74	839 only the
meillo@74	840 .Sw -build
meillo@76	841 switches of
meillo@74	842 .Pn forw
meillo@74	843 and
meillo@74	844 .Pn repl
meillo@217	845 are left to be MH-E extensions.
meillo@76	846 They are now always built in because they add little code and complexity.
meillo@76	847 In consequence, the
meillo@74	848 .Sw --disable-mhe
meillo@76	849 configure option was removed
meillo@217	850 .Ci a7ce7b4a580d77b6c2c4d980812beb589aa4c643 .
meillo@217	851 Dropping the option also removed a variant of the code base
meillo@217	852 that would have needed to be tested.
meillo@217	853 This change was undertaken in January 2012 in nmh and
meillo@217	854 thereafter merged into mmh.
meillo@217	855
meillo@72	856
meillo@74	857 .U3 "Masquerading
meillo@72	858 .P
meillo@74	859 The configure option
meillo@74	860 .Sw --enable-masquerade
meillo@76	861 could take up to three arguments:
meillo@217	862 .Ar draft_from ,
meillo@217	863 .Ar mmailid ,
meillo@217	864 and
meillo@217	865 .Ar username_extension .
meillo@74	866 They activated different types of address masquerading.
meillo@74	867 All of them were implemented in the SMTP-speaking
meillo@74	868 .Pn post
meillo@217	869 command.
meillo@76	870 Address masquerading is an MTA's task and mmh does not cover
meillo@76	871 this field anymore.
meillo@76	872 Hence, true masquerading needs to be implemented in the external MTA.
meillo@74	873 .P
meillo@74	874 The
meillo@74	875 .I mmailid
meillo@74	876 masquerading type is the oldest one of the three and the only one
meillo@74	877 available in the original MH.
meillo@74	878 It provided a
meillo@74	879 .I username
meillo@74	880 to
meillo@74	881 .I fakeusername
meillo@217	882 mapping, based on the
meillo@217	883 .Fn passwd 's
meillo@217	884 GECOS field.
meillo@217	885 Nmh's man page
meillo@181	886 .Mp mh-tailor (5)
meillo@74	887 described the use case as being the following:
meillo@98	888 .QS
meillo@74	889 This is useful if you want the messages you send to always
meillo@74	890 appear to come from the name of an MTA alias rather than your
meillo@74	891 actual account name. For instance, many organizations set up
meillo@74	892 `First.Last' sendmail aliases for all users. If this is
meillo@74	893 the case, the GECOS field for each user should look like:
meillo@74	894 ``First [Middle] Last <First.Last>''
meillo@98	895 .QE
meillo@74	896 .P
meillo@74	897 As mmh sends outgoing mail via the local MTA only,
meillo@76	898 the best location to do such global rewrites is there.
meillo@74	899 Besides, the MTA is conceptionally the right location because it
meillo@74	900 does the reverse mapping for incoming mail (aliasing), too.
meillo@181	901 Furthermore, masquerading set up there is readily available for all
meillo@74	902 mail software on the system.
meillo@76	903 Hence, mmailid masquerading was removed.
meillo@74	904 .Ci 0836c8000ccb34b59410ef1c15b1b7feac70ce5f
meillo@74	905 .P
meillo@74	906 The
meillo@74	907 .I username_extension
meillo@76	908 masquerading type did not replace the username but would append a suffix,
meillo@76	909 specified by the
meillo@74	910 .Ev USERNAME_EXTENSION
meillo@76	911 environment variable, to it.
meillo@76	912 This provided support for the
meillo@74	913 .I user-extension
meillo@217	914 feature of qmail
meillo@217	915 .[ [
meillo@217	916 sill qmail handbook
meillo@217	917 .], p. 141]
meillo@217	918 and the similar
meillo@74	919 .I "plussed user
meillo@217	920 processing of Sendmail.
meillo@217	921 .[ [
meillo@217	922 sendmail costales
meillo@217	923 .], p. 476]
meillo@217	924 The decision to remove this username_extension masquerading
meillo@217	925 was motivated by the fact that
meillo@74	926 .Pn spost
meillo@217	927 had not supported it yet.
meillo@217	928 Username extensions can be used in mmh, but less convenient.
meillo@225	929 .\" XXX In the format file: %(getenv USERNAME_EXTENSION)
meillo@217	930 .Ci 2abae0bfd0ad5bf898461e50aa4b466d641f23d9
meillo@74	931 .P
meillo@74	932 The
meillo@74	933 .I draft_from
meillo@74	934 masquerading type instructed
meillo@74	935 .Pn post
meillo@84	936 to use the value of the
meillo@84	937 .Hd From
meillo@84	938 header field as SMTP envelope sender.
meillo@76	939 Sender addresses could be replaced completely.
meillo@76	940 Mmh offers a kind of masquerading similar in effect, but
meillo@74	941 with technical differences.
meillo@76	942 As mmh does not transfer messages itself, the local MTA has final control
meillo@217	943 over the sender's address.
meillo@217	944 Any masquerading mmh introduces may be reverted by the MTA.
meillo@76	945 In times of pedantic spam checking, an MTA will take care to use
meillo@76	946 sensible envelope sender addresses to keep its own reputation up.
meillo@84	947 Nonetheless, the MUA can set the
meillo@84	948 .Hd From
meillo@217	949 header field and thereby propose a sender address to the MTA.
meillo@74	950 The MTA may then decide to take that one or generate the canonical sender
meillo@74	951 address for use as envelope sender address.
meillo@217	952 .Ci b14ea6073f77b4359aaf3fddd0e105989db9
meillo@74	953 .P
meillo@74	954 In mmh, the MTA will always extract the recipient and sender from the
meillo@84	955 message header (\c
meillo@74	956 .Pn sendmail 's
meillo@74	957 .Sw -t
meillo@74	958 switch).
meillo@84	959 The
meillo@84	960 .Hd From
meillo@84	961 header field of the draft may be set arbitrary by the user.
meillo@74	962 If it is missing, the canonical sender address will be generated by the MTA.
meillo@74	963
meillo@74	964 .U3 "Remaining Options
meillo@74	965 .P
meillo@74	966 Two configure options remain in mmh.
meillo@74	967 One is the locking method to use:
meillo@74	968 .Sw --with-locking=[dot\|fcntl\|flock\|lockf] .
meillo@217	969 The idea of removing all methods except the portable
meillo@217	970 .I "dot locking
meillo@76	971 and having that one as the default is appealing, but this change
meillo@76	972 requires deeper technical investigation into the topic.
meillo@76	973 The other option,
meillo@74	974 .Sw --enable-debug ,
meillo@217	975 compiles the programs with debugging symbols.
meillo@74	976 This option is likely to stay.
meillo@72	977
meillo@72	978
meillo@58	979
meillo@63	980
meillo@100	981 .H2 "Command Line Switches
meillo@58	982 .P
meillo@217	983 The command line switches of MH tools follow a style similar to
meillo@217	984 the X Window System style.
meillo@217	985 The switches consist of a single dash (`\fL-\fP') followed by a word.
meillo@217	986 For example
meillo@217	987 .Cl -truncate .
meillo@212	988 To ease typing, the word can be abbreviated, given the remaining
meillo@217	989 prefix is unambiguous.
meillo@212	990 If no other switch starts with the letter `t', then any of
meillo@212	991 .Cl "-truncate" ,
meillo@212	992 .Cl "-trunc" ,
meillo@212	993 .Cl "-tr" ,
meillo@212	994 and
meillo@212	995 .Cl "-t
meillo@212	996 is equal.
meillo@212	997 As a result, switches can neither be grouped (as in
meillo@212	998 .Cl "ls -ltr" )
meillo@212	999 nor can switch arguments be appended directly to the switch (as in
meillo@212	1000 .Cl "sendmail -q30m" ).
meillo@212	1001 Many switches have negating counter-parts, which start with `no'.
meillo@212	1002 For example
meillo@212	1003 .Cl "-notruncate
meillo@212	1004 inverts the
meillo@212	1005 .Cl "-truncate
meillo@212	1006 switch.
meillo@212	1007 They exist to override the effect of default switches in the profile.
meillo@93	1008 Every program in mmh has two generic switches:
meillo@93	1009 .Sw -help ,
meillo@93	1010 to print a short message on how to use the program, and
meillo@159	1011 .Sw -Version
meillo@164	1012 (with capital `V'), to tell what version of mmh the program belongs to.
meillo@93	1013 .P
meillo@93	1014 Switches change the behavior of programs.
meillo@93	1015 Programs that do one thing in one way require no switches.
meillo@93	1016 In most cases, doing something in exactly one way is too limiting.
meillo@217	1017 If one task should be accomplished in various ways,
meillo@217	1018 switches are a good approach to alter the behavior of a program.
meillo@93	1019 Changing the behavior of programs provides flexibility and customization
meillo@217	1020 to users, but at the same time it complicates the code,
meillo@217	1021 the documentation, and the usage of the program.
meillo@93	1022 Therefore, the number of switches should be kept small.
meillo@217	1023 A small set of well-chosen switches is best.
meillo@217	1024 Usually, the number of switches increases over time.
meillo@93	1025 Already in 1985, Rose and Romine have identified this as a major
meillo@93	1026 problem of MH:
meillo@93	1027 .[ [
meillo@93	1028 rose romine real work
meillo@93	1029 .], p. 12]
meillo@98	1030 .QS
meillo@93	1031 A complaint often heard about systems which undergo substantial development
meillo@93	1032 by many people over a number of years, is that more and more options are
meillo@93	1033 introduced which add little to the functionality but greatly increase the
meillo@93	1034 amount of information a user needs to know in order to get useful work done.
meillo@93	1035 This is usually referred to as creeping featurism.
meillo@93	1036 .QP
meillo@93	1037 Unfortunately MH, having undergone six years of off-and-on development by
meillo@93	1038 ten or so well-meaning programmers (the present authors included),
meillo@93	1039 suffers mightily from this.
meillo@98	1040 .QE
meillo@93	1041 .P
meillo@217	1042 Being reluctant to adding new switches (or \fIoptions\fP,
meillo@217	1043 as Rose and Romine call them) is one part of a counter-action,
meillo@97	1044 the other part is removing hardly used switches.
meillo@217	1045 Nmh's tools have lots of switches already implemented.
meillo@217	1046 Hence, cleaning up by removing some of them was the more important part
meillo@97	1047 of the counter-action.
meillo@93	1048 Removing existing functionality is always difficult because it
meillo@93	1049 breaks programs that use these functions.
meillo@93	1050 Also, for every obsolete feature, there'll always be someone who still
meillo@93	1051 uses it and thus opposes its removal.
meillo@93	1052 This puts the developer into the position,
meillo@93	1053 where sensible improvements to style are regarded as destructive acts.
meillo@97	1054 Yet, living with the featurism is far worse, in my eyes, because
meillo@97	1055 future needs will demand adding further features,
meillo@93	1056 worsening the situation more and more.
meillo@93	1057 Rose and Romine added in a footnote,
meillo@93	1058 ``[...]
meillo@93	1059 .Pn send
meillo@217	1060 will no doubt acquire an endless number of switches in the years to come''
meillo@217	1061 .[ [
meillo@217	1062 rose romine real work
meillo@217	1063 .], p. 12].
meillo@97	1064 Although clearly humorous, the comment points to the nature of the problem.
meillo@97	1065 Refusing to add any new switches would encounter the problem at its root,
meillo@97	1066 but this is not practical.
meillo@97	1067 New needs will require new switches and it would be unwise to block
meillo@97	1068 them strictly.
meillo@97	1069 Nevertheless, removing obsolete switches still is an effective approach
meillo@97	1070 to deal with the problem.
meillo@97	1071 Working on an experimental branch without an established user base,
meillo@97	1072 eased my work because I did not offend users when I removed existing
meillo@110	1073 functions.
meillo@93	1074 .P
meillo@93	1075 Rose and Romine counted 24 visible and 9 more hidden switches for
meillo@93	1076 .Pn send .
meillo@97	1077 In nmh, they increased up to 32 visible and 12 hidden ones.
meillo@182	1078 At the time of writing, no more than 4 visible switches and 1 hidden switch
meillo@97	1079 have remained in mmh's
meillo@97	1080 .Pn send .
meillo@217	1081 These numbers include the two generic switches,
meillo@182	1082 .Sw -help
meillo@182	1083 and
meillo@183	1084 .Sw -Version .
meillo@217	1085 .P
meillo@183	1086 Hidden switches are ones not documented.
meillo@183	1087 In mmh, 12 tools have hidden switches.
meillo@183	1088 9 of them are
meillo@183	1089 .Sw -debug
meillo@183	1090 switches, the other 6 provide special interfaces for internal use.
meillo@93	1091 .P
meillo@217	1092 The following figure displays the number of switches for each of the tools
meillo@159	1093 that is available in both nmh and mmh.
meillo@100	1094 The tools are sorted by the number of switches they had in nmh.
meillo@217	1095 Both visible and hidden switches were counted,
meillo@97	1096 but not the generic help and version switches.
meillo@93	1097 Whereas in the beginning of the project, the average tool had 11 switches,
meillo@93	1098 now it has no more than 5 \(en only half as many.
meillo@93	1099 If the `no' switches and similar inverse variant are folded onto
meillo@100	1100 their counter-parts, the average tool had 8 switches in pre-mmh times and
meillo@100	1101 has 4 now.
meillo@93	1102 The total number of functional switches in mmh dropped from 465
meillo@182	1103 to 233.
meillo@58	1104
meillo@93	1105 .KS
meillo@93	1106 .in 1c
meillo@93	1107 .so input/switches.grap
meillo@93	1108 .KE
meillo@58	1109
meillo@93	1110 .P
meillo@93	1111 A part of the switches vanished after functions were removed.
meillo@93	1112 This was the case for network mail transfer, for instance.
meillo@97	1113 Sometimes, however, the work flow was the other way:
meillo@97	1114 I looked through the
meillo@97	1115 .Mp mh-chart (7)
meillo@97	1116 man page to identify the tools with apparently too many switches.
meillo@217	1117 Then I considered the benefit of each switch by examining
meillo@217	1118 the tool's man page and source code, aided by literature research
meillo@217	1119 and testing.
meillo@97	1120
meillo@58	1121
meillo@93	1122 .U3 "Draft Folder Facility
meillo@93	1123 .P
meillo@100	1124 A change early in the project was the complete transition from
meillo@217	1125 the single draft message to the draft folder facility
meillo@217	1126 .Ci 337338b404931f06f0db2119c9e145e8ca5a9860 .
meillo@164	1127 .\" XXX ref to section ...
meillo@109	1128 The draft folder facility was introduced in the mid-eighties, when
meillo@100	1129 Rose and Romine called it a ``relatively new feature''.
meillo@93	1130 .[
meillo@93	1131 rose romine real work
meillo@93	1132 .]
meillo@217	1133 Since then, the facility was included, inactive by default.
meillo@217	1134 By making it permanently active and by related rework of the tools, the
meillo@93	1135 .Sw -[no]draftfolder ,
meillo@93	1136 and
meillo@93	1137 .Sw -draftmessage
meillo@217	1138 switches could be removed from
meillo@93	1139 .Pn comp ,
meillo@93	1140 .Pn repl ,
meillo@93	1141 .Pn forw ,
meillo@93	1142 .Pn dist ,
meillo@93	1143 .Pn whatnow ,
meillo@93	1144 and
meillo@217	1145 .Pn send
meillo@217	1146 .Ci 337338b404931f06f0db2119c9e145e8ca5a9860 .
meillo@217	1147 The only flexibility lost with this change is having multiple
meillo@97	1148 draft folders within one profile.
meillo@97	1149 I consider this a theoretical problem only.
meillo@159	1150 At the same time, the
meillo@93	1151 .Sw -draft
meillo@93	1152 switch of
meillo@93	1153 .Pn anno ,
meillo@93	1154 .Pn refile ,
meillo@93	1155 and
meillo@93	1156 .Pn send
meillo@93	1157 was removed.
meillo@159	1158 The special treatment of \fIthe\fP draft message became irrelevant after
meillo@217	1159 the rework of the draft system
meillo@159	1160 (cf. Sec.
meillo@217	1161 .Cf draft-folder ).
meillo@164	1162 Furthermore,
meillo@95	1163 .Pn comp
meillo@164	1164 no longer needs a
meillo@95	1165 .Sw -file
meillo@164	1166 switch as the draft folder facility together with the
meillo@95	1167 .Sw -form
meillo@164	1168 switch are sufficient.
meillo@93	1169
meillo@95	1170
meillo@102	1171 .U3 "In Place Editing
meillo@93	1172 .P
meillo@93	1173 .Pn anno
meillo@93	1174 had the switches
meillo@93	1175 .Sw -[no]inplace
meillo@100	1176 to either annotate the message in place and thus preserve hard links,
meillo@217	1177 or annotate a copy to replace the original message.
meillo@217	1178 The latter approach broke hard links.
meillo@97	1179 Following the assumption that linked messages should truly be the
meillo@217	1180 same message and annotating it should not break the link, the
meillo@93	1181 .Sw -[no]inplace
meillo@93	1182 switches were removed and the previous default
meillo@93	1183 .Sw -inplace
meillo@217	1184 was made the definitive behavior
meillo@217	1185 .Ci c8195849d2e366c569271abb0f5f60f4ebf0b4d0 .
meillo@93	1186 The
meillo@93	1187 .Sw -[no]inplace
meillo@93	1188 switches of
meillo@93	1189 .Pn repl ,
meillo@93	1190 .Pn forw ,
meillo@93	1191 and
meillo@93	1192 .Pn dist
meillo@217	1193 could be removed, as well, as they were simply passed through to
meillo@93	1194 .Pn anno .
meillo@93	1195 .P
meillo@93	1196 .Pn burst
meillo@93	1197 also had
meillo@93	1198 .Sw -[no]inplace
meillo@217	1199 switches, but with a different meaning.
meillo@95	1200 With
meillo@95	1201 .Sw -inplace ,
meillo@95	1202 the digest had been replaced by the table of contents (i.e. the
meillo@110	1203 introduction text) and the burst messages were placed right
meillo@95	1204 after this message, renumbering all following messages.
meillo@95	1205 Also, any trailing text of the digest was lost, though,
meillo@95	1206 in practice, it usually consists of an end-of-digest marker only.
meillo@217	1207 Nonetheless, this behavior appeared less elegant than the
meillo@95	1208 .Sw -noinplace
meillo@95	1209 behavior, which already had been the default.
meillo@95	1210 Nmh's
meillo@95	1211 .Mp burst (1)
meillo@95	1212 man page reads:
meillo@98	1213 .QS
meillo@164	1214 If
meillo@164	1215 .Sw -noinplace
meillo@164	1216 is given, each digest is preserved, no table
meillo@93	1217 of contents is produced, and the messages contained within
meillo@93	1218 the digest are placed at the end of the folder. Other messages
meillo@93	1219 are not tampered with in any way.
meillo@98	1220 .QE
meillo@95	1221 .LP
meillo@93	1222 The decision to drop the
meillo@93	1223 .Sw -inplace
meillo@95	1224 behavior was supported by the code complexity and the possible data loss
meillo@95	1225 it caused.
meillo@93	1226 .Sw -noinplace
meillo@95	1227 was chosen to be the definitive behavior.
meillo@97	1228 .Ci 68a686adeb39223a5e1ad35e4a24890ec053679d
meillo@93	1229
meillo@95	1230
meillo@95	1231 .U3 "Forms and Format Strings
meillo@93	1232 .P
meillo@95	1233 Historically, the tools that had
meillo@95	1234 .Sw -form
meillo@95	1235 switches to supply a form file had
meillo@95	1236 .Sw -format
meillo@95	1237 switches as well to supply the contents of a form file as a string
meillo@95	1238 on the command line directly.
meillo@95	1239 In consequence, the following two lines equaled:
meillo@95	1240 .VS
meillo@95	1241 scan -form scan.mailx
meillo@217	1242 scan -format "`cat /path/to/scan.mailx`"
meillo@95	1243 VE
meillo@95	1244 The
meillo@95	1245 .Sw -format
meillo@95	1246 switches were dropped in favor for extending the
meillo@95	1247 .Sw -form
meillo@217	1248 switches
meillo@217	1249 .Ci f51956be123db66b00138f80464d06f030dbb88d .
meillo@217	1250 If their argument starts with an equal sign (`\fL=\fP'),
meillo@95	1251 then the rest of the argument is taken as a format string,
meillo@95	1252 otherwise the arguments is treated as the name of a format file.
meillo@95	1253 Thus, now the following two lines equal:
meillo@95	1254 .VS
meillo@95	1255 scan -form scan.mailx
meillo@217	1256 scan -form "=`cat /path/to/scan.mailx`"
meillo@95	1257 VE
meillo@95	1258 This rework removed the prefix collision between
meillo@95	1259 .Sw -form
meillo@95	1260 and
meillo@95	1261 .Sw -format .
meillo@217	1262 Typing `\fL-fo\fP' is sufficient to specify form file or format string.
meillo@95	1263 .P
meillo@95	1264 The different meaning of
meillo@95	1265 .Sw -format
meillo@95	1266 for
meillo@217	1267 .Pn forw
meillo@217	1268 and
meillo@95	1269 .Pn repl
meillo@95	1270 was removed in mmh.
meillo@95	1271 .Pn forw
meillo@95	1272 was completely switched to MIME-type forwarding, thus removing the
meillo@217	1273 .Sw -[no]format
meillo@217	1274 .Ci 6e271608b7b9c23771523f88d23a4d3593010cf1 .
meillo@95	1275 For
meillo@95	1276 .Pn repl ,
meillo@95	1277 the
meillo@95	1278 .Sw -[no]format
meillo@95	1279 switches were reworked to
meillo@95	1280 .Sw -[no]filter
meillo@217	1281 switches
meillo@217	1282 .Ci 67411b1f95d6ec987b4c732459e1ba8a8ac192c6 .
meillo@95	1283 The
meillo@95	1284 .Sw -format
meillo@95	1285 switches of
meillo@95	1286 .Pn send
meillo@95	1287 and
meillo@95	1288 .Pn post ,
meillo@217	1289 which had a third meaning, were removed likewise
meillo@217	1290 .Ci f3cb7cde0e6f10451b6848678d95860d512224b9 .
meillo@95	1291 Eventually, the ambiguity of the
meillo@95	1292 .Sw -format
meillo@217	1293 switches is resolved by not having such switches anymore in mmh.
meillo@95	1294
meillo@95	1295
meillo@95	1296 .U3 "MIME Tools
meillo@95	1297 .P
meillo@217	1298 The MIME tools, which once were part of
meillo@100	1299 .Pn mhn
meillo@164	1300 (whatever that stood for),
meillo@95	1301 had several switches that added little practical value to the programs.
meillo@95	1302 The
meillo@95	1303 .Sw -[no]realsize
meillo@95	1304 switches of
meillo@95	1305 .Pn mhbuild
meillo@95	1306 and
meillo@95	1307 .Pn mhlist
meillo@217	1308 were removed
meillo@217	1309 .Ci 8d8f1c3abc586c005c904e52c4adbfe694d2201c .
meillo@217	1310 Real size calculations are done always now because nmh's
meillo@159	1311 .Mp mhbuild (1)
meillo@217	1312 man page states that
meillo@217	1313 ``This provides an accurate count at the expense of a small delay''
meillo@217	1314 with the small delay not being noticable on modern systems.
meillo@95	1315 .P
meillo@95	1316 The
meillo@95	1317 .Sw -[no]check
meillo@95	1318 switches were removed together with the support for
meillo@95	1319 .Hd Content-MD5
meillo@217	1320 header fields [RFC\\|1864]
meillo@154	1321 (cf. Sec.
meillo@154	1322 .Cf content-md5 )
meillo@217	1323 .Ci 31dc797eb5178970d68962ca8939da3fd9a8efda .
meillo@95	1324 .P
meillo@95	1325 The
meillo@95	1326 .Sw -[no]ebcdicsafe
meillo@95	1327 and
meillo@95	1328 .Sw -[no]rfc934mode
meillo@95	1329 switches of
meillo@95	1330 .Pn mhbuild
meillo@217	1331 were removed because they are considered obsolete
meillo@97	1332 .Ci 01a3480928da485b4d6109d36d751dfa71799d58
meillo@217	1333 .Ci 3363e2624dce0eb8164cf8b3f1ab385c8ff72e88 .
meillo@95	1334 .P
meillo@95	1335 Content caching of external MIME parts, activated with the
meillo@95	1336 .Sw -rcache
meillo@95	1337 and
meillo@95	1338 .Sw -wcache
meillo@217	1339 switches was completely removed
meillo@217	1340 .Ci d1fefd9f614e4dc3cda16da6c69133c1b2005269 .
meillo@97	1341 External MIME parts are rare today, having a caching facility
meillo@159	1342 for them appears to be unnecessary.
meillo@95	1343 .P
meillo@95	1344 In pre-MIME times,
meillo@95	1345 .Pn mhl
meillo@95	1346 had covered many tasks that are part of MIME handling today.
meillo@95	1347 Therefore,
meillo@95	1348 .Pn mhl
meillo@95	1349 could be simplified to a large extend, reducing the number of its
meillo@217	1350 switches from 21 to 6
meillo@97	1351 .Ci 350ad6d3542a07639213cf2a4fe524e829c1e7b6
meillo@217	1352 .Ci 0e46503be3c855bddaeae3843e1b659279c35d70 .
meillo@95	1353
meillo@95	1354
meillo@95	1355
meillo@95	1356
meillo@95	1357 .U3 "Header Printing
meillo@95	1358 .P
meillo@95	1359 .Pn folder 's
meillo@95	1360 data output is self-explaining enough that
meillo@159	1361 displaying the header line makes little sense.
meillo@95	1362 Hence, the
meillo@95	1363 .Sw -[no]header
meillo@217	1364 switch was removed and headers are never printed
meillo@217	1365 .Ci 601cc73d1fa05ce96faa728f036d6c51b91701c7 .
meillo@95	1366 .P
meillo@95	1367 In
meillo@95	1368 .Pn mhlist ,
meillo@95	1369 the
meillo@95	1370 .Sw -[no]header
meillo@217	1371 switches were removed, as well
meillo@217	1372 .Ci b24f96523aaf60e44e04a3ffb1d22e69a13a602f .
meillo@217	1373 In this case, the headers are printed always because the output
meillo@217	1374 is not self-explaining.
meillo@95	1375 .P
meillo@95	1376 .Pn scan
meillo@95	1377 also had
meillo@95	1378 .Sw -[no]header
meillo@95	1379 switches.
meillo@217	1380 Printing this header had been sensible until the introduction of
meillo@217	1381 format strings made it impossible to display column headings.
meillo@95	1382 Only the folder name and the current date remained to be printed.
meillo@217	1383 As this information can be perfectly generated with
meillo@95	1384 .Pn folder
meillo@95	1385 and
meillo@95	1386 .Pn date ,
meillo@217	1387 the switches were removed
meillo@217	1388 .Ci c477dc5d1d03fa6d9a8ab3dd3508c63cbddc044e .
meillo@95	1389 .P
meillo@95	1390 By removing all
meillo@95	1391 .Sw -header
meillo@95	1392 switches, the collision with
meillo@95	1393 .Sw -help
meillo@95	1394 on the first two letters was resolved.
meillo@95	1395 Currently,
meillo@95	1396 .Sw -h
meillo@95	1397 evaluates to
meillo@95	1398 .Sw -help
meillo@95	1399 for all tools of mmh.
meillo@95	1400
meillo@95	1401
meillo@139	1402 .U3 "Suppressing Edits or the Invocation of the WhatNow Shell
meillo@95	1403 .P
meillo@95	1404 The
meillo@95	1405 .Sw -noedit
meillo@100	1406 switch of
meillo@95	1407 .Pn comp ,
meillo@95	1408 .Pn repl ,
meillo@95	1409 .Pn forw ,
meillo@95	1410 .Pn dist ,
meillo@95	1411 and
meillo@95	1412 .Pn whatnow
meillo@217	1413 was removed and replaced by specifying
meillo@95	1414 .Sw -editor
meillo@217	1415 with an empty argument
meillo@217	1416 .Ci 75fca31a5b9d5c1a99c74ab14c94438d8852fba9 .
meillo@95	1417 (Specifying
meillo@159	1418 .Cl "-editor /bin/true
meillo@217	1419 is nearly the same. It differs only in setting the previous editor.)
meillo@95	1420 .P
meillo@95	1421 The more important change is the removal of the
meillo@95	1422 .Sw -nowhatnowproc
meillo@217	1423 switch
meillo@217	1424 .Ci ee4f43cf2ef0084ec698e4e87159a94c01940622 .
meillo@217	1425 This switch had once introduced an awkward behavior,
meillo@217	1426 as explained in nmh's man page for
meillo@95	1427 .Mp comp (1):
meillo@98	1428 .QS
meillo@164	1429 The
meillo@164	1430 .Sw -editor
meillo@164	1431 .Ar editor
meillo@164	1432 switch indicates the editor to use for
meillo@164	1433 the initial edit. Upon exiting from the editor,
meillo@164	1434 .Pn comp
meillo@164	1435 will invoke the
meillo@164	1436 .Pn whatnow
meillo@164	1437 program. See
meillo@164	1438 .Mp whatnow (1)
meillo@164	1439 for a discussion of available options.
meillo@164	1440 The invocation of this program can be
meillo@164	1441 inhibited by using the
meillo@164	1442 .Sw -nowhatnowproc
meillo@164	1443 switch. (In truth of fact, it is the
meillo@164	1444 .Pn whatnow
meillo@164	1445 program which starts the initial edit.
meillo@164	1446 Hence,
meillo@164	1447 .Sw -nowhatnowproc
meillo@164	1448 will prevent any edit from occurring.)
meillo@98	1449 .QE
meillo@95	1450 .P
meillo@95	1451 Effectively, the
meillo@95	1452 .Sw -nowhatnowproc
meillo@217	1453 switch caused only only a draft message to be created.
meillo@95	1454 As
meillo@159	1455 .Cl "-whatnowproc /bin/true
meillo@217	1456 does the same, the
meillo@95	1457 .Sw -nowhatnowproc
meillo@95	1458 switch was removed for being redundant.
meillo@95	1459
meillo@95	1460
meillo@95	1461
meillo@95	1462 .U3 "Various
meillo@95	1463 .BU
meillo@139	1464 With the removal of MMDF maildrop format support,
meillo@139	1465 .Pn packf
meillo@139	1466 and
meillo@139	1467 .Pn rcvpack
meillo@139	1468 no longer needed their
meillo@139	1469 .Sw -mbox
meillo@139	1470 and
meillo@139	1471 .Sw -mmdf
meillo@139	1472 switches.
meillo@217	1473 The behavior of
meillo@139	1474 .Sw -mbox
meillo@217	1475 is the sole behavior now
meillo@217	1476 .Ci 3916ab66ad5d183705ac12357621ea8661afd3c0 .
meillo@171	1477 Further rework in both tools made the
meillo@139	1478 .Sw -file
meillo@217	1479 switch unnecessary
meillo@217	1480 .Ci ca1023716d4c2ab890696f3e41fa0d94267a940e .
meillo@139	1481
meillo@139	1482 .BU
meillo@217	1483 Mmh's tools do no longer clear the screen (\c
meillo@139	1484 .Pn scan 's
meillo@139	1485 and
meillo@139	1486 .Pn mhl 's
meillo@139	1487 .Sw -[no]clear
meillo@139	1488 switches
meillo@139	1489 .Ci e57b17343dcb3ff373ef4dd089fbe778f0c7c270
meillo@139	1490 .Ci 943765e7ac5693ae177fd8d2b5a2440e53ce816e ).
meillo@217	1491 Neither does
meillo@139	1492 .Pn mhl
meillo@139	1493 ring the bell (\c
meillo@139	1494 .Sw -[no]bell
meillo@139	1495 .Ci e11983f44e59d8de236affa5b0d0d3067c192e24 )
meillo@217	1496 nor does it page the output itself (\c
meillo@139	1497 .Sw -length
meillo@139	1498 .Ci 5b9d883db0318ed2b84bb82dee880d7381f99188 ).
meillo@159	1499 .\" XXX Ref
meillo@139	1500 Generally, the pager to use is no longer specified with the
meillo@139	1501 .Sw -[no]moreproc
meillo@139	1502 command line switches for
meillo@139	1503 .Pn mhl
meillo@139	1504 and
meillo@139	1505 .Pn show /\c
meillo@217	1506 .Pn mhshow
meillo@217	1507 .Ci 39e87a75b5c2d3572ec72e717720b44af291e88a .
meillo@139	1508
meillo@139	1509 .BU
meillo@96	1510 In order to avoid prefix collisions among switch names, the
meillo@95	1511 .Sw -version
meillo@95	1512 switch was renamed to
meillo@95	1513 .Sw -Version
meillo@217	1514 (with capital `V')
meillo@217	1515 .Ci 32b2354dbaf4bf934936eb5b102a4a3d2fdd209a .
meillo@95	1516 Every program has the
meillo@95	1517 .Sw -version
meillo@95	1518 switch but its first three letters collided with the
meillo@95	1519 .Sw -verbose
meillo@95	1520 switch, present in many programs.
meillo@95	1521 The rename solved this problem once for all.
meillo@95	1522 Although this rename breaks a basic interface, having the
meillo@95	1523 .Sw -V
meillo@95	1524 abbreviation to display the version information, isn't all too bad.
meillo@139	1525
meillo@95	1526 .BU
meillo@95	1527 .Sw -[no]preserve
meillo@95	1528 of
meillo@95	1529 .Pn refile
meillo@168	1530 was removed
meillo@168	1531 .Ci 8edc5aaf86f9f77124664f6801bc6c6cdf258173
meillo@168	1532 because what use was it anyway?
meillo@168	1533 Quoting nmh's man page
meillo@165	1534 .Mp refile (1):
meillo@98	1535 .QS
meillo@95	1536 Normally when a message is refiled, for each destination
meillo@95	1537 folder it is assigned the number which is one above the current
meillo@95	1538 highest message number in that folder. Use of the
meillo@164	1539 .Sw -preserv
meillo@164	1540 [sic!] switch will override this message renaming, and try
meillo@95	1541 to preserve the number of the message. If a conflict for a
meillo@164	1542 particular folder occurs when using the
meillo@164	1543 .Sw -preserve
meillo@164	1544 switch, then
meillo@164	1545 .Pn refile
meillo@164	1546 will use the next available message number which
meillo@95	1547 is above the message number you wish to preserve.
meillo@98	1548 .QE
meillo@139	1549
meillo@95	1550 .BU
meillo@95	1551 The removal of the
meillo@95	1552 .Sw -[no]reverse
meillo@95	1553 switches of
meillo@95	1554 .Pn scan
meillo@97	1555 .Ci 8edc5aaf86f9f77124664f6801bc6c6cdf258173
meillo@217	1556 is a bug fix.
meillo@217	1557 This is supported by the comments
meillo@95	1558 ``\-[no]reverse under #ifdef BERK (I really HATE this)''
meillo@95	1559 by Rose and
meillo@95	1560 ``Lists messages in reverse order with the `\-reverse' switch.
meillo@217	1561 This should be considered a bug'' by Romine in the changelogs.
meillo@217	1562 The question remains why neither Rose nor Romine have fixed this
meillo@217	1563 bug in the eighties when they wrote these comments.
meillo@93	1564
meillo@93	1565
meillo@93	1566
meillo@102	1567
meillo@102	1568
meillo@95	1569
meillo@95	1570
meillo@133	1571 .\" --------------------------------------------------------------
meillo@74	1572 .H1 "Modernizing
meillo@102	1573 .P
meillo@164	1574 In the more than thirty years of MH's existence, its code base was
meillo@159	1575 increasingly extended.
meillo@118	1576 New features entered the project and became alternatives to the
meillo@118	1577 existing behavior.
meillo@217	1578 Relics from several decades have gathered in the code base
meillo@118	1579 but seldom obsolete features were dropped.
meillo@118	1580 This section describes the removing of old code
meillo@118	1581 and the modernizing of the default setup.
meillo@118	1582 It focuses on the functional aspect only;
meillo@154	1583 the non-functional aspects of code style are discussed in Sec.
meillo@154	1584 .Cf code-style .
meillo@58	1585
meillo@58	1586
meillo@212	1587 .H2 "Code Relics
meillo@0	1588 .P
meillo@217	1589 My position regarding the removal of obsolete code
meillo@159	1590 is much more revolutional than the nmh community appreciates.
meillo@217	1591 Working on an experimental version, I was able to quickly drop
meillo@217	1592 functionality that I considered ancient.
meillo@104	1593 The need for consensus with peers would have slowed this process down.
meillo@104	1594 Without the need to justify my decisions, I was able to rush forward.
meillo@217	1595 .P
meillo@110	1596 In December 2011, Paul Vixie motivated the nmh developers to just
meillo@104	1597 do the work:
meillo@104	1598 .[
meillo@104	1599 paul vixie edginess nmh-workers
meillo@104	1600 .]
meillo@104	1601 .QS
meillo@104	1602 let's stop walking on egg shells with this code base. there's no need to
meillo@104	1603 discuss whether to keep using vfork, just note in [sic!] passing, [...]
meillo@104	1604 we don't need a separate branch for removing vmh
meillo@104	1605 or ridding ourselves of #ifdef's or removing posix replacement functions
meillo@164	1606 or depending on pure ansi/posix ``libc''.
meillo@104	1607 .QP
meillo@164	1608 these things should each be a day or two of work and the ``main branch''
meillo@104	1609 should just be modern. [...]
meillo@104	1610 let's push forward, aggressively.
meillo@104	1611 .QE
meillo@104	1612 .LP
meillo@104	1613 I did so already in the months before.
meillo@104	1614 I pushed forward.
meillo@104	1615 I simply dropped the cruft.
meillo@104	1616 .P
meillo@104	1617 The decision to drop a feature was based on literature research and
meillo@159	1618 careful thinking, but whether having had contact with this particular
meillo@104	1619 feature within my own computer life served as a rule of thumb.
meillo@159	1620 I explained my reasons in the commit messages
meillo@109	1621 in the version control system.
meillo@104	1622 Hence, others can comprehend my view and argue for undoing the change
meillo@104	1623 if I have missed an important aspect.
meillo@109	1624 I was quick in dropping parts.
meillo@179	1625 I rather include falsely dropped parts again, than going at a slower pace.
meillo@179	1626 Mmh is experimental work; it requires tough decisions.
meillo@12	1627
meillo@102	1628
meillo@217	1629 .U3 "Process Forking
meillo@12	1630 .P
meillo@109	1631 Being a tool chest, MH creates many processes.
meillo@104	1632 In earlier times
meillo@104	1633 .Fu fork()
meillo@104	1634 had been an expensive system call, because the process's image needed
meillo@159	1635 to be completely duplicated at once.
meillo@200	1636 This expensive work was especially unnecessary in the commonly occurring
meillo@159	1637 case wherein the image is replaced by a call to
meillo@104	1638 .Fu exec()
meillo@104	1639 right after having forked the child process.
meillo@104	1640 The
meillo@104	1641 .Fu vfork()
meillo@104	1642 system call was invented to speed up this particular case.
meillo@104	1643 It completely omits the duplication of the image.
meillo@104	1644 On old systems this resulted in significant speed ups.
meillo@104	1645 Therefore MH used
meillo@104	1646 .Fu vfork()
meillo@104	1647 whenever possible.
meillo@12	1648 .P
meillo@104	1649 Modern memory management units support copy-on-write semantics, which make
meillo@104	1650 .Fu fork()
meillo@104	1651 almost as fast as
meillo@104	1652 .Fu vfork() .
meillo@104	1653 The man page of
meillo@104	1654 .Mp vfork (2)
meillo@104	1655 in FreeBSD 8.0 states:
meillo@104	1656 .QS
meillo@104	1657 This system call will be eliminated when proper system sharing mechanisms
meillo@104	1658 are implemented. Users should not depend on the memory sharing semantics
meillo@104	1659 of vfork() as it will, in that case, be made synonymous to fork(2).
meillo@104	1660 .QE
meillo@104	1661 .LP
meillo@104	1662 Vixie supports the removal with the note that ``the last
meillo@104	1663 system on which fork was so slow that an mh user would notice it, was
meillo@104	1664 Eunice. that was 1987''.
meillo@104	1665 .[
meillo@104	1666 nmh-workers vixie edginess
meillo@104	1667 .]
meillo@104	1668 I replaced all calls to
meillo@104	1669 .Fu vfork()
meillo@104	1670 with calls to
meillo@217	1671 .Fu fork()
meillo@217	1672 .Ci 40821f5c1316e9205a08375e7075909cc9968e7d .
meillo@104	1673 .P
meillo@104	1674 Related to the costs of
meillo@104	1675 .Fu fork()
meillo@104	1676 is the probability of its success.
meillo@109	1677 In the eighties, on heavy loaded systems, calls to
meillo@104	1678 .Fu fork()
meillo@104	1679 were prone to failure.
meillo@104	1680 Hence, many of the
meillo@104	1681 .Fu fork()
meillo@104	1682 calls in the code were wrapped into loops to retry the
meillo@104	1683 .Fu fork()
meillo@217	1684 several times, to increase the chances to succeed eventually.
meillo@109	1685 On modern systems, a failing
meillo@104	1686 .Fu fork()
meillo@109	1687 call is unusual.
meillo@104	1688 Hence, in the rare case when
meillo@104	1689 .Fu fork()
meillo@217	1690 fails, mmh programs simply abort
meillo@217	1691 .Ci 5fbf37ee68e018998ada61eeab73e035b26834b6 .
meillo@12	1692
meillo@12	1693
meillo@109	1694 .U3 "Header Fields
meillo@104	1695 .BU
meillo@84	1696 The
meillo@84	1697 .Hd Encrypted
meillo@104	1698 header field was introduced by RFC\\|822,
meillo@109	1699 but already marked as legacy in RFC\\|2822.
meillo@109	1700 Today, OpenPGP provides the basis for standardized exchange of encrypted
meillo@104	1701 messages [RFC\\|4880, RFC\\|3156].
meillo@109	1702 Hence, the support for
meillo@104	1703 .Hd Encrypted
meillo@217	1704 header fields is removed in mmh
meillo@217	1705 .Ci 064527f7b57ab050e5af13e15ad99aeeab125857 .
meillo@104	1706 .BU
meillo@159	1707 The native support for
meillo@84	1708 .Hd Face
meillo@217	1709 header fields has been removed, as well
meillo@217	1710 .Ci 8e5be81f784682822f5e868c1bf3c8624682bd23 .
meillo@104	1711 This feature is similar to the
meillo@84	1712 .Hd X-Face
meillo@84	1713 header field in its intent,
meillo@21	1714 but takes a different approach to store the image.
meillo@84	1715 Instead of encoding the image data directly into the header field,
meillo@109	1716 it contains the hostname and UDP port where the image
meillo@109	1717 date can be retrieved.
meillo@159	1718 There is even a third Face system,
meillo@109	1719 which is the successor of
meillo@109	1720 .Hd X-Face ,
meillo@109	1721 although it re-uses the
meillo@104	1722 .Hd Face
meillo@217	1723 header field name.
meillo@109	1724 It was invented in 2005 and supports colored PNG images.
meillo@104	1725 None of the Face systems described here is popular today.
meillo@104	1726 Hence, mmh has no direct support for them.
meillo@104	1727 .BU
meillo@154	1728 .Id content-md5
meillo@104	1729 The
meillo@104	1730 .Hd Content-MD5
meillo@104	1731 header field was introduced by RFC\\|1864.
meillo@104	1732 It provides detection of data corruption during the transfer.
meillo@104	1733 But it can not ensure verbatim end-to-end delivery of the contents
meillo@104	1734 [RFC\\|1864].
meillo@104	1735 The proper approach to verify content integrity in an
meillo@166	1736 end-to-end relationship is the use of digital signatures.
meillo@104	1737 .\" XXX (RFCs FIXME).
meillo@104	1738 On the other hand, transfer protocols should detect corruption during
meillo@109	1739 the transmission.
meillo@109	1740 The TCP includes a checksum field therefore.
meillo@104	1741 These two approaches in combinations render the
meillo@104	1742 .Hd Content-MD5
meillo@104	1743 header field superfluous.
meillo@109	1744 Not a single one out of 4\\|200 messages from two decades
meillo@217	1745 in the nmh-workers mailing list archive
meillo@217	1746 .[
meillo@217	1747 nmh-workers mailing list archive website
meillo@217	1748 .]
meillo@217	1749 contains a
meillo@104	1750 .Hd Content-MD5
meillo@104	1751 header field.
meillo@104	1752 Neither did any of the 60\\|000 messages in my personal mail storage.
meillo@217	1753 Removing the support for this header field
meillo@217	1754 .Ci 31dc797eb5178970d68962ca8939da3fd9a8efda ,
meillo@104	1755 removed the last place where MD5 computation was needed.
meillo@104	1756 Hence, the MD5 code could be removed as well.
meillo@104	1757 Over 500 lines of code vanished by this one change.
meillo@104	1758
meillo@104	1759
meillo@104	1760 .U3 "MMDF maildrop support
meillo@21	1761 .P
meillo@217	1762 This type of maildrop format is conceptionally similar to the mbox format,
meillo@139	1763 but uses a different message delimiter (`\fL\\1\\1\\1\\1\fP',
meillo@139	1764 commonly written as `\fL^A^A^A^A\fP', instead of `\fLFrom\0\fP').
meillo@104	1765 Mbox is the de-facto standard maildrop format on Unix,
meillo@159	1766 whereas the MMDF maildrop format is now forgotten.
meillo@217	1767 Mbox remains as the only packed mailbox format, supported in mmh.
meillo@104	1768 .P
meillo@109	1769 The simplifications within the code were moderate.
meillo@109	1770 Mainly, the reading and writing of MMDF mailbox files was removed.
meillo@109	1771 But also, switches of
meillo@109	1772 .Pn packf
meillo@104	1773 and
meillo@109	1774 .Pn rcvpack
meillo@217	1775 could be removed
meillo@217	1776 .Ci 3916ab66ad5d183705ac12357621ea8661afd3c0 .
meillo@109	1777 In the message parsing function
meillo@109	1778 .Fn sbr/m_getfld.c ,
meillo@217	1779 knowledge of MMDF packed mail boxes was removed
meillo@217	1780 .Ci 684ec30d81e1223a282764452f4902ed4ad1c754 .
meillo@109	1781 Further code structure simplifications may be possible there,
meillo@109	1782 because only one single packed mailbox format is left to be supported.
meillo@104	1783 I have not worked on them yet because
meillo@104	1784 .Fu m_getfld()
meillo@104	1785 is heavily optimized and thus dangerous to touch.
meillo@104	1786 The risk of damaging the intricate workings of the optimized code is
meillo@104	1787 too high.
meillo@104	1788
meillo@12	1789
meillo@101	1790 .U3 "Prompter's Control Keys
meillo@20	1791 .P
meillo@20	1792 The program
meillo@20	1793 .Pn prompter
meillo@104	1794 queries the user to fill in a message form.
meillo@217	1795 When used as
meillo@104	1796 .Cl "comp -editor prompter" ,
meillo@20	1797 the resulting behavior is similar to
meillo@20	1798 .Pn mailx .
meillo@51	1799 Apparently,
meillo@20	1800 .Pn prompter
meillo@173	1801 had not been touched lately.
meillo@104	1802 Otherwise it's hardly explainable why it
meillo@20	1803 still offered the switches
meillo@84	1804 .Sw -erase
meillo@84	1805 .Ar chr
meillo@20	1806 and
meillo@84	1807 .Sw -kill
meillo@84	1808 .Ar chr
meillo@20	1809 to name the characters for command line editing.
meillo@21	1810 The times when this had been necessary are long time gone.
meillo@20	1811 Today these things work out-of-the-box, and if not, are configured
meillo@20	1812 with the standard tool
meillo@20	1813 .Pn stty .
meillo@104	1814 The switches are removed now
meillo@104	1815 .Ci 0bd9750710cdbab80cfb4036dd87af20afe1552f .
meillo@20	1816
meillo@104	1817
meillo@109	1818 .U3 "Hardcopy Terminal Support
meillo@21	1819 .P
meillo@109	1820 More of a funny anecdote is a check for being connected to a
meillo@109	1821 hardcopy terminal.
meillo@159	1822 It remained in the code until spring 2012, when I finally removed it
meillo@104	1823 .Ci b7764c4a6b71d37918a97594d866258f154017ca .
meillo@21	1824 .P
meillo@109	1825 The check only prevented a pager to be placed between the printing
meillo@104	1826 program (\c
meillo@104	1827 .Pn mhl )
meillo@104	1828 and the terminal.
meillo@109	1829 In nmh, this could have been ensured statically with the
meillo@104	1830 .Sw -nomoreproc
meillo@109	1831 at the command line, too.
meillo@121	1832 In mmh, setting the profile entry
meillo@104	1833 .Pe Pager
meillo@104	1834 or the environment variable
meillo@104	1835 .Ev PAGER
meillo@104	1836 to
meillo@109	1837 .Pn cat
meillo@159	1838 is sufficient.
meillo@104	1839
meillo@104	1840
meillo@21	1841
meillo@12	1842
meillo@58	1843 .H2 "Attachments
meillo@22	1844 .P
meillo@101	1845 The mind model of email attachments is unrelated to MIME.
meillo@217	1846 Although the MIME RFCs [RFC\\|2045\(en2049] define the technical
meillo@217	1847 requirements for having attachments, they do not mention the term.
meillo@101	1848 Instead of attachments, MIME talks about ``multi-part message bodies''
meillo@101	1849 [RFC\\|2045], a more general concept.
meillo@101	1850 Multi-part messages are messages
meillo@101	1851 ``in which one or more different
meillo@101	1852 sets of data are combined in a single body''
meillo@101	1853 [RFC\\|2046].
meillo@101	1854 MIME keeps its descriptions generic;
meillo@101	1855 it does not imply specific usage models.
meillo@217	1856 Today, one usage model is prevalent: attachments.
meillo@101	1857 The idea is having a main text document with files of arbitrary kind
meillo@101	1858 attached to it.
meillo@101	1859 In MIME terms, this is a multi-part message having a text part first
meillo@110	1860 and parts of arbitrary type following.
meillo@101	1861 .P
meillo@101	1862 MH's MIME support is a direct implementation of the RFCs.
meillo@101	1863 The perception of the topic described in the RFCs is clearly visible
meillo@101	1864 in MH's implementation.
meillo@159	1865 As a result,
meillo@159	1866 MH had all the MIME features but no idea of attachments.
meillo@173	1867 But users do not need all the MIME features,
meillo@109	1868 they want convenient attachment handling.
meillo@109	1869
meillo@102	1870
meillo@102	1871 .U3 "Composing MIME Messages
meillo@102	1872 .P
meillo@102	1873 In order to improve the situation on the message composing side,
meillo@217	1874 Jon Steinhart had added an attachment system to nmh in 2002
meillo@217	1875 .Ci 7480dbc14bc90f2d872d434205c0784704213252 .
meillo@102	1876 In the file
meillo@102	1877 .Fn docs/README-ATTACHMENTS ,
meillo@217	1878 he described his motivation to do so:
meillo@101	1879 .QS
meillo@159	1880 Although nmh contains the necessary functionality for MIME message
meillo@159	1881 handing [sic!], the interface to this functionality is pretty obtuse.
meillo@101	1882 There's no way that I'm ever going to convince my partner to write
meillo@101	1883 .Pn mhbuild
meillo@101	1884 composition files!
meillo@101	1885 .QE
meillo@102	1886 .LP
meillo@102	1887 With this change, the mind model of attachments entered nmh.
meillo@102	1888 In the same document:
meillo@101	1889 .QS
meillo@101	1890 These changes simplify the task of managing attachments on draft files.
meillo@101	1891 They allow attachments to be added, listed, and deleted.
meillo@101	1892 MIME messages are automatically created when drafts with attachments
meillo@101	1893 are sent.
meillo@101	1894 .QE
meillo@102	1895 .LP
meillo@217	1896 Unfortunately, the attachment system, like every new facilities in nmh,
meillo@110	1897 was inactive by default.
meillo@101	1898 .P
meillo@217	1899 During my time in Argentina, I tried to improve the attachment system.
meillo@217	1900 But, after long discussions my patch died as a proposal on the
meillo@217	1901 mailing list because of great opposition in the nmh community.
meillo@101	1902 .[
meillo@101	1903 nmh-workers attachment proposal
meillo@101	1904 .]
meillo@217	1905 In January 2012, I extended the patch and applied it to mmh
meillo@217	1906 .Ci 8ff284ff9167eff8f5349481529332d59ed913b1 .
meillo@102	1907 In mmh, the attachment system is active by default.
meillo@102	1908 Instead of command line switches, the
meillo@102	1909 .Pe Attachment-Header
meillo@102	1910 profile entry is used to specify
meillo@102	1911 the name of the attachment header field.
meillo@102	1912 It is pre-defined to
meillo@102	1913 .Hd Attach .
meillo@101	1914 .P
meillo@159	1915 To add an attachment to a draft, a header line needs to be added:
meillo@101	1916 .VS
meillo@101	1917 To: bob
meillo@101	1918 Subject: The file you wanted
meillo@101	1919 Attach: /path/to/the/file-bob-wanted
meillo@101	1920 --------
meillo@101	1921 Here it is.
meillo@101	1922 VE
meillo@101	1923 The header field can be added to the draft manually in the editor,
meillo@102	1924 or by using the `attach' command at the WhatNow prompt, or
meillo@102	1925 non-interactively with
meillo@101	1926 .Pn anno :
meillo@101	1927 .VS
meillo@102	1928 anno -append -nodate -component Attach -text /path/to/attachment
meillo@101	1929 VE
meillo@102	1930 Drafts with attachment headers are converted to MIME automatically by
meillo@102	1931 .Pn send .
meillo@102	1932 The conversion to MIME is invisible to the user.
meillo@159	1933 The draft stored in the draft folder is always in source form with
meillo@101	1934 attachment headers.
meillo@179	1935 If the MIMEification fails (e.g. because the file to attach
meillo@179	1936 is not accessible) the original draft is not changed.
meillo@101	1937 .P
meillo@102	1938 The attachment system handles the forwarding of messages, too.
meillo@173	1939 If the attachment header value starts with a plus character (`\fL+\fP'),
meillo@101	1940 like in
meillo@101	1941 .Cl "Attach: +bob 30 42" ,
meillo@159	1942 the given messages in the specified folder will be attached.
meillo@101	1943 This allowed to simplify
meillo@217	1944 .Pn forw
meillo@217	1945 .Ci f41f04cf4ceca7355232cf7413e59afafccc9550 .
meillo@101	1946 .P
meillo@101	1947 Closely related to attachments is non-ASCII text content,
meillo@217	1948 because it requires MIME as well.
meillo@102	1949 In nmh, the user needed to call `mime' at the WhatNow prompt
meillo@101	1950 to have the draft converted to MIME.
meillo@102	1951 This was necessary whenever the draft contained non-ASCII characters.
meillo@101	1952 If the user did not call `mime', a broken message would be sent.
meillo@101	1953 Therefore, the
meillo@101	1954 .Pe automimeproc
meillo@101	1955 profile entry could be specified to have the `mime' command invoked
meillo@102	1956 automatically each time.
meillo@179	1957 Unfortunately, this approach conflicted with the attachment system
meillo@101	1958 because the draft would already be in MIME format at the time
meillo@101	1959 when the attachment system wanted to MIMEify it.
meillo@102	1960 To use nmh's attachment system, `mime' must not be called at the
meillo@102	1961 WhatNow prompt and
meillo@101	1962 .Pe automimeproc
meillo@102	1963 must not be set in the profile.
meillo@101	1964 But then the case of non-ASCII text without attachment headers was
meillo@101	1965 not caught.
meillo@102	1966 All in all, the solution was complex and irritating.
meillo@168	1967 My patch from December 2010
meillo@168	1968 .[
meillo@168	1969 nmh-workers attachment proposal
meillo@168	1970 .]
meillo@168	1971 would have simplified the situation.
meillo@102	1972 .P
meillo@101	1973 Mmh's current solution is even more elaborate.
meillo@101	1974 Any necessary MIMEification is done automatically.
meillo@101	1975 There is no `mime' command at the WhatNow prompt anymore.
meillo@102	1976 The draft will be converted automatically to MIME when either an
meillo@102	1977 attachment header or non-ASCII text is present.
meillo@173	1978 Furthermore, the hash character (`\fL#\fP') is not special any more
meillo@159	1979 at line beginnings in the draft message.
meillo@159	1980 .\" XXX REF ?
meillo@159	1981 Users need not concern themselves with the whole topic at all.
meillo@101	1982 .P
meillo@102	1983 Although the new approach does not anymore support arbitrary MIME
meillo@102	1984 compositions directly, the full power of
meillo@101	1985 .Pn mhbuild
meillo@101	1986 can still be accessed.
meillo@217	1987 Given no attachment headers are included, users can create
meillo@101	1988 .Pn mhbuild
meillo@102	1989 composition drafts like in nmh.
meillo@217	1990 Then, at the WhatNow prompt, they can invoke
meillo@101	1991 .Cl "edit mhbuild
meillo@217	1992 to convert the draft to MIME.
meillo@217	1993 Because the resulting draft neither contains non-ASCII characters
meillo@102	1994 nor has it attachment headers, the attachment system will not touch it.
meillo@101	1995 .P
meillo@159	1996 The approach taken in mmh is tailored towards today's most common case:
meillo@159	1997 a text part, possibly with attachments.
meillo@159	1998 This case was simplified.
meillo@102	1999
meillo@112	2000
meillo@102	2001 .U3 "MIME Type Guessing
meillo@102	2002 .P
meillo@159	2003 From the programmer's point of view, the use of
meillo@101	2004 .Pn mhbuild
meillo@159	2005 composition drafts had one notable advantage over attachment headers:
meillo@159	2006 The user provides the appropriate MIME types for files to include.
meillo@217	2007 The new attachment system needs to find out the correct MIME type itself.
meillo@217	2008 This is a difficult task.
meillo@102	2009 Determining the correct MIME type of content is partly mechanical,
meillo@102	2010 partly intelligent work.
meillo@102	2011 Forcing the user to find out the correct MIME type,
meillo@102	2012 forces him to do partly mechanical work.
meillo@179	2013 Letting the computer do the work can lead to bad choices for difficult
meillo@102	2014 content.
meillo@217	2015 For mmh, the latter option was chosen to spare the user the work
meillo@217	2016 .Ci 3baec236a39c5c89a9bda8dbd988d643a21decc6 .
meillo@102	2017 .P
meillo@102	2018 Determining the MIME type by the suffix of the file name is a dumb
meillo@102	2019 approach, yet it is simple to implement and provides good results
meillo@102	2020 for the common cases.
meillo@217	2021 If no MIME type can be determined, text content is sent as `text/plain',
meillo@217	2022 anything else under the generic fall-back type `application/octet-stream'.
meillo@102	2023 Mmh implements this approach in the
meillo@102	2024 .Pn print-mimetype
meillo@217	2025 script
meillo@217	2026 .Ci 4b5944268ea0da7bb30598a27857304758ea9b44 .
meillo@102	2027 .P
meillo@112	2028 A far better, though less portable, approach is the use of
meillo@102	2029 .Pn file .
meillo@102	2030 This standard tool tries to determine the type of files.
meillo@102	2031 Unfortunately, its capabilities and accuracy varies from system to system.
meillo@102	2032 Additionally, its output was only intended for human beings,
meillo@102	2033 but not to be used by programs.
meillo@102	2034 Nevertheless, modern versions of GNU
meillo@102	2035 .Pn file ,
meillo@217	2036 which are prevalent on the popular GNU/Linux systems,
meillo@159	2037 provide MIME type output in machine-readable form.
meillo@217	2038 Although this solution is system-dependent,
meillo@102	2039 it solves the difficult problem well.
meillo@102	2040 On systems where GNU
meillo@102	2041 .Pn file ,
meillo@102	2042 version 5.04 or higher, is available it should be used.
meillo@102	2043 One needs to specify the following profile entry to do so:
meillo@102	2044 .VS
meillo@102	2045 Mime-Type-Query: file -b --mime
meillo@102	2046 VE
meillo@102	2047 .LP
meillo@102	2048 Other versions of
meillo@102	2049 .Pn file
meillo@217	2050 might possibly be usable with wrapper scripts that reformat the output.
meillo@102	2051 The diversity among
meillo@102	2052 .Pn file
meillo@102	2053 implementations is great; one needs to check the local variant.
meillo@102	2054 .P
meillo@102	2055 It is not possible in mmh to override the automatic MIME type guessing
meillo@102	2056 for a specific file.
meillo@159	2057 To do so, either the user would need to know in advance for which file
meillo@217	2058 the automatic guessing fails or the system would require interaction.
meillo@102	2059 I consider both cases impractical.
meillo@102	2060 The existing solution should be sufficient.
meillo@102	2061 If not, the user may always fall back to
meillo@102	2062 .Pn mhbuild
meillo@217	2063 composition drafts and bypass the attachment system.
meillo@101	2064
meillo@102	2065
meillo@102	2066 .U3 "Storing Attachments
meillo@102	2067 .P
meillo@169	2068 Extracting MIME parts of a message and storing them to disk is performed by
meillo@108	2069 .Pn mhstore .
meillo@108	2070 The program has two operation modes,
meillo@108	2071 .Sw -auto
meillo@108	2072 and
meillo@108	2073 .Sw -noauto .
meillo@108	2074 With the former one, each part is stored under the filename given in the
meillo@108	2075 MIME part's meta information, if available.
meillo@108	2076 This naming information is usually available for modern attachments.
meillo@108	2077 If no filename is available, this MIME part is stored as if
meillo@108	2078 .Sw -noauto
meillo@108	2079 would have been specified.
meillo@108	2080 In the
meillo@108	2081 .Sw -noauto
meillo@108	2082 mode, the parts are processed according to rules, defined by
meillo@108	2083 .Pe mhstore-store-*
meillo@108	2084 profile entries.
meillo@108	2085 These rules define generic filename templates for storing
meillo@108	2086 or commands to post-process the contents in arbitrary ways.
meillo@108	2087 If no matching rule is available the part is stored under a generic
meillo@108	2088 filename, built from message number, MIME part number, and MIME type.
meillo@108	2089 .P
meillo@108	2090 The
meillo@108	2091 .Sw -noauto
meillo@108	2092 mode had been the default in nmh because it was considered safe,
meillo@108	2093 in contrast to the
meillo@108	2094 .Sw -auto
meillo@108	2095 mode.
meillo@108	2096 In mmh,
meillo@108	2097 .Sw -auto
meillo@108	2098 is not dangerous anymore.
meillo@108	2099 Two changes were necessary:
meillo@171	2100 .LI 1
meillo@108	2101 Any directory path is removed from the proposed filename.
meillo@108	2102 Thus, the files are always stored in the expected directory.
meillo@108	2103 .Ci 41b6eadbcecf63c9a66aa5e582011987494abefb
meillo@171	2104 .LI 2
meillo@108	2105 Tar files are not extracted automatically any more.
meillo@108	2106 Thus, the rest of the file system will not be touched.
meillo@108	2107 .Ci 94c80042eae3383c812d9552089953f9846b1bb6
meillo@217	2108 .P
meillo@217	2109 In mmh, the result of
meillo@108	2110 .Cl "mhstore -auto
meillo@110	2111 can be foreseen from the output of
meillo@108	2112 .Cl "mhlist -verbose" .
meillo@217	2113 Although the
meillo@108	2114 .Sw -noauto
meillo@217	2115 mode is considered to be more powerful, it is less convenient and
meillo@108	2116 .Sw -auto
meillo@217	2117 is safe now.
meillo@217	2118 Additionally, storing attachments under their original name
meillo@217	2119 is intuitive.
meillo@108	2120 Hence,
meillo@108	2121 .Sw -auto
meillo@217	2122 serves better as the default option
meillo@217	2123 .Ci 3410b680416c49a7617491af38bc1929855a331d .
meillo@108	2124 .P
meillo@108	2125 Files are stored into the directory given by the
meillo@108	2126 .Pe Nmh-Storage
meillo@108	2127 profile entry, if set, or
meillo@108	2128 into the current working directory, otherwise.
meillo@108	2129 Storing to different directories is only possible with
meillo@108	2130 .Pe mhstore-store-*
meillo@108	2131 profile entries.
meillo@108	2132 .P
meillo@217	2133 Still existing files get overwritten silently in both modes.
meillo@108	2134 This can be considered a bug.
meillo@108	2135 Yet, each other behavior has its draw-backs, too.
meillo@108	2136 Refusing to replace files requires adding a
meillo@108	2137 .Sw -force
meillo@217	2138 switch.
meillo@108	2139 Users will likely need to invoke
meillo@108	2140 .Pn mhstore
meillo@108	2141 a second time with
meillo@159	2142 .Sw -force .
meillo@159	2143 Eventually, only the user can decide in the specific case.
meillo@108	2144 This requires interaction, which I like to avoid if possible.
meillo@108	2145 Appending a unique suffix to the filename is another bad option.
meillo@108	2146 For now, the behavior remains as it is.
meillo@108	2147 .P
meillo@108	2148 In mmh, only MIME parts of type message are special in
meillo@108	2149 .Pn mhstore 's
meillo@108	2150 .Sw -auto
meillo@108	2151 mode.
meillo@108	2152 Instead of storing message/rfc822 parts as files to disk,
meillo@108	2153 they are stored as messages into the current mail folder.
meillo@159	2154 The same applies to message/partial, although the parts are
meillo@159	2155 automatically reassembled beforehand.
meillo@159	2156 MIME parts of type message/external-body are not automatically retrieved
meillo@159	2157 anymore.
meillo@159	2158 Instead, information on how to retrieve them is output.
meillo@217	2159 Not supporting this rare case saved nearly one thousand lines of code
meillo@217	2160 .Ci 55e1d8c654ee0f7c45b9361ce34617983b454c32 .
meillo@217	2161 The MIME type `application/octet-stream; type=tar' is not special anymore.
meillo@217	2162 The automatically extracting of such MIME parts had been the
meillo@217	2163 dangerous part of the
meillo@108	2164 .Sw -auto
meillo@217	2165 mode
meillo@217	2166 .Ci 94c80042eae3383c812d9552089953f9846b1bb6 .
meillo@108	2167
meillo@102	2168
meillo@102	2169
meillo@102	2170 .U3 "Showing MIME Messages
meillo@102	2171 .P
meillo@114	2172 The program
meillo@114	2173 .Pn mhshow
meillo@217	2174 was written to display MIME messages.
meillo@114	2175 It implemented the conceptional view of the MIME RFCs.
meillo@114	2176 Nmh's
meillo@114	2177 .Pn mhshow
meillo@217	2178 handles each MIME part independently, presenting them separately
meillo@114	2179 to the user.
meillo@114	2180 This does not match today's understanding of email attachments,
meillo@114	2181 where displaying a message is seen to be a single, integrated operation.
meillo@114	2182 Today, email messages are expected to consist of a main text part
meillo@114	2183 plus possibly attachments.
meillo@217	2184 They are no more seen to be arbitrary MIME hierarchies with
meillo@114	2185 information on how to display the individual parts.
meillo@114	2186 I adjusted
meillo@114	2187 .Pn mhshow 's
meillo@114	2188 behavior to the modern view on the topic.
meillo@114	2189 .P
meillo@224	2190 One should note that this section completely ignores the original
meillo@114	2191 .Pn show
meillo@114	2192 program, because it was not capable to display MIME messages
meillo@114	2193 and is no longer part of mmh.
meillo@179	2194 .\" XXX ref to other section
meillo@114	2195 Although
meillo@114	2196 .Pn mhshow
meillo@114	2197 was renamed to
meillo@114	2198 .Pn show
meillo@114	2199 in mmh, this section uses the name
meillo@114	2200 .Pn mhshow ,
meillo@224	2201 in order to avoid confusion.
meillo@114	2202 .P
meillo@114	2203 In mmh, the basic idea is that
meillo@114	2204 .Pn mhshow
meillo@114	2205 should display a message in one single pager session.
meillo@114	2206 Therefore,
meillo@114	2207 .Pn mhshow
meillo@114	2208 invokes a pager session for all its output,
meillo@217	2209 whenever it prints to a terminal
meillo@217	2210 .Ci a4197ea6ffc5c1550e8b52d5a654bcaaaee04a4e .
meillo@114	2211 In consequence,
meillo@114	2212 .Pn mhl
meillo@217	2213 does no more invoke a pager
meillo@217	2214 .Ci 0e46503be3c855bddaeae3843e1b659279c35d70 .
meillo@114	2215 With
meillo@114	2216 .Pn mhshow
meillo@114	2217 replacing the original
meillo@114	2218 .Pn show ,
meillo@217	2219 the output of
meillo@114	2220 .Pn mhl
meillo@217	2221 no longer goes to the terminal directly, but through
meillo@114	2222 .Pn mhshow .
meillo@114	2223 Hence,
meillo@114	2224 .Pn mhl
meillo@114	2225 does not need to invoke a pager.
meillo@114	2226 The one and only job of
meillo@114	2227 .Pn mhl
meillo@114	2228 is to format messages or parts of them.
meillo@114	2229 The only place in mmh, where a pager is invoked is
meillo@114	2230 .Pn mhshow .
meillo@114	2231 .P
meillo@217	2232 In the intended setup, only text content is be displayed,
meillo@217	2233 in a single pager session.
meillo@217	2234 Non-text content needs to be converted to text by appropriate
meillo@217	2235 .Pe mhshow-show-*
meillo@217	2236 profile entries before, if this is possible and wanted.
meillo@217	2237 A common example for this are PDF files.
meillo@217	2238 In mmh, MIME parts are always displayed serially.
meillo@114	2239 The request to display the MIME type `multipart/parallel' in parallel
meillo@114	2240 is ignored.
meillo@217	2241 It is simply treated as `multipart/mixed'
meillo@217	2242 .Ci d0581ba306a7299113a346f9b4c46ce97bc4cef6 .
meillo@217	2243 This was already possible to requested with the, now removed,
meillo@114	2244 .Sw -serialonly
meillo@114	2245 switch of
meillo@114	2246 .Pn mhshow .
meillo@179	2247 As MIME parts are always processed exclusively, i.e. serially,
meillo@217	2248 the `\fL%e\fP' escape in
meillo@114	2249 .Pe mhshow-show-*
meillo@217	2250 profile entries became useless and was thus removed
meillo@217	2251 .Ci a20d405db09b7ccca74d3e8c57550883da49e1ae .
meillo@114	2252 .P
meillo@114	2253 Other kinds of attachments are ignored.
meillo@114	2254 With
meillo@114	2255 .Pe mhshow-show-*
meillo@114	2256 profile entries for them, they can be displayed serially along
meillo@114	2257 the message.
meillo@114	2258 For parallel display, the attachments need to be stored to disk first.
meillo@114	2259 .P
meillo@114	2260 To display text content in foreign charsets, they need to be converted
meillo@114	2261 to the native charset.
meillo@114	2262 Therefore,
meillo@114	2263 .Pe mhshow-charset-*
meillo@217	2264 profile entries were needed.
meillo@169	2265 In mmh, the conversion is performed automatically by piping the
meillo@169	2266 text through the
meillo@114	2267 .Pn iconv
meillo@217	2268 command, if necessary
meillo@217	2269 .Ci 2433122c20baccb10b70b49c04c6b0497b5b3b60 .
meillo@114	2270 Custom
meillo@114	2271 .Pe mhshow-show-*
meillo@114	2272 rules for textual content might need a
meillo@114	2273 .Cl "iconv -f %c %f \|
meillo@114	2274 prefix to have the text converted to the native charset.
meillo@114	2275 .P
meillo@121	2276 Although the conversion of foreign charsets to the native one
meillo@114	2277 has improved, it is not consistent enough.
meillo@114	2278 Further work needs to be done and
meillo@114	2279 the basic concepts in this field need to be re-thought.
meillo@114	2280 Though, the default setup of mmh displays message in foreign charsets
meillo@114	2281 correctly without the need to configure anything.
meillo@114	2282
meillo@114	2283
meillo@114	2284 .ig
meillo@114	2285
meillo@114	2286 .P
meillo@114	2287 mhshow/mhstore: Removed support for retrieving message/external-body parts.
meillo@173	2288 These tools will not download the contents automatically anymore. Instead,
meillo@114	2289 they print the information needed to get the contents. If someone should
meillo@114	2290 really receive one of those rare message/external-body messages, he can
meillo@114	2291 do the job manually. We save nearly a thousand lines of code. That's worth
meillo@114	2292 it!
meillo@114	2293 (The profile entry `nmh-access-ftp' and sbr/ruserpass.c for reading
meillo@114	2294 ~/.netrc are gone now.)
meillo@114	2295 .Ci 55e1d8c654ee0f7c45b9361ce34617983b454c32
meillo@114	2296
meillo@114	2297 ..
meillo@102	2298
meillo@58	2299
meillo@58	2300
meillo@166	2301 .H2 "Signing and Encrypting
meillo@22	2302 .P
meillo@166	2303 Nmh offers no direct support for digital signatures and message encryption.
meillo@157	2304 This functionality needed to be added through third-party software.
meillo@217	2305 In mmh, the functionality is included because it
meillo@217	2306 is a part of modern email and is likely wanted by users of mmh.
meillo@217	2307 A fresh mmh installation supports signing and encrypting
meillo@157	2308 out-of-the-box.
meillo@157	2309 Therefore, Neil Rickert's
meillo@157	2310 .Pn mhsign
meillo@157	2311 and
meillo@157	2312 .Pn mhpgp
meillo@157	2313 scripts
meillo@157	2314 .[
meillo@157	2315 neil rickert mhsign mhpgp
meillo@157	2316 .]
meillo@217	2317 were included
meillo@177	2318 .Ci f45cdc98117a84f071759462c7ae212f4bc5ab2e
meillo@177	2319 .Ci 58cf09aa36e9f7f352a127158bbf1c5678bc6ed8 .
meillo@177	2320 The scripts fit well because they are lightweight and
meillo@177	2321 similar of style to the existing tools.
meillo@217	2322 Additionally, no licensing difficulties appeared
meillo@157	2323 as they are part of the public domain.
meillo@112	2324 .P
meillo@157	2325 .Pn mhsign
meillo@157	2326 handles the signing and encrypting part.
meillo@157	2327 It comprises about 250 lines of shell code and interfaces between
meillo@223	2328 .Pn gnupg
meillo@217	2329 and the MH system.
meillo@177	2330 It was meant to be invoked manually at the WhatNow prompt, but in mmh,
meillo@157	2331 .Pn send
meillo@177	2332 invokes
meillo@217	2333 .Pn mhsign
meillo@177	2334 automatically
meillo@177	2335 .Ci c7b5e1df086bcc37ff40163ee67571f076cf6683 .
meillo@177	2336 Special header fields were introduced to request this action.
meillo@157	2337 If a draft contains the
meillo@157	2338 .Hd Sign
meillo@157	2339 header field,
meillo@157	2340 .Pn send
meillo@177	2341 will initiate the signing.
meillo@217	2342 The signing key is either chosen automatically or it is specified by the
meillo@157	2343 .Pe Pgpkey
meillo@157	2344 profile entry.
meillo@157	2345 .Pn send
meillo@217	2346 always create signatures using the PGP/MIME standard [RFC\\|4880],
meillo@217	2347 but by invoking
meillo@217	2348 .Pn mhsign
meillo@217	2349 manually, old-style non-MIME signatures can be created as well.
meillo@177	2350 To encrypt an outgoing message, the draft needs to contain an
meillo@157	2351 .Hd Enc
meillo@157	2352 header field.
meillo@177	2353 Public keys of all recipients are searched for in the gnupg keyring and
meillo@177	2354 in a file called
meillo@177	2355 .Fn pgpkeys ,
meillo@177	2356 which contains exceptions and overrides.
meillo@157	2357 Unless public keys are found for all recipients,
meillo@177	2358 .Pn mhsign
meillo@177	2359 will refuse to encrypt it.
meillo@157	2360 Currently, messages with hidden (BCC) recipients can not be encrypted.
meillo@171	2361 This work is pending because it requires a structurally more complex
meillo@171	2362 approach.
meillo@157	2363 .P
meillo@177	2364 .Pn mhpgp
meillo@177	2365 is the companion to
meillo@177	2366 .Pn mhsign .
meillo@177	2367 It verifies signatures and decrypts messages.
meillo@217	2368 Encrypted messages can be either temporarily decrypted and displayed
meillo@177	2369 or permanently decrypted and stored into the current folder.
meillo@177	2370 Currently,
meillo@177	2371 .Pn mhpgp
meillo@177	2372 needs to be invoked manually.
meillo@177	2373 The integration into
meillo@177	2374 .Pn show
meillo@177	2375 and
meillo@177	2376 .Pn mhstore
meillo@217	2377 to verify signatures and decrypt messages as needed
meillo@217	2378 is planned but not yet realized.
meillo@177	2379 .P
meillo@217	2380 Both scripts were written for nmh.
meillo@217	2381 Hence they needed to be adjust
meillo@177	2382 according to the differences between nmh and mmh.
meillo@177	2383 For instance, they use the backup prefix no longer.
meillo@181	2384 Furthermore, compatibility support for old PGP features was dropped.
meillo@177	2385 .P
meillo@157	2386 The integrated message signing and encrypting support is one of the
meillo@157	2387 most recent features in mmh.
meillo@217	2388 It has not had the time to mature.
meillo@177	2389 User feedback and personal experience need to be accumulated to
meillo@177	2390 direct the further development of the facility.
meillo@217	2391 Already it seems to be worthwhile to consider adding
meillo@157	2392 .Sw -[no]sign
meillo@157	2393 and
meillo@157	2394 .Sw -[no]enc
meillo@157	2395 switches to
meillo@157	2396 .Pn send ,
meillo@177	2397 to be able to override the corresponding header fields.
meillo@177	2398 A profile entry:
meillo@157	2399 .VS
meillo@157	2400 send: -sign
meillo@157	2401 VE
meillo@177	2402 would then activate signing for all outgoing messages.
meillo@177	2403 With the present approach, a
meillo@177	2404 .Hd Send
meillo@177	2405 header component needs to be added to each draft template
meillo@177	2406 to achieve the same result.
meillo@177	2407 Adding the switches would ease the work greatly and keep the
meillo@177	2408 template files clean.
meillo@157	2409
meillo@58	2410
meillo@58	2411
meillo@102	2412
meillo@133	2413 .H2 "Draft and Trash Folder
meillo@131	2414 .P
meillo@58	2415
meillo@131	2416 .U3 "Draft Folder
meillo@154	2417 .Id draft-folder
meillo@131	2418 .P
meillo@131	2419 In the beginning, MH had the concept of a draft message.
meillo@217	2420 This was a file named
meillo@131	2421 .Fn draft
meillo@217	2422 in the MH directory, which was treated special.
meillo@131	2423 On composing a message, this draft file was used.
meillo@131	2424 When starting to compose another message before the former one was sent,
meillo@131	2425 the user had to decide among:
meillo@171	2426 .LI 1
meillo@168	2427 Using the old draft to finish and send it before starting with a new one.
meillo@171	2428 .LI 2
meillo@168	2429 Discarding the old draft and replacing it with a new one.
meillo@171	2430 .LI 3
meillo@168	2431 Preserving the old draft by refiling it to a folder.
meillo@171	2432 .LP
meillo@217	2433 Working on multiple drafts was only possible in alternation.
meillo@217	2434 For that, the current draft needed to be refiled to a folder and
meillo@168	2435 another one re-used for editing.
meillo@131	2436 Working on multiple drafts at the same time was impossible.
meillo@131	2437 The usual approach of switching to a different MH context did not
meillo@168	2438 help anything.
meillo@131	2439 .P
meillo@131	2440 The draft folder facility exists to
meillo@131	2441 allow true parallel editing of drafts, in a straight forward way.
meillo@131	2442 It was introduced by Marshall T. Rose, already in 1984.
meillo@131	2443 Similar to other new features, the draft folder was inactive by default.
meillo@131	2444 Even in nmh, the highly useful draft folder was not available
meillo@131	2445 out-of-the-box.
meillo@131	2446 At least, Richard Coleman added the man page
meillo@131	2447 .Mp mh-draft (5)
meillo@131	2448 to better document the feature.
meillo@131	2449 .P
meillo@131	2450 Not using the draft folder facility has the single advantage of having
meillo@131	2451 the draft file at a static location.
meillo@131	2452 This is simple in simple cases but the concept does not scale for more
meillo@131	2453 complex cases.
meillo@217	2454 The concept of the draft message is too limited for the problem
meillo@217	2455 it tries to solve.
meillo@131	2456 Therefore the draft folder was introduced.
meillo@131	2457 It is the more powerful and more natural concept.
meillo@131	2458 The draft folder is a folder like any other folder in MH.
meillo@131	2459 Its messages can be listed like any other messages.
meillo@131	2460 A draft message is no longer a special case.
meillo@131	2461 Tools do not need special switches to work on the draft message.
meillo@171	2462 Hence corner cases were removed.
meillo@131	2463 .P
meillo@131	2464 The trivial part of the work was activating the draft folder with a
meillo@131	2465 default name.
meillo@131	2466 I chose the name
meillo@217	2467 .Fn +drafts ,
meillo@131	2468 for obvious reasons.
meillo@131	2469 In consequence, the command line switches
meillo@131	2470 .Sw -draftfolder
meillo@131	2471 and
meillo@131	2472 .Sw -draftmessage
meillo@131	2473 could be removed.
meillo@131	2474 More difficult but also more improving was updating the tools to the
meillo@131	2475 new concept.
meillo@131	2476 For nearly three decades, the tools needed to support two draft handling
meillo@131	2477 approaches.
meillo@217	2478 By fully switching to the draft folder, the tools could be
meillo@217	2479 simplified by dropping the awkward draft message handling code.
meillo@131	2480 .Sw -draft
meillo@131	2481 switches were removed because operating on a draft message is no longer
meillo@131	2482 special.
meillo@131	2483 It became indistinguishable to operating on any other message.
meillo@168	2484 .Ci 337338b404931f06f0db2119c9e145e8ca5a9860
meillo@168	2485 .P
meillo@168	2486 There is no more need to query the user for draft handling
meillo@168	2487 .Ci 2d48b455c303a807041c35e4248955f8bec59eeb .
meillo@131	2488 It is always possible to add another new draft.
meillo@131	2489 Refiling drafts is without difference to refiling other messages.
meillo@168	2490 All of these special cases are gone.
meillo@131	2491 Yet, one draft-related switch remained.
meillo@131	2492 .Pn comp
meillo@131	2493 still has
meillo@131	2494 .Sw -[no]use
meillo@131	2495 for switching between two modes:
meillo@171	2496 .LI 1
meillo@217	2497 Modifying an existing draft, with
meillo@217	2498 .Sw -use .
meillo@171	2499 .LI 2
meillo@217	2500 Composing a new draft, possibly taking some existing message as template,
meillo@217	2501 with
meillo@217	2502 .Sw -nouse ,
meillo@217	2503 the default.
meillo@171	2504 .LP
meillo@131	2505 In either case, the behavior of
meillo@131	2506 .Pn comp
meillo@131	2507 is deterministic.
meillo@131	2508 .P
meillo@131	2509 .Pn send
meillo@131	2510 now operates on the current message in the draft folder by default.
meillo@131	2511 As message and folder can both be overridden by specifying them on
meillo@131	2512 the command line, it is possible to send any message in the mail storage
meillo@131	2513 by simply specifying its number and folder.
meillo@131	2514 In contrast to the other tools,
meillo@131	2515 .Pn send
meillo@131	2516 takes the draft folder as its default folder.
meillo@131	2517 .P
meillo@131	2518 Dropping the draft message concept in favor for the draft folder concept,
meillo@217	2519 replaced special cases with regular cases.
meillo@131	2520 This simplified the source code of the tools, as well as the concepts.
meillo@131	2521 In mmh, draft management does not break with the MH concepts
meillo@131	2522 but applies them.
meillo@133	2523 .Cl "scan +drafts" ,
meillo@133	2524 for instance, is a truly natural request.
meillo@217	2525 .P
meillo@169	2526 Most of the work was already performed by Rose in the eighties.
meillo@133	2527 The original improvement of mmh is dropping the old draft message approach
meillo@217	2528 and thus simplifying the tools, the documentation,
meillo@217	2529 and the system as a whole.
meillo@131	2530 Although my part in the draft handling improvement was small,
meillo@217	2531 it was important.
meillo@131	2532
meillo@131	2533
meillo@131	2534 .U3 "Trash Folder
meillo@154	2535 .Id trash-folder
meillo@131	2536 .P
meillo@131	2537 Similar to the situation for drafts is the situation for removed messages.
meillo@131	2538 Historically, a message was ``deleted'' by prepending a specific
meillo@173	2539 \fIbackup prefix\fP, usually the comma character,
meillo@173	2540 to the file name.
meillo@164	2541 The specific file would then be ignored by MH because only files with
meillo@164	2542 names consisting of digits only are treated as messages.
meillo@131	2543 Although files remained in the file system,
meillo@168	2544 the messages were no longer visible in MH.
meillo@168	2545 To truly delete them, a maintenance job was needed.
meillo@168	2546 Usually a cron job was installed to delete them after a grace time.
meillo@131	2547 For instance:
meillo@131	2548 .VS
meillo@131	2549 find $HOME/Mail -type f -name ',*' -ctime +7 -delete
meillo@131	2550 VE
meillo@168	2551 In such a setup, the original message could be restored
meillo@131	2552 within the grace time interval by stripping the
meillo@217	2553 backup prefix from the file name \(en usually but not always.
meillo@168	2554 If the last message of a folder with six messages (\fL1-6\fP) was removed,
meillo@131	2555 message
meillo@131	2556 .Fn 6 ,
meillo@168	2557 became file
meillo@131	2558 .Fn ,6 .
meillo@168	2559 If then a new message entered the same folder, it would be named with
meillo@168	2560 the number one above the highest existing message number.
meillo@168	2561 In this case the message would be named
meillo@217	2562 .Fn 6 ,
meillo@217	2563 reusing the number.
meillo@168	2564 If this new message would be removed as well,
meillo@217	2565 then the backup of the former message becomes overwritten.
meillo@168	2566 Hence, the ability to restore removed messages did not only depend on
meillo@181	2567 the sweeping cron job but also on the removing of further messages.
meillo@131	2568 It is undesirable to have such obscure and complex mechanisms.
meillo@168	2569 The user should be given a small set of clear assertions, such as
meillo@131	2570 ``Removed files are restorable within a seven-day grace time.''
meillo@131	2571 With the addition ``... unless a message with the same name in the
meillo@131	2572 same folder is removed before.'' the statement becomes complex.
meillo@217	2573 A user will hardly be able to keep track of all removals to know
meillo@131	2574 if the assertion still holds true for a specific file.
meillo@164	2575 In practice, the real mechanism is unclear to the user.
meillo@131	2576 .P
meillo@217	2577 Furthermore, the backup files were scattered within the whole mail storage.
meillo@217	2578 This complicated managing them.
meillo@217	2579 It was possible with the help of
meillo@131	2580 .Pn find ,
meillo@217	2581 but everything is more convenient
meillo@217	2582 if the deleted messages are collected in one place.
meillo@131	2583 .P
meillo@131	2584 The profile entry
meillo@131	2585 .Pe rmmproc
meillo@131	2586 (previously named
meillo@131	2587 .Pe Delete-Prog )
meillo@131	2588 was introduced very early to improve the situation.
meillo@164	2589 It could be set to any command, which would be executed to remove
meillo@131	2590 the specified messages.
meillo@217	2591 This had overridden the default action, described above.
meillo@217	2592 Refiling the to-be-removed files to a trash folder was the usual example.
meillo@131	2593 Nmh's man page
meillo@131	2594 .Mp rmm (1)
meillo@131	2595 proposes to set the
meillo@131	2596 .Pe rmmproc
meillo@131	2597 to
meillo@131	2598 .Cl "refile +d
meillo@217	2599 to move messages to the trash folder
meillo@217	2600 .Fn +d
meillo@131	2601 instead of renaming them with the backup prefix.
meillo@217	2602 The man page additionally proposes the expunge command
meillo@131	2603 .Cl "rm `mhpath +d all`
meillo@168	2604 to empty the trash folder.
meillo@131	2605 .P
meillo@217	2606 Removing messages in such a way has advantages:
meillo@217	2607 .LI 1
meillo@131	2608 The mail storage is prevented from being cluttered with removed messages
meillo@131	2609 because they are all collected in one place.
meillo@131	2610 Existing and removed messages are thus separated more strictly.
meillo@217	2611 .LI 2
meillo@131	2612 No backup files are silently overwritten.
meillo@217	2613 .LI 3
meillo@217	2614 Most important, however, removed messages are kept in the MH domain.
meillo@131	2615 Messages in the trash folder can be listed like those in any other folder.
meillo@131	2616 Deleted messages can be displayed like any other messages.
meillo@169	2617 .Pn refile
meillo@169	2618 can restore deleted messages.
meillo@131	2619 All operations on deleted files are still covered by the MH tools.
meillo@131	2620 The trash folder is just like any other folder in the mail storage.
meillo@131	2621 .P
meillo@131	2622 Similar to the draft folder case, I dropped the old backup prefix approach
meillo@131	2623 in favor for replacing it by the better suiting trash folder system.
meillo@131	2624 Hence,
meillo@131	2625 .Pn rmm
meillo@131	2626 calls
meillo@131	2627 .Pn refile
meillo@131	2628 to move the to-be-removed message to the trash folder,
meillo@131	2629 .Fn +trash
meillo@131	2630 by default.
meillo@164	2631 To sweep it clean, the user can use
meillo@131	2632 .Cl "rmm -unlink +trash a" ,
meillo@131	2633 where the
meillo@131	2634 .Sw -unlink
meillo@131	2635 switch causes the files to be unlinked.
meillo@168	2636 .Ci 8edc5aaf86f9f77124664f6801bc6c6cdf258173
meillo@168	2637 .Ci ca0b3e830b86700d9e5e31b1784de2bdcaf58fc5
meillo@131	2638 .P
meillo@217	2639 Dropping the legacy approach and converting to the new approach
meillo@217	2640 completely, simplified the code base.
meillo@131	2641 The relationship between
meillo@131	2642 .Pn rmm
meillo@131	2643 and
meillo@131	2644 .Pn refile
meillo@131	2645 was inverted.
meillo@131	2646 In mmh,
meillo@131	2647 .Pn rmm
meillo@131	2648 invokes
meillo@217	2649 .Pn refile .
meillo@217	2650 That used to be the other way round.
meillo@131	2651 Yet, the relationship is simpler now.
meillo@164	2652 Loops, like described in nmh's man page for
meillo@131	2653 .Mp refile (1),
meillo@164	2654 can no longer occur:
meillo@131	2655 .QS
meillo@131	2656 Since
meillo@131	2657 .Pn refile
meillo@131	2658 uses your
meillo@131	2659 .Pe rmmproc
meillo@131	2660 to delete the message, the
meillo@131	2661 .Pe rmmproc
meillo@131	2662 must NOT call
meillo@131	2663 .Pn refile
meillo@131	2664 without specifying
meillo@131	2665 .Sw -normmproc
meillo@131	2666 or you will create an infinite loop.
meillo@131	2667 .QE
meillo@131	2668 .LP
meillo@131	2669 .Pn rmm
meillo@131	2670 either unlinks a message with
meillo@131	2671 .Fu unlink()
meillo@131	2672 or invokes
meillo@131	2673 .Pn refile
meillo@131	2674 to move it to the trash folder.
meillo@131	2675 .Pn refile
meillo@131	2676 does not invoke any tools.
meillo@131	2677 .P
meillo@136	2678 By generalizing the message removal in the way that it became covered
meillo@136	2679 by the MH concepts made the whole system more powerful.
meillo@131	2680
meillo@131	2681
meillo@131	2682
meillo@131	2683
meillo@131	2684
meillo@133	2685 .H2 "Modern Defaults
meillo@133	2686 .P
meillo@133	2687 Nmh has a bunch of convenience-improving features inactive by default,
meillo@217	2688 although one can expect every new user to want them active.
meillo@133	2689 The reason they are inactive by default is the wish to stay compatible
meillo@133	2690 with old versions.
meillo@217	2691 But what are old versions?
meillo@136	2692 Still, the highly useful draft folder facility has not been activated
meillo@136	2693 by default although it was introduced over twenty-five years ago.
meillo@133	2694 .[
meillo@133	2695 rose romine real work
meillo@133	2696 .]
meillo@136	2697 The community seems not to care.
meillo@217	2698 .P
meillo@217	2699 In nmh, new users are required to first build up
meillo@217	2700 a profile before they can access the modern features.
meillo@136	2701 Without an extensive profile, the setup is hardly usable
meillo@133	2702 for modern emailing.
meillo@133	2703 The point is not the customization of the setup,
meillo@136	2704 but the need to activate generally useful facilities.
meillo@217	2705 Yet, the real problem lies less in enabling the features,
meillo@217	2706 as this is straight forward as soon as one knows what he wants.
meillo@168	2707 The real problem is that new users need deep insight into the project
meillo@217	2708 to discover the available but inactive features.
meillo@133	2709 To give an example, I needed one year of using nmh
meillo@133	2710 before I became aware of the existence of the attachment system.
meillo@133	2711 One could argue that this fact disqualifies my reading of the
meillo@133	2712 documentation.
meillo@133	2713 If I would have installed nmh from source back then, I could agree.
meillo@217	2714 Yet, I had used a pre-packaged version and had expected that it would
meillo@133	2715 just work.
meillo@133	2716 Nevertheless, I had been convinced by the concepts of MH already
meillo@133	2717 and I am a software developer,
meillo@133	2718 still I required a lot of time to discover the cool features.
meillo@133	2719 How can we expect users to be even more advanced than me,
meillo@217	2720 just to enable them to use MH in a convenient and modern way?
meillo@133	2721 Unless they are strongly convinced of the concepts, they will fail.
meillo@133	2722 I have seen friends of me giving up disappointed
meillo@133	2723 before they truly used the system,
meillo@133	2724 although they had been motivated in the beginning.
meillo@217	2725 New users suffer hard enough to get used to the tool chest approach,
meillo@179	2726 we developers should spare them further inconveniences.
meillo@133	2727 .P
meillo@136	2728 Maintaining compatibility for its own sake is bad,
meillo@217	2729 because the code base will collect more and more compatibility code.
meillo@200	2730 Sticking to the compatibility code means remaining limited;
meillo@168	2731 whereas adjusting to the changes renders the compatibility unnecessary.
meillo@217	2732 Keeping unused alternatives in the code for longer than a short
meillo@217	2733 grace time is a bad choice as they likely
meillo@217	2734 gather bugs by not being constantly tested.
meillo@136	2735 Also, the increased code size and the greater number of conditions
meillo@136	2736 increase the maintenance costs.
meillo@133	2737 If any MH implementation would be the back-end of widespread
meillo@133	2738 email clients with large user bases, compatibility would be more
meillo@133	2739 important.
meillo@133	2740 Yet, it appears as if this is not the case.
meillo@133	2741 Hence, compatibility is hardly important for technical reasons.
meillo@217	2742 Its importance originates from personal reasons rather.
meillo@133	2743 Nmh's user base is small and old.
meillo@217	2744 Changing the interfaces causes inconvenience to long-term users of MH.
meillo@217	2745 It forces them to change their many years old MH configurations.
meillo@168	2746 I do understand this aspect, but by sticking to the old users,
meillo@217	2747 new users are kept from entering the world of MH.
meillo@217	2748 But the future lies in new users.
meillo@168	2749 In consequence, mmh invites new users by providing a convenient
meillo@168	2750 and modern setup, readily usable out-of-the-box.
meillo@133	2751 .P
meillo@136	2752 In mmh, all modern features are active by default and many previous
meillo@217	2753 approaches are removed or only accessible in a manual way.
meillo@136	2754 New default features include:
meillo@133	2755 .BU
meillo@133	2756 The attachment system (\c
meillo@217	2757 .Hd Attach )
meillo@217	2758 .Ci 8ff284ff9167eff8f5349481529332d59ed913b1 .
meillo@133	2759 .BU
meillo@133	2760 The draft folder facility (\c
meillo@217	2761 .Fn +drafts )
meillo@217	2762 .Ci 337338b404931f06f0db2119c9e145e8ca5a9860 .
meillo@133	2763 .BU
meillo@133	2764 The unseen sequence (`u')
meillo@133	2765 .Ci c2360569e1d8d3678e294eb7c1354cb8bf7501c1
meillo@217	2766 and the sequence negation prefix (`!')
meillo@217	2767 .Ci db74c2bd004b2dc9bf8086a6d8bf773ac051f3cc .
meillo@133	2768 .BU
meillo@217	2769 Quoting the original message in the reply
meillo@217	2770 .Ci 67411b1f95d6ec987b4c732459e1ba8a8ac192c6 .
meillo@133	2771 .BU
meillo@217	2772 Forwarding messages using MIME
meillo@217	2773 .Ci 6e271608b7b9c23771523f88d23a4d3593010cf1 .
meillo@171	2774 .LP
meillo@217	2775 An mmh setup with a profile that defines only the path to the
meillo@136	2776 mail storage, is already convenient to use.
meillo@217	2777 Again, Paul Vixie's supports the direction I took:
meillo@136	2778 ``the `main branch' should just be modern''.
meillo@136	2779 .[
meillo@136	2780 paul vixie edginess nmh-workers
meillo@136	2781 .]
meillo@131	2782
meillo@133	2783
meillo@133	2784
meillo@133	2785
meillo@133	2786
meillo@133	2787 .\" --------------------------------------------------------------
meillo@131	2788 .H1 "Styling
meillo@22	2789 .P
meillo@118	2790 Kernighan and Pike have emphasized the importance of style in the
meillo@219	2791 preface of \fPThe Practice of Programming\fP:
meillo@118	2792 .[ [
meillo@118	2793 kernighan pike practice of programming
meillo@118	2794 .], p. x]
meillo@118	2795 .QS
meillo@118	2796 Chapter 1 discusses programming style.
meillo@219	2797 Good style is so important to good programming that we have chosen
meillo@118	2798 to cover it first.
meillo@118	2799 .QE
meillo@168	2800 This section covers changes in mmh that were guided by the desire
meillo@118	2801 to improve on style.
meillo@219	2802 Many of them follow the advice given in the quoted book.
meillo@118	2803
meillo@118	2804
meillo@127	2805
meillo@127	2806
meillo@127	2807 .H2 "Code Style
meillo@154	2808 .Id code-style
meillo@118	2809 .P
meillo@118	2810 .U3 "Indentation Style
meillo@118	2811 .P
meillo@219	2812 Indentation styles are the holy cow of programming.
meillo@219	2813 Kernighan and Pike write:
meillo@118	2814 .[ [
meillo@118	2815 kernighan pike practice of programming
meillo@118	2816 .], p. 10]
meillo@118	2817 .QS
meillo@118	2818 Programmers have always argued about the layout of programs,
meillo@118	2819 but the specific style is much less important than its consistent
meillo@118	2820 application.
meillo@121	2821 Pick one style, preferably ours, use it consistently, and don't waste
meillo@118	2822 time arguing.
meillo@118	2823 .QE
meillo@118	2824 .P
meillo@118	2825 I agree that the constant application is most important,
meillo@118	2826 but I believe that some styles have advantages over others.
meillo@118	2827 For instance the indentation with tab characters only.
meillo@219	2828 The number of tabs corresponds to the nesting level \(en
meillo@118	2829 one tab, one level.
meillo@219	2830 Tab characters provide flexible visual appearance because developers
meillo@219	2831 can adjust their width as prefered.
meillo@219	2832 There is no more need to check for the correct mixture of
meillo@219	2833 tabs and spaces.
meillo@219	2834 Two simple rules ensure the integrity and flexibility of the visual
meillo@219	2835 appearance:
meillo@219	2836 .LI 1
meillo@219	2837 Leading whitespace must consist of tabs only.
meillo@219	2838 .LI 2
meillo@219	2839 All other whitespace should be spaces.
meillo@219	2840 .LP
meillo@121	2841 Although reformatting existing code should be avoided, I did it.
meillo@200	2842 I did not waste time arguing; I just reformatted the code.
meillo@118	2843 .Ci a485ed478abbd599d8c9aab48934e7a26733ecb1
meillo@118	2844
meillo@118	2845 .U3 "Comments
meillo@118	2846 .P
meillo@219	2847 Kernighan and Pike demand: ``Don't belabor the obvious''.
meillo@118	2848 .[ [
meillo@118	2849 kernighan pike practice of programming
meillo@118	2850 .], p. 23]
meillo@219	2851 Following the advice, I removed unnecessary comments.
meillo@219	2852 For instance, I removed all comments in the following code excerpt
meillo@219	2853 .Ci 426543622b377fc5d091455cba685e114b6df674 :
meillo@118	2854 .VS
meillo@120	2855 context_replace(curfolder, folder); /* update current folder */
meillo@120	2856 seq_setcur(mp, mp->lowsel); /* update current message */
meillo@120	2857 seq_save(mp); /* synchronize message sequences */
meillo@120	2858 folder_free(mp); /* free folder/message structure */
meillo@120	2859 context_save(); /* save the context file */
meillo@120	2860
meillo@120	2861 [...]
meillo@120	2862
meillo@120	2863 int c; /* current character */
meillo@120	2864 char cp; / miscellaneous character pointer */
meillo@120	2865
meillo@120	2866 [...]
meillo@120	2867
meillo@120	2868 /* NUL-terminate the field */
meillo@120	2869 *cp = '\0';
meillo@118	2870 VE
meillo@118	2871 .P
meillo@219	2872 The information in each of the comments was present in the code
meillo@219	2873 statements already, except for the NUL-termination, which became
meillo@219	2874 obvious from the context.
meillo@136	2875
meillo@118	2876
meillo@118	2877 .U3 "Names
meillo@118	2878 .P
meillo@219	2879 Regarding this topic, Kernighan and Pike suggest:
meillo@118	2880 ``Use active names for functions''.
meillo@118	2881 .[ [
meillo@118	2882 kernighan pike practice of programming
meillo@118	2883 .], p. 4]
meillo@118	2884 One application of this rule was the rename of
meillo@118	2885 .Fu check_charset()
meillo@118	2886 to
meillo@219	2887 .Fu is_native_charset()
meillo@219	2888 .Ci 8d77b48284c58c135a6b2787e721597346ab056d .
meillo@219	2889 The same change additionally fixed a violation of ``Be accurate'',
meillo@181	2890 .[ [
meillo@181	2891 kernighan pike practice of programming
meillo@181	2892 .], p. 4]
meillo@219	2893 as the code did not match the expectation the function suggested.
meillo@219	2894 It did not compare charset names but prefixes of them only.
meillo@219	2895 In case the native charset was `ISO-8859-1', then
meillo@219	2896 .VS
meillo@219	2897 check_charset("ISO-8859-11", strlen("ISO-8859-11"))
meillo@219	2898 VE
meillo@219	2899 had returned true although the upper halves of the code pages
meillo@219	2900 are different.
meillo@118	2901 .P
meillo@118	2902 More important than using active names is using descriptive names.
meillo@145	2903 .VS
meillo@145	2904 m_unknown(in); /* the MAGIC invocation... */
meillo@145	2905 VE
meillo@145	2906 Renaming the obscure
meillo@118	2907 .Fu m_unknown()
meillo@219	2908 function was a delightful event, although it made the code less funny
meillo@219	2909 .Ci 611d68d19204d7cbf5bd585391249cb5bafca846 .
meillo@118	2910 .P
meillo@118	2911 Magic numbers are generally considered bad style.
meillo@118	2912 Obviously, Kernighan and Pike agree:
meillo@118	2913 ``Give names to magic numbers''.
meillo@118	2914 .[ [
meillo@118	2915 kernighan pike practice of programming
meillo@118	2916 .], p. 19]
meillo@219	2917 .P
meillo@219	2918 The argument
meillo@219	2919 .CW outnum
meillo@219	2920 of the function
meillo@219	2921 .Fu scan()
meillo@219	2922 in
meillo@219	2923 .Fn uip/scansbr.c
meillo@219	2924 holds the number of the message to be created.
meillo@219	2925 As well it encodes program logic with negative numbers and zero.
meillo@219	2926 This led to obscure code.
meillo@219	2927 I clarified the code by introducing two variables that extracted
meillo@219	2928 the hidden information:
meillo@219	2929 .VS
meillo@219	2930 int incing = (outnum > 0);
meillo@219	2931 int ismbox = (outnum != 0);
meillo@219	2932 VE
meillo@219	2933 The readable names are thus used in conditions;
meillo@219	2934 the variable
meillo@219	2935 .CW outnum
meillo@219	2936 is used only to extract ordinary message numbers
meillo@219	2937 .Ci b8b075c77be7794f3ae9ff0e8cedb12b48fd139f .
meillo@219	2938 .P
meillo@219	2939 Through the clarity improvement of the change detours in the program
meillo@219	2940 logic of related code parts became apparent.
meillo@219	2941 The implementation was simplified.
meillo@219	2942 This possibility to improve had been invisible before
meillo@219	2943 .Ci aa60b0ab5e804f8befa890c0a6df0e3143ce0723 .
meillo@219	2944 .P
meillo@219	2945 The names just described were a first step, yet the situation
meillo@219	2946 was further improved by giving names to the magic values of
meillo@219	2947 .CW outnum :
meillo@118	2948 .VS
meillo@118	2949 #define SCN_MBOX (-1)
meillo@118	2950 #define SCN_FOLD 0
meillo@118	2951 VE
meillo@219	2952 The two variables were updated thereafter as well:
meillo@219	2953 .VS
meillo@219	2954 int incing = (outnum != SCN_MBOX && outnum != SCN_FOLD);
meillo@219	2955 int scanfolder = (outnum == SCN_FOLD);
meillo@219	2956 VE
meillo@219	2957 Furthermore,
meillo@219	2958 .CW ismbox
meillo@219	2959 was replaced by
meillo@219	2960 .CW scanfolder
meillo@219	2961 because that matched better to the program logic.
meillo@118	2962 .Ci 7ffb36d28e517a6f3a10272056fc127592ab1c19
meillo@219	2963
meillo@118	2964
meillo@133	2965
meillo@133	2966
meillo@133	2967 .H2 "Structural Rework
meillo@133	2968 .P
meillo@219	2969 Although the stylistic changes described already improve the
meillo@219	2970 readability of the source code, all of them were changes ``in the small''.
meillo@219	2971 Structural changes, in contrast, affect much larger code areas.
meillo@219	2972 They are more difficult to accomplish but lead to larger improvements,
meillo@219	2973 especially as they often influence the outer shape of the tools as well.
meillo@118	2974 .P
meillo@118	2975 At the end of their chapter on style,
meillo@118	2976 Kernighan and Pike ask: ``But why worry about style?''
meillo@181	2977 .[ [
meillo@181	2978 kernighan pike practice of programming
meillo@219	2979 .], p. 28].
meillo@219	2980 Following are two examples of structural rework that demonstrate
meillo@136	2981 why style is important in the first place.
meillo@136	2982
meillo@136	2983
meillo@136	2984 .U3 "Rework of \f(CWanno\fP
meillo@118	2985 .P
meillo@120	2986 Until 2002,
meillo@120	2987 .Pn anno
meillo@219	2988 had six functional command line switches:
meillo@120	2989 .Sw -component
meillo@120	2990 and
meillo@120	2991 .Sw -text ,
meillo@219	2992 each with an argument,
meillo@120	2993 and the two pairs of flags,
meillo@120	2994 .Sw -[no]date
meillo@120	2995 and
meillo@120	2996 .Sw -[no]inplace .
meillo@120	2997 Then Jon Steinhart introduced his attachment system.
meillo@120	2998 In need for more advanced annotation handling, he extended
meillo@120	2999 .Pn anno .
meillo@120	3000 He added five more switches:
meillo@120	3001 .Sw -draft ,
meillo@120	3002 .Sw -list ,
meillo@120	3003 .Sw -delete ,
meillo@120	3004 .Sw -append ,
meillo@120	3005 and
meillo@120	3006 .Sw -number ,
meillo@219	3007 the last one taking an argument
meillo@219	3008 .Ci 7480dbc14bc90f2d872d434205c0784704213252 .
meillo@120	3009 Later,
meillo@120	3010 .Sw -[no]preserve
meillo@219	3011 was added as well
meillo@219	3012 .Ci d9b1d57351d104d7ec1a5621f090657dcce8cb7f .
meillo@120	3013 Then, the Synopsis section of the man page
meillo@120	3014 .Mp anno (1)
meillo@120	3015 read:
meillo@120	3016 .VS
meillo@219	3017 anno [+folder] [msgs] [-component f(CIfieldfP] [-inplace \| -noinplace]
meillo@120	3018 [-date \| -nodate] [-draft] [-append] [-list] [-delete]
meillo@219	3019 [-number [f(CInumfP\|fPallfP]] [-preserve \| -nopreserve] [-version]
meillo@219	3020 [-help] [-text f(CIbodyfP]
meillo@120	3021 VE
meillo@120	3022 .LP
meillo@120	3023 The implementation followed the same structure.
meillo@120	3024 Problems became visible when
meillo@120	3025 .Cl "anno -list -number 42
meillo@219	3026 worked on the current message instead of on message number 42,
meillo@120	3027 and
meillo@120	3028 .Cl "anno -list -number l:5
meillo@124	3029 did not work on the last five messages but failed with the mysterious
meillo@120	3030 error message: ``anno: missing argument to -list''.
meillo@121	3031 Yet, the invocation matched the specification in the man page.
meillo@120	3032 There, the correct use of
meillo@120	3033 .Sw -number
meillo@120	3034 was defined as being
meillo@120	3035 .Cl "[-number [num\|all]]
meillo@120	3036 and the textual description for the combination with
meillo@120	3037 .Sw -list
meillo@120	3038 read:
meillo@120	3039 .QS
meillo@164	3040 The
meillo@164	3041 .Sw -list
meillo@164	3042 option produces a listing of the field bodies for
meillo@120	3043 header fields with names matching the specified component,
meillo@164	3044 one per line. The listing is numbered, starting at 1, if the
meillo@164	3045 .Sw -number
meillo@164	3046 option is also used.
meillo@120	3047 .QE
meillo@120	3048 .LP
meillo@120	3049 The problem was manifold.
meillo@120	3050 Semantically, the argument to the
meillo@120	3051 .Sw -number
meillo@120	3052 switch is only necessary in combination with
meillo@120	3053 .Sw -delete ,
meillo@120	3054 but not with
meillo@120	3055 .Sw -list .
meillo@219	3056 The code, however, required a numeric argument in any case.
meillo@219	3057 If the argument was missing or non-numeric,
meillo@219	3058 .Pn anno
meillo@219	3059 aborted with an error message that additionally had an off-by-one error.
meillo@219	3060 It printed the name of the switch one before the concerned one.
meillo@120	3061 .P
meillo@219	3062 Trying to fix these problems on the surface would not have solved them.
meillo@219	3063 They originate from a discrepance between the
meillo@120	3064 structure of the problem and the structure implemented in the program.
meillo@219	3065 Such structural differences can only be solved by adjusting the
meillo@219	3066 structure of the implementation to the structure of the problem.
meillo@120	3067 .P
meillo@219	3068 Steinhart had added the new
meillo@120	3069 .Sw -list
meillo@120	3070 and
meillo@120	3071 .Sw -delete
meillo@219	3072 switches in a style similar to the other switches though
meillo@219	3073 they are of structural different type.
meillo@120	3074 Semantically,
meillo@120	3075 .Sw -list
meillo@120	3076 and
meillo@120	3077 .Sw -delete
meillo@219	3078 introduce operation modes.
meillo@120	3079 Historically,
meillo@120	3080 .Pn anno
meillo@120	3081 had only one operation mode: adding header fields.
meillo@219	3082 With the extension, two more modes were added:
meillo@120	3083 listing and deleting header fields.
meillo@120	3084 The structure of the code changes did not pay respect to this
meillo@219	3085 fundamental change.
meillo@120	3086 Neither the implementation nor the documentation did clearly
meillo@219	3087 declare the exclusive operation modes as such.
meillo@120	3088 Having identified the problem, I solved it by putting structure into
meillo@120	3089 .Pn anno
meillo@219	3090 and its documentation
meillo@219	3091 .Ci d54c8db8bdf01e8381890f7729bc0ef4a055ea11 .
meillo@120	3092 .P
meillo@173	3093 The difference is visible in both the code and the documentation.
meillo@219	3094 For instance in the following code excerpt:
meillo@120	3095 .VS
meillo@120	3096 int delete = -2; /* delete header element if set */
meillo@120	3097 int list = 0; /* list header elements if set */
meillo@120	3098 [...]
meillo@121	3099 case DELETESW: /* delete annotations */
meillo@121	3100 delete = 0;
meillo@121	3101 continue;
meillo@121	3102 case LISTSW: /* produce a listing */
meillo@121	3103 list = 1;
meillo@121	3104 continue;
meillo@120	3105 VE
meillo@121	3106 .LP
meillo@219	3107 which was replaced by:
meillo@120	3108 .VS
meillo@120	3109 static enum { MODE_ADD, MODE_DEL, MODE_LIST } mode = MODE_ADD;
meillo@120	3110 [...]
meillo@121	3111 case DELETESW: /* delete annotations */
meillo@121	3112 mode = MODE_DEL;
meillo@121	3113 continue;
meillo@121	3114 case LISTSW: /* produce a listing */
meillo@121	3115 mode = MODE_LIST;
meillo@121	3116 continue;
meillo@120	3117 VE
meillo@120	3118 .LP
meillo@121	3119 The replacement code does not only reflect the problem's structure better,
meillo@121	3120 it is easier to understand as well.
meillo@121	3121 The same applies to the documentation.
meillo@120	3122 The man page was completely reorganized to propagate the same structure.
meillo@219	3123 This is already visible in the Synopsis section:
meillo@120	3124 .VS
meillo@219	3125 anno [+folder] [msgs] [-component f(CIfieldfP] [-text fPbodyfP]
meillo@120	3126 [-append] [-date \| -nodate] [-preserve \| -nopreserve]
meillo@120	3127 [-Version] [-help]
meillo@120	3128
meillo@219	3129 anno -delete [+folder] [msgs] [-component fPfieldfP] [-text
meillo@219	3130 fPbodyfP] [-number fPnum fP\| fPall fP] [-preserve \| -nopreserve]
meillo@120	3131 [-Version] [-help]
meillo@120	3132
meillo@219	3133 anno -list [+folder] [msgs] [-component fPfieldfP] [-number]
meillo@120	3134 [-Version] [-help]
meillo@120	3135 VE
meillo@118	3136
meillo@58	3137
meillo@58	3138
meillo@133	3139 .U3 "Path Conversion
meillo@133	3140 .P
meillo@134	3141 Four kinds of path names can appear in MH:
meillo@171	3142 .LI 1
meillo@134	3143 Absolute Unix directory paths, like
meillo@134	3144 .Fn /etc/passwd .
meillo@171	3145 .LI 2
meillo@134	3146 Relative Unix directory paths, like
meillo@134	3147 .Fn ./foo/bar .
meillo@171	3148 .LI 3
meillo@134	3149 Absolute MH folder paths, like
meillo@219	3150 .Fn +projects/mmh .
meillo@171	3151 .LI 4
meillo@134	3152 Relative MH folder paths, like
meillo@134	3153 .Fn @subfolder .
meillo@171	3154 .LP
meillo@219	3155 Relative MH folder paths, are hardly documented
meillo@219	3156 although they are useful for large mail storages.
meillo@134	3157 The current mail folder is specified as `\c
meillo@134	3158 .Fn @ ',
meillo@134	3159 just like the current directory is specified as `\c
meillo@134	3160 .Fn . '.
meillo@134	3161 .P
meillo@134	3162 To allow MH tools to understand all four notations,
meillo@219	3163 they need to be able to convert between them.
meillo@134	3164 In nmh, these path name conversion functions were located in the files
meillo@134	3165 .Fn sbr/path.c
meillo@134	3166 (``return a pathname'') and
meillo@134	3167 .Fn sbr/m_maildir.c
meillo@134	3168 (``get the path for the mail directory'').
meillo@134	3169 The seven functions in the two files were documented with no more
meillo@134	3170 than two comments, which described obvious information.
meillo@219	3171 The signatures of the four exported functions did not explain their
meillo@219	3172 semantics:
meillo@219	3173 .LI 1
meillo@219	3174 .CW "char path(char , int);
meillo@219	3175 .LI 2
meillo@219	3176 .CW "char pluspath(char );
meillo@219	3177 .LI 3
meillo@219	3178 .CW "char m_mailpath(char );
meillo@219	3179 .LI 4
meillo@219	3180 .CW "char m_maildir(char );
meillo@134	3181 .P
meillo@219	3182 My investigations provided the following descriptions:
meillo@171	3183 .LI 1
meillo@134	3184 The second parameter of
meillo@134	3185 .Fu path()
meillo@219	3186 defines the type as which the path given in the first parameter should
meillo@219	3187 be treated.
meillo@134	3188 Directory paths are converted to absolute directory paths.
meillo@134	3189 Folder paths are converted to absolute folder paths.
meillo@173	3190 Folder paths must not include a leading `\fL@\fP' character.
meillo@134	3191 Leading plus characters are preserved.
meillo@134	3192 The result is a pointer to newly allocated memory.
meillo@171	3193 .LI 2
meillo@134	3194 .Fu pluspath()
meillo@134	3195 is a convenience-wrapper to
meillo@134	3196 .Fu path() ,
meillo@134	3197 to convert folder paths only.
meillo@134	3198 This function can not be used for directory paths.
meillo@134	3199 An empty string parameter causes a buffer overflow.
meillo@171	3200 .LI 3
meillo@134	3201 .Fu m_mailpath()
meillo@134	3202 converts directory paths to absolute directory paths.
meillo@173	3203 The characters `\fL+\fP' or `\fL@\fP' at the beginning of the path name are
meillo@134	3204 treated literal, i.e. as the first character of a relative directory path.
meillo@134	3205 Hence, this function can not be used for folder paths.
meillo@219	3206 In any case, the result is an absolute directory path,
meillo@219	3207 returned as a pointer to newly allocated memory.
meillo@171	3208 .LI 4
meillo@134	3209 .Fu m_maildir()
meillo@134	3210 returns the parameter unchanged if it is an absolute directory path
meillo@173	3211 or begins with the entry `\fL.\fP' or `\fL..\fP'.
meillo@134	3212 All other strings are prepended with the current working directory.
meillo@219	3213 Hence, this function can not be used for folder paths.
meillo@134	3214 The result is either an absolute directory path or a relative
meillo@219	3215 directory path, starting with dot or dot-dot.
meillo@134	3216 In contrast to the other functions, the result is a pointer to
meillo@134	3217 static memory.
meillo@134	3218 .P
meillo@134	3219 The situation was obscure, irritating, error-prone, and non-orthogonal.
meillo@219	3220 Additionally, no clear terminology was used to name the different
meillo@219	3221 kinds of path names.
meillo@219	3222 Sometimes, the names were even misleading, much as the first argument of
meillo@134	3223 .Fu m_mailpath() ,
meillo@219	3224 which was named
meillo@219	3225 .CW folder ,
meillo@219	3226 although
meillo@134	3227 .Fu m_mailpath()
meillo@219	3228 could not be used with MH folder arguments.
meillo@134	3229 .P
meillo@219	3230 I clarified the path name conversion by complete rework.
meillo@134	3231 First of all, the terminology needed to be defined.
meillo@134	3232 A path name is either in the Unix domain, then it is called
meillo@219	3233 \fIdirectory path\fP (\fIdirpath\fP for short) or it is in the MH domain,
meillo@219	3234 then it is called \fIfolder path\fP (\fIfolpath\fP for short).
meillo@134	3235 The two terms need to be used with strict distinction.
meillo@219	3236 Often a clear terminology indicates that the problem is understood.
meillo@134	3237 Second, I exploited the concept of path type indicators.
meillo@219	3238 By requiring every path name to start with a distinct type identifier,
meillo@219	3239 the conversion between the types could be fully automated.
meillo@219	3240 This allows the tools to accept paths of any type from the user.
meillo@134	3241 Therefore, it was necessary to require relative directory paths to be
meillo@134	3242 prefixed with a dot character.
meillo@134	3243 In consequence, the dot character could no longer be an alias for the
meillo@134	3244 current message.
meillo@134	3245 .Ci cff0e16925e7edbd25b8b9d6d4fbdf03e0e60c01
meillo@134	3246 Third, I created three new functions to replace the previous mess:
meillo@171	3247 .LI 1
meillo@134	3248 .Fu expandfol()
meillo@219	3249 converts folder paths to absolute folder paths.
meillo@134	3250 Directory paths are simply passed through.
meillo@134	3251 This function is to be used for folder paths only, thus the name.
meillo@134	3252 The result is a pointer to static memory.
meillo@171	3253 .LI 2
meillo@134	3254 .Fu expanddir()
meillo@134	3255 converts directory paths to absolute directory paths.
meillo@134	3256 Folder paths are treated as relative directory paths.
meillo@134	3257 This function is to be used for directory paths only, thus the name.
meillo@134	3258 The result is a pointer to static memory.
meillo@171	3259 .LI 3
meillo@134	3260 .Fu toabsdir()
meillo@134	3261 converts any type of path to an absolute directory path.
meillo@134	3262 This is the function of choice for path conversion.
meillo@134	3263 Absolute directory paths are the most general representation of a
meillo@134	3264 path name.
meillo@134	3265 The result is a pointer to static memory.
meillo@134	3266 .P
meillo@134	3267 The new functions have names that indicate their use.
meillo@134	3268 Two of the functions convert relative to absolute path names of the
meillo@134	3269 same type.
meillo@134	3270 The third function converts any path name type to the most general one,
meillo@134	3271 the absolute directory path.
meillo@134	3272 All of the functions return pointers to static memory.
meillo@219	3273 The file
meillo@219	3274 .Fn sbr/path.c
meillo@219	3275 contains the implementation of the functions;
meillo@134	3276 .Fn sbr/m_maildir.c
meillo@219	3277 was removed.
meillo@168	3278 .Ci d39e2c447b0d163a5a63f480b23d06edb7a73aa0
meillo@134	3279 .P
meillo@134	3280 Along with the path conversion rework, I also replaced
meillo@134	3281 .Fu getfolder(FDEF)
meillo@134	3282 with
meillo@134	3283 .Fu getdeffol()
meillo@134	3284 and
meillo@134	3285 .Fu getfolder(FCUR)
meillo@134	3286 with
meillo@134	3287 .Fu getcurfol() ,
meillo@219	3288 which only wraps
meillo@219	3289 .Fu expandfol(""@"")
meillo@219	3290 for convenience.
meillo@134	3291 This code was moved from
meillo@134	3292 .Fn sbr/getfolder.c
meillo@219	3293 into
meillo@219	3294 .Fn sbr/path.c
meillo@219	3295 as well.
meillo@168	3296 .Ci d39e2c447b0d163a5a63f480b23d06edb7a73aa0
meillo@134	3297 .P
meillo@134	3298 The related function
meillo@134	3299 .Fu etcpath()
meillo@219	3300 is now included in
meillo@134	3301 .Fn sbr/path.c ,
meillo@168	3302 too
meillo@168	3303 .Ci b4c29794c12099556151d93a860ee51badae2e35 .
meillo@134	3304 Previously, it had been located in
meillo@219	3305 .Fn config/config.c .
meillo@134	3306 .P
meillo@219	3307 Now,
meillo@134	3308 .Fn sbr/path.c
meillo@219	3309 contains all path handling code.
meillo@219	3310 Besides being less code, its readability is highly improved.
meillo@219	3311 The functions follow a common style and are well documented.
meillo@133	3312
meillo@133	3313
meillo@133	3314
meillo@133	3315
meillo@133	3316 .H2 "Profile Reading
meillo@133	3317 .P
meillo@220	3318 The MH profile contains the configuration of a user-specific MH setup.
meillo@220	3319 MH tools read the profile right after starting up
meillo@220	3320 because it contains the location of the user's mail storage
meillo@138	3321 and similar settings that influence the whole setup.
meillo@220	3322 Furthermore, the profile contains the default switches for the tools
meillo@220	3323 as well.
meillo@220	3324 The context file is read along with the profile.
meillo@138	3325 .P
meillo@138	3326 For historic reasons, some MH tools did not read the profile and context.
meillo@138	3327 Among them were
meillo@138	3328 .Pn post /\c
meillo@138	3329 .Pn spost ,
meillo@138	3330 .Pn mhmail ,
meillo@138	3331 and
meillo@138	3332 .Pn slocal .
meillo@138	3333 The reason why these tools ignored the profile were not clearly stated.
meillo@220	3334 During a discussion on the nmh-workers mailing list,
meillo@181	3335 David Levine posted an explanation, quoting John Romine:
meillo@138	3336 .[
meillo@138	3337 nmh-workers levine post profile
meillo@138	3338 .]
meillo@220	3339
meillo@138	3340 .QS
meillo@138	3341 I asked John Romine and here's what he had to say, which
meillo@138	3342 agrees and provides an example that convinces me:
meillo@138	3343 .QS
meillo@164	3344 My take on this is that
meillo@164	3345 .Pn post
meillo@164	3346 should not be called by users directly, and it doesn't read the
meillo@164	3347 .Fn .mh_profile
meillo@138	3348 (only front-end UI programs read the profile).
meillo@138	3349 .QP
meillo@164	3350 For example, there can be contexts where
meillo@164	3351 .Pn post
meillo@164	3352 is called by a helper program (like `\c
meillo@164	3353 .Pn mhmail ')
meillo@164	3354 which may be run by a non-MH user.
meillo@164	3355 We don't want this to prompt the user to create an MH profile, etc.
meillo@138	3356 .QP
meillo@164	3357 My suggestion would be to have
meillo@164	3358 .Pn send
meillo@164	3359 pass a (hidden) `\c
meillo@164	3360 .Sw -fileproc
meillo@164	3361 .Ar proc '
meillo@164	3362 option to
meillo@164	3363 .Pn post
meillo@164	3364 if needed.
meillo@164	3365 You could also
meillo@164	3366 use an environment variable (I think
meillo@164	3367 .Pn send /\c
meillo@164	3368 .Pn whatnow
meillo@164	3369 do this).
meillo@138	3370 .QE
meillo@220	3371 .sp \n(PDu
meillo@164	3372 I think that's the way to go.
meillo@164	3373 My personal preference is to use a command line option,
meillo@164	3374 not an environment variable.
meillo@138	3375 .QE
meillo@220	3376
meillo@138	3377 .P
meillo@220	3378 To solve the problem that
meillo@138	3379 .Pn post
meillo@220	3380 does not honor the
meillo@138	3381 .Pe fileproc
meillo@138	3382 profile entry,
meillo@138	3383 the community roughly agreed that a switch
meillo@138	3384 .Sw -fileproc
meillo@138	3385 should be added to
meillo@138	3386 .Pn post
meillo@138	3387 to be able to pass a different fileproc.
meillo@138	3388 I strongly disagree with this approach because it does not solve
meillo@138	3389 the problem; it only removes a single symptom.
meillo@220	3390 The actual problem is that
meillo@138	3391 .Pn post
meillo@220	3392 does not behave as expected,
meillo@220	3393 though all programs should behave as expected.
meillo@220	3394 Clear and general concepts are a precondition for this.
meillo@220	3395 Thus, there should be no separation into ``front-end UI programs''
meillo@220	3396 and ones that ``should not be called by users directly''.
meillo@220	3397 The real solution is having all MH tools read the profile.
meillo@138	3398 .P
meillo@220	3399 But the problem has a further aspect,
meillo@220	3400 which originates from
meillo@220	3401 .Pn mhmail
meillo@220	3402 mainly.
meillo@138	3403 .Pn mhmail
meillo@138	3404 was intended to be a replacement for
meillo@138	3405 .Pn mailx
meillo@138	3406 on systems with MH installations.
meillo@220	3407 In difference to
meillo@220	3408 .Pn mailx ,
meillo@138	3409 .Pn mhmail
meillo@220	3410 used MH's
meillo@138	3411 .Pn post
meillo@220	3412 to send the message.
meillo@220	3413 The idea was that using
meillo@138	3414 .Pn mhmail
meillo@220	3415 should not be influenced whether the user had
meillo@138	3416 MH set up for himself or not.
meillo@220	3417 Therefore
meillo@138	3418 .Pn mhmail
meillo@220	3419 had not read the profile.
meillo@138	3420 As
meillo@138	3421 .Pn mhmail
meillo@138	3422 used
meillo@138	3423 .Pn post ,
meillo@138	3424 .Pn post
meillo@220	3425 was not allowed to read the profile neither.
meillo@138	3426 This is the reason for the actual problem.
meillo@220	3427 Yet, this was not considered much of a problem because
meillo@138	3428 .Pn post
meillo@138	3429 was not intended to be used by users directly.
meillo@220	3430 To invoke
meillo@220	3431 .Pn post ,
meillo@138	3432 .Pn send
meillo@220	3433 was used an a front-end.
meillo@138	3434 .Pn send
meillo@138	3435 read the profile and passed all relevant values on the command line to
meillo@138	3436 .Pn post
meillo@138	3437 \(en an awkward solution.
meillo@138	3438 .P
meillo@138	3439 The important insight is that
meillo@138	3440 .Pn mhmail
meillo@220	3441 is a wolf in sheep's clothing.
meillo@220	3442 This alien tool broke the concepts because it was treated like
meillo@220	3443 a normal MH tool.
meillo@138	3444 Instead it should have been treated accordingly to its foreign style.
meillo@220	3445 .P
meillo@220	3446 The solution is not to prevent the tools from reading the profile but
meillo@220	3447 to instruct them to read a different profile.
meillo@138	3448 .Pn mhmail
meillo@220	3449 could have set up a well-defined profile and caused the following
meillo@138	3450 .Pn post
meillo@220	3451 to use this profile by exporting an environment variable.
meillo@220	3452 With this approach, no special cases would have been introduced
meillo@220	3453 and no surprises would have been caused.
meillo@220	3454 By writing a wrapper program to provide a clean temporary profile,
meillo@220	3455 the concept could have been generalized orthogonally to the whole
meillo@220	3456 MH tool chest.
meillo@220	3457 .P
meillo@220	3458 In mmh, the wish to have
meillo@220	3459 .Pn mhmail
meillo@220	3460 as a replacement for
meillo@220	3461 .Pn mailx
meillo@220	3462 is considered obsolete.
meillo@220	3463 Mmh's
meillo@220	3464 .Pn mhmail
meillo@220	3465 does no longer cover this use-case
meillo@220	3466 .Ci d36e56e695fe1c482c7920644bfbb6386ac9edb0 .
meillo@220	3467 Currently,
meillo@220	3468 .Pn mhmail
meillo@220	3469 is in a transition state
meillo@220	3470 .Ci 32d4f9daaa70519be3072479232ff7be0500d009 .
meillo@220	3471 It may become a front-end to
meillo@220	3472 .Pn comp ,
meillo@220	3473 which provides an alternative interface which can be more convenient
meillo@220	3474 in some cases.
meillo@220	3475 This would convert
meillo@220	3476 .Pn mhmail
meillo@220	3477 into an ordinary MH tool.
meillo@220	3478 If, however, this idea does not convince, then
meillo@220	3479 .Pn mhmail
meillo@220	3480 will be removed.
meillo@220	3481 .P
meillo@220	3482 In the mmh tool chest, every program reads the profile.
meillo@220	3483 (\c
meillo@220	3484 .Pn slocal
meillo@220	3485 is not considered part of the mmh tool chest (cf. Sec.
meillo@220	3486 .Cf slocal ).)
meillo@220	3487 Mmh has no
meillo@220	3488 .Pn post
meillo@220	3489 program, but it has
meillo@220	3490 .Pn spost ,
meillo@220	3491 which now does read the profile
meillo@220	3492 .Ci 3e017a7abbdf69bf0dff7a4073275961eda1ded8 .
meillo@220	3493 Following this change,
meillo@220	3494 .Pn send
meillo@220	3495 and
meillo@220	3496 .Pn spost
meillo@220	3497 can be considered for merging.
meillo@220	3498 Besides
meillo@220	3499 .Pn send ,
meillo@220	3500 .Pn spost
meillo@220	3501 is only invoked directly by the to-be-changed
meillo@220	3502 .Pn mhmail
meillo@220	3503 implementation and by
meillo@220	3504 .Pn rcvdist ,
meillo@220	3505 which requires rework anyway.
meillo@220	3506
meillo@220	3507 .P
meillo@220	3508 Jeffrey Honig quoted Marshall T. Rose explaining the decision that
meillo@220	3509 .Pn post
meillo@220	3510 ignores the profile:
meillo@138	3511 .[
meillo@197	3512 nmh-workers honig post profile
meillo@138	3513 .]
meillo@138	3514 .QS
meillo@138	3515 when you run mh commands in a script, you want all the defaults to be
meillo@138	3516 what the man page says.
meillo@138	3517 when you run a command by hand, then you want your own defaults...
meillo@138	3518 .QE
meillo@138	3519 .LP
meillo@220	3520 The explanation neither matches the problem concered exactly
meillo@220	3521 nor is the interpretation clear.
meillo@220	3522 If the described desire addresses the technical level,
meillo@220	3523 then it conflicts fundametally with the Unix philosophy,
meillo@220	3524 precisely because the indistinquishability of human and script
meillo@220	3525 input is the main reason for the huge software leverage in Unix.
meillo@220	3526 If, however, the described desire addresses the user's view,
meillo@220	3527 then different technical solutions are more appropriate.
meillo@220	3528 The two cases can be regarded simply as two different MH setups.
meillo@220	3529 Hence, mapping the problem of different behavior between interactive and
meillo@220	3530 automated use on the concept of switching between different profiles,
meillo@220	3531 marks it already solved.
meillo@133	3532
meillo@133	3533
meillo@127	3534
meillo@121	3535 .H2 "Standard Libraries
meillo@22	3536 .P
meillo@121	3537 MH is one decade older than the POSIX and ANSI C standards.
meillo@121	3538 Hence, MH included own implementations of functions
meillo@220	3539 that were neither standardized nor widely available, back then.
meillo@220	3540 Today, twenty years after POSIX and ANSI C were published,
meillo@220	3541 developers can expect that systems comply with these standards.
meillo@121	3542 In consequence, MH-specific replacements for standard functions
meillo@121	3543 can and should be dropped.
meillo@220	3544 Kernighan and Pike advise: ``Use standard libraries''.
meillo@121	3545 .[ [
meillo@121	3546 kernighan pike practice of programming
meillo@121	3547 .], p. 196]
meillo@121	3548 Actually, MH had followed this advice in history,
meillo@220	3549 but it had not adjusted to more recent changes in this field.
meillo@121	3550 The
meillo@121	3551 .Fu snprintf()
meillo@121	3552 function, for instance, was standardized with C99 and is available
meillo@121	3553 almost everywhere because of its high usefulness.
meillo@220	3554 Thus, the project's own implementation of
meillo@121	3555 .Fu snprintf()
meillo@123	3556 was dropped in March 2012 in favor for using the one of the
meillo@220	3557 standard library
meillo@220	3558 .Ci 0052f1024deb0a0a2fc2e5bacf93d45a5a9c9b32 .
meillo@123	3559 Such decisions limit the portability of mmh
meillo@173	3560 if systems do not support these standardized and widespread functions.
meillo@123	3561 This compromise is made because mmh focuses on the future.
meillo@121	3562 .P
meillo@220	3563 As I am still in my twenties, have no programming experience from
meillo@220	3564 past decades.
meillo@220	3565 I have not followed the evolution of C through time.
meillo@220	3566 I have not suffered from the the Unix wars.
meillo@121	3567 I have not longed for standardization.
meillo@121	3568 All my programming experience is from a time when ANSI C and POSIX
meillo@121	3569 were well established already.
meillo@220	3570 Thus, I needed to learn about the history in retrospective.
meillo@121	3571 I have only read a lot of books about the (good) old times.
meillo@220	3572 This put me in a difficult position when working with old code.
meillo@123	3573 I need to freshly acquire knowledge about old code constructs and ancient
meillo@123	3574 programming styles, whereas older programmers know these things by
meillo@123	3575 heart from their own experience.
meillo@123	3576 Being aware of the situation, I rather let people with more historic
meillo@220	3577 experience do the transition from ancient code constructs to
meillo@220	3578 standardized ones.
meillo@121	3579 Lyndon Nerenberg covered large parts of this task for the nmh project.
meillo@121	3580 He converted project-specific functions to POSIX replacements,
meillo@121	3581 also removing the conditionals compilation of now standardized features.
meillo@220	3582 Ken Hornstein and David Levine had their part in this work, as well.
meillo@220	3583 Often, I only pulled the changes over from nmh into mmh.
meillo@220	3584 These changes include many commits, among them:
meillo@121	3585 .Ci 768b5edd9623b7238e12ec8dfc409b82a1ed9e2d
meillo@121	3586 .Ci 0052f1024deb0a0a2fc2e5bacf93d45a5a9c9b32 .
meillo@102	3587 .P
meillo@220	3588 Nevertheless, I worked on the task as well, tidying up the
meillo@220	3589 \fIMH standard library\fP,
meillo@220	3590 .Fn libmh.a .
meillo@220	3591 It is located in the
meillo@123	3592 .Fn sbr
meillo@220	3593 (``subroutines'') directory in the source tree and
meillo@220	3594 includes functions that mmh tools usually need.
meillo@123	3595 Among them are MH-specific functions for profile, context, sequence,
meillo@123	3596 and folder handling, but as well
meillo@123	3597 MH-independent functions, such as auxiliary string functions,
meillo@123	3598 portability interfaces and error-checking wrappers for critical
meillo@123	3599 functions of the standard library.
meillo@220	3600 .BU
meillo@123	3601 I have replaced the
meillo@121	3602 .Fu atooi()
meillo@121	3603 function with calls to
meillo@220	3604 .Fu strtoul() ,
meillo@220	3605 setting the third parameter, the base, to eight.
meillo@123	3606 .Fu strtoul()
meillo@220	3607 is part of C89 and thus considered safe to use
meillo@220	3608 .Ci c490c51b3c0f8871b6953bd0c74551404f840a74 .
meillo@220	3609 .BU
meillo@121	3610 I did remove project-included fallback implementations of
meillo@121	3611 .Fu memmove()
meillo@121	3612 and
meillo@220	3613 .Fu strerror()
meillo@220	3614 .Ci b067ff5c465a5d243ce5a19e562085a9a1a97215 ,
meillo@121	3615 although Peter Maydell had re-included them into nmh in 2008
meillo@121	3616 to support SunOS 4.
meillo@121	3617 Nevertheless, these functions are part of ANSI C.
meillo@121	3618 Systems that do not even provide full ANSI C support should not
meillo@121	3619 put a load on mmh.
meillo@220	3620 .BU
meillo@121	3621 The
meillo@121	3622 .Fu copy()
meillo@180	3623 function copies the string in parameter one to the location in
meillo@180	3624 parameter two.
meillo@121	3625 In contrast to
meillo@121	3626 .Fu strcpy() ,
meillo@121	3627 it returns a pointer to the terminating null-byte in the destination area.
meillo@123	3628 The code was adjusted to replace
meillo@121	3629 .Fu copy()
meillo@123	3630 with
meillo@121	3631 .Fu strcpy() ,
meillo@121	3632 except within
meillo@121	3633 .Fu concat() ,
meillo@121	3634 where
meillo@121	3635 .Fu copy()
meillo@123	3636 was more convenient.
meillo@123	3637 Therefore, the definition of
meillo@121	3638 .Fu copy()
meillo@123	3639 was moved into the source file of
meillo@121	3640 .Fu concat()
meillo@220	3641 and its visibility it limited to that
meillo@220	3642 .Ci 552fd7253e5ee9e554c5c7a8248a6322aa4363bb .
meillo@220	3643 .BU
meillo@121	3644 The function
meillo@121	3645 .Fu r1bindex()
meillo@121	3646 had been a generalized version of
meillo@121	3647 .Fu basename()
meillo@121	3648 with minor differences.
meillo@121	3649 As all calls to
meillo@121	3650 .Fu r1bindex()
meillo@220	3651 had the slash (`\fL/\fP') as delimiter anyway,
meillo@121	3652 replacing
meillo@121	3653 .Fu r1bindex()
meillo@121	3654 with the more specific and better-named function
meillo@121	3655 .Fu basename()
meillo@121	3656 became desirable.
meillo@121	3657 Unfortunately, many of the 54 calls to
meillo@121	3658 .Fu r1bindex()
meillo@123	3659 depended on a special behavior,
meillo@121	3660 which differed from the POSIX specification for
meillo@121	3661 .Fu basename() .
meillo@121	3662 Hence,
meillo@121	3663 .Fu r1bindex()
meillo@121	3664 was kept but renamed to
meillo@123	3665 .Fu mhbasename() ,
meillo@220	3666 setting the delimiter to the slash
meillo@220	3667 .Ci 240013872c392fe644bd4f79382d9f5314b4ea60 .
meillo@121	3668 For possible uses of
meillo@121	3669 .Fu r1bindex()
meillo@121	3670 with a different delimiter,
meillo@121	3671 the ANSI C function
meillo@121	3672 .Fu strrchr()
meillo@121	3673 provides the core functionality.
meillo@220	3674 .BU
meillo@121	3675 The
meillo@121	3676 .Fu ssequal()
meillo@121	3677 function \(en apparently for ``substring equal'' \(en
meillo@121	3678 was renamed to
meillo@121	3679 .Fu isprefix() ,
meillo@220	3680 because this is what it actually checked
meillo@220	3681 .Ci c20b4fa14515c7ab388ce35411d89a7a92300711.
meillo@220	3682 Its source file had included both of the following comments, no joke.
meillo@220	3683 .in -\n(PIu
meillo@121	3684 .VS
meillo@121	3685 /*
meillo@121	3686 * THIS CODE DOES NOT WORK AS ADVERTISED.
meillo@121	3687 * It is actually checking if s1 is a PREFIX of s2.
meillo@121	3688 * All calls to this function need to be checked to see
meillo@121	3689 * if that needs to be changed. Prefix checking is cheaper, so
meillo@121	3690 * should be kept if it's sufficient.
meillo@121	3691 */
meillo@121	3692
meillo@121	3693 /*
meillo@121	3694 * Check if s1 is a substring of s2.
meillo@121	3695 * If yes, then return 1, else return 0.
meillo@121	3696 */
meillo@121	3697 VE
meillo@220	3698 .in +\n(PIu
meillo@220	3699 Eventually, the function was completely replaced with calls to
meillo@220	3700 .Fu strncmp()
meillo@220	3701 .Ci b0b1dd37ff515578cf7cba51625189eb34a196cb .
meillo@121	3702
meillo@102	3703
meillo@102	3704
meillo@102	3705
meillo@133	3706
meillo@133	3707 .H2 "User Data Locations
meillo@133	3708 .P
meillo@133	3709 In nmh, a personal setup consists of the MH profile and the MH directory.
meillo@133	3710 The profile is a file named
meillo@133	3711 .Fn \&.mh_profile
meillo@133	3712 in the user's home directory.
meillo@133	3713 It contains the static configuration.
meillo@133	3714 It also contains the location of the MH directory in the profile entry
meillo@133	3715 .Pe Path .
meillo@133	3716 The MH directory contains the mail storage and is the first
meillo@220	3717 place to search for form files, scan formats, and similar
meillo@133	3718 configuration files.
meillo@133	3719 The location of the MH directory can be chosen freely by the user.
meillo@220	3720 The usual name is a directory named
meillo@133	3721 .Fn Mail
meillo@220	3722 in the user's home directory.
meillo@133	3723 .P
meillo@200	3724 The way MH data is split between profile and MH directory is a legacy.
meillo@133	3725 It is only sensible in a situation where the profile is the only
meillo@133	3726 configuration file.
meillo@133	3727 Why else should the mail storage and the configuration files be intermixed?
meillo@220	3728 They are of different kind:
meillo@220	3729 One kind is the data to be operated on and the other kind is
meillo@220	3730 the configuration to change how tools operate.
meillo@133	3731 Splitting the configuration between the profile and the MH directory
meillo@220	3732 is inappropriate, as well.
meillo@220	3733 I improved the situation by breaking compatibility.
meillo@133	3734 .P
meillo@220	3735 In mmh, personal data is grouped by type.
meillo@220	3736 This results in two distinct parts:
meillo@171	3737 the mail storage and the configuration.
meillo@220	3738 The mail storage directory still contains all the messages,
meillo@133	3739 but, in exception of public sequences files, nothing else.
meillo@133	3740 In difference to nmh, the auxiliary configuration files are no longer
meillo@133	3741 located there.
meillo@133	3742 Therefore, the directory is no longer called the user's \fIMH directory\fP
meillo@220	3743 but the user's \fImail storage\fP.
meillo@133	3744 Its location is still user-chosen, with the default name
meillo@220	3745 .Fn Mail
meillo@133	3746 in the user's home directory.
meillo@220	3747 The configuration is grouped together in the hidden directory
meillo@133	3748 .Fn \&.mmh
meillo@133	3749 in the user's home directory.
meillo@133	3750 This \fImmh directory\fP contains the context file, personal forms,
meillo@133	3751 scan formats, and the like, but also the user's profile, now named
meillo@133	3752 .Fn profile .
meillo@220	3753 The path to the profile is no longer
meillo@133	3754 .Fn $HOME/.mh_profile
meillo@220	3755 but
meillo@133	3756 .Fn $HOME/.mmh/profile .
meillo@220	3757 (The alternative of having file
meillo@133	3758 .Fn $HOME/.mh_profile
meillo@220	3759 and a configuration directory
meillo@133	3760 .Fn $HOME/.mmh
meillo@220	3761 appeared to be inconsistent.)
meillo@220	3762 .P
meillo@133	3763 The approach chosen for mmh is consistent, simple, and familiar to
meillo@133	3764 Unix users.
meillo@220	3765 The main achievement of the change is the clear and sensible separation
meillo@220	3766 of the mail storage and the configuration.
meillo@168	3767 .Ci 7030d7edb099bff36ded7548bb5380f7acab4f9b
meillo@133	3768 .P
meillo@220	3769 As MH allows users to have multiple MH setups,
meillo@220	3770 it is necessary to switch the profile.
meillo@133	3771 The profile is the single entry point to access the rest of a
meillo@133	3772 personal MH setup.
meillo@133	3773 In nmh, the environment variable
meillo@133	3774 .Ev MH
meillo@220	3775 is used to specify a different profile.
meillo@220	3776 To operate in the same MH setup with a separate context, the
meillo@133	3777 .Ev MHCONTEXT
meillo@220	3778 environment variable is used.
meillo@220	3779 This allows having a separate current folder in each terminal at
meillo@220	3780 the same time, for instance.
meillo@220	3781 In mmh, three environment variables replace the two of nmh.
meillo@133	3782 .Ev MMH
meillo@133	3783 overrides the default location of the mmh directory (\c
meillo@133	3784 .Fn .mmh ).
meillo@133	3785 .Ev MMHP
meillo@133	3786 and
meillo@133	3787 .Ev MMHC
meillo@220	3788 override the paths to the profile and context file, respectively.
meillo@133	3789 This approach allows the set of personal configuration files to be chosen
meillo@220	3790 independently of the profile, context, and mail storage.
meillo@133	3791 The new approach has no functional disadvantages,
meillo@133	3792 as every setup I can imagine can be implemented with both approaches,
meillo@220	3793 possibly even easier with the new one.
meillo@220	3794 .Ci 7030d7edb099bff36ded7548bb5380f7acab4f9b
meillo@133	3795
meillo@133	3796
meillo@133	3797
meillo@133	3798
meillo@133	3799
meillo@118	3800 .H2 "Modularization
meillo@220	3801 .Id modularization
meillo@118	3802 .P
meillo@123	3803 The source code of the mmh tools is located in the
meillo@122	3804 .Fn uip
meillo@123	3805 (``user interface programs'') directory.
meillo@180	3806 Each tool has a source file with the name of the command.
meillo@122	3807 For example,
meillo@122	3808 .Pn rmm
meillo@122	3809 is built from
meillo@122	3810 .Fn uip/rmm.c .
meillo@123	3811 Some source files are used for multiple programs.
meillo@122	3812 For example
meillo@122	3813 .Fn uip/scansbr.c
meillo@173	3814 is used for both
meillo@122	3815 .Pn scan
meillo@122	3816 and
meillo@122	3817 .Pn inc .
meillo@122	3818 In nmh, 49 tools were built from 76 source files.
meillo@123	3819 This is a ratio of 1.6 source files per program.
meillo@123	3820 32 programs depended on multiple source files;
meillo@123	3821 17 programs depended on one source file only.
meillo@122	3822 In mmh, 39 tools are built from 51 source files.
meillo@123	3823 This is a ratio of 1.3 source files per program.
meillo@123	3824 18 programs depend on multiple source files;
meillo@123	3825 21 programs depend on one source file only.
meillo@123	3826 (These numbers and the ones in the following text ignore the MH library
meillo@123	3827 as well as shell scripts and multiple names for the same program.)
meillo@122	3828 .P
meillo@123	3829 Splitting the source code of a large program into multiple files can
meillo@220	3830 increase the readability of its source code,
meillo@220	3831 but most of the mmh tools are small and straight-forward programs.
meillo@220	3832 In exception of the MIME handling tools (i.e.
meillo@122	3833 .Pn mhbuild ,
meillo@122	3834 .Pn mhstore ,
meillo@122	3835 .Pn show ,
meillo@220	3836 etc.),
meillo@220	3837 .Pn pick
meillo@220	3838 is the only tool with more than one thousand lines of source code.
meillo@220	3839 Splitting programs with less than one thousand lines of code into
meillo@220	3840 multiple source files leads seldom to better readability.
meillo@220	3841 For such tools, splitting still makes sense
meillo@220	3842 when parts of the code are reused in other programs
meillo@179	3843 and the reused code fragment is (1) not general enough
meillo@179	3844 for including it in the MH library
meillo@179	3845 or (2) has dependencies on a library that only few programs need.
meillo@122	3846 .Fn uip/packsbr.c ,
meillo@122	3847 for instance, provides the core program logic for the
meillo@122	3848 .Pn packf
meillo@122	3849 and
meillo@122	3850 .Pn rcvpack
meillo@122	3851 programs.
meillo@122	3852 .Fn uip/packf.c
meillo@122	3853 and
meillo@122	3854 .Fn uip/rcvpack.c
meillo@122	3855 mainly wrap the core function appropriately.
meillo@122	3856 No other tools use the folder packing functions.
meillo@123	3857 As another example,
meillo@123	3858 .Fn uip/termsbr.c
meillo@220	3859 accesses terminal properties, which requires linking with the
meillo@220	3860 \fItermcap\fP or a \fIcurses\fP library.
meillo@220	3861 If
meillo@123	3862 .Fn uip/termsbr.c
meillo@220	3863 is included in the MH library, then every program needs to be linked
meillo@220	3864 with termcap or curses, although only few of the programs use
meillo@220	3865 the library.
meillo@122	3866 .P
meillo@122	3867 The task of MIME handling is complex enough that splitting its code
meillo@122	3868 into multiple source files improves the readability.
meillo@122	3869 The program
meillo@122	3870 .Pn mhstore ,
meillo@122	3871 for instance, is compiled out of seven source files with 2\\|500
meillo@122	3872 lines of code in summary.
meillo@122	3873 The main code file
meillo@122	3874 .Fn uip/mhstore.c
meillo@220	3875 consists of 800 lines; the other 1\\|700 lines are code reused in
meillo@123	3876 other MIME handling tools.
meillo@123	3877 It seems to be worthwhile to bundle the generic MIME handling code into
meillo@123	3878 a MH-MIME library, as a companion to the MH standard library.
meillo@220	3879 This is left to be done.
meillo@122	3880 .P
meillo@169	3881 The work already accomplished focussed on the non-MIME tools.
meillo@122	3882 The amount of code compiled into each program was reduced.
meillo@123	3883 This eases the understanding of the code base.
meillo@122	3884 In nmh,
meillo@122	3885 .Pn comp
meillo@122	3886 was built from six source files:
meillo@122	3887 .Fn comp.c ,
meillo@122	3888 .Fn whatnowproc.c ,
meillo@122	3889 .Fn whatnowsbr.c ,
meillo@122	3890 .Fn sendsbr.c ,
meillo@122	3891 .Fn annosbr.c ,
meillo@122	3892 and
meillo@122	3893 .Fn distsbr.c .
meillo@122	3894 In mmh, it builds from only two:
meillo@122	3895 .Fn comp.c
meillo@122	3896 and
meillo@122	3897 .Fn whatnowproc.c .
meillo@123	3898 In nmh's
meillo@123	3899 .Pn comp ,
meillo@123	3900 the core function of
meillo@122	3901 .Pn whatnow ,
meillo@122	3902 .Pn send ,
meillo@122	3903 and
meillo@122	3904 .Pn anno
meillo@220	3905 were all compiled into
meillo@122	3906 .Pn comp .
meillo@123	3907 This saved the need to execute these programs with
meillo@220	3908 the expensive system calls
meillo@122	3909 .Fu fork()
meillo@122	3910 and
meillo@220	3911 .Fu exec() .
meillo@171	3912 Whereas this approach improved the time performance,
meillo@171	3913 it interwove the source code.
meillo@122	3914 Core functionalities were not encapsulated into programs but into
meillo@122	3915 function, which were then wrapped by programs.
meillo@122	3916 For example,
meillo@122	3917 .Fn uip/annosbr.c
meillo@122	3918 included the function
meillo@122	3919 .Fu annotate() .
meillo@122	3920 Each program that wanted to annotate messages, included the source file
meillo@123	3921 .Fn uip/annosbr.c
meillo@123	3922 and called
meillo@123	3923 .Fu annotate() .
meillo@123	3924 Because the function
meillo@123	3925 .Fu annotate()
meillo@123	3926 was used like the tool
meillo@123	3927 .Pn anno ,
meillo@123	3928 it had seven parameters, reflecting the command line switches of the tool.
meillo@122	3929 When another pair of command line switches was added to
meillo@122	3930 .Pn anno ,
meillo@122	3931 a rather ugly hack was implemented to avoid adding another parameter
meillo@220	3932 to the function
meillo@220	3933 .Ci d9b1d57351d104d7ec1a5621f090657dcce8cb7f .
meillo@122	3934 .P
meillo@122	3935 In mmh, the relevant code of
meillo@122	3936 .Pn comp
meillo@122	3937 comprises the two files
meillo@122	3938 .Fn uip/comp.c
meillo@122	3939 and
meillo@122	3940 .Fn uip/whatnowproc.c ,
meillo@220	3941 together 210 lines of code,
meillo@220	3942 whereas in nmh,
meillo@122	3943 .Pn comp
meillo@122	3944 comprises six files with 2\\|450 lines.
meillo@220	3945 Not all of the code in these six files is actually used by
meillo@122	3946 .Pn comp ,
meillo@220	3947 but the reader needed to read it all to know which parts are relevant.
meillo@220	3948 Understanding nmh's
meillo@122	3949 .Pn comp ,
meillo@123	3950 required understanding the inner workings of
meillo@122	3951 .Fn uip/annosbr.c
meillo@122	3952 first.
meillo@123	3953 To be sure to fully understand a program, its whole source code needs
meillo@122	3954 to be examined.
meillo@123	3955 Not doing so is a leap of faith, assuming that the developers
meillo@122	3956 have avoided obscure programming techniques.
meillo@220	3957 Here, it should be recalled that information passed in obscure ways
meillo@220	3958 through the program's source base, due to the aforementioned hack
meillo@220	3959 to save an additional parameter in nmh's
meillo@220	3960 .Pn anno .
meillo@220	3961 .P
meillo@220	3962 In mmh, understanding
meillo@220	3963 .Pn comp
meillo@220	3964 requires to read only 210 lines of code to read, whereas the amount
meillo@220	3965 is ten times more for nmh's
meillo@220	3966 .Pn comp .
meillo@220	3967 .P
meillo@220	3968 By separating the tools on the program-level,
meillo@220	3969 the boundaries are clearly visible, as the interfaces are calls to
meillo@122	3970 .Fu exec()
meillo@122	3971 rather than arbitrary function calls.
meillo@220	3972 Additionally, this kind of separation is more strict because
meillo@220	3973 it is technically enforced by the operating system;
meillo@220	3974 it can not be simply bypassed with global variables.
meillo@220	3975 Good separation simplifies the understanding of program code
meillo@220	3976 because the area influenced by any particular statement is small.
meillo@220	3977 As I have read a lot in nmh's code base during the last two years,
meillo@220	3978 I have learned about the easy and the difficult parts.
meillo@220	3979 In my observation, the understanding of code is enormously eased
meillo@220	3980 if the influenced area is small and clearly bounded.
meillo@123	3981 .P
meillo@220	3982 Yet, the real problem is another:
meillo@123	3983 Nmh violates the golden ``one tool, one job'' rule of the Unix philosophy.
meillo@123	3984 Understanding
meillo@122	3985 .Pn comp
meillo@123	3986 requires understanding
meillo@123	3987 .Fn uip/annosbr.c
meillo@123	3988 and
meillo@123	3989 .Fn uip/sendsbr.c
meillo@123	3990 because
meillo@123	3991 .Pn comp
meillo@220	3992 annotates and sends messages.
meillo@220	3993 In nmh, there surely exist the tools
meillo@220	3994 .Pn anno
meillo@220	3995 and
meillo@122	3996 .Pn send ,
meillo@220	3997 which cover these jobs,
meillo@220	3998 but
meillo@122	3999 .Pn comp
meillo@123	4000 and
meillo@122	4001 .Pn repl
meillo@122	4002 and
meillo@122	4003 .Pn forw
meillo@122	4004 and
meillo@122	4005 .Pn dist
meillo@122	4006 and
meillo@122	4007 .Pn whatnow
meillo@122	4008 and
meillo@220	4009 .Pn viamail
meillo@220	4010 \(en they all (!) \(en
meillo@220	4011 have the same annotating and sending functions included, once more.
meillo@220	4012 As a result,
meillo@123	4013 .Pn comp
meillo@123	4014 sends messages without using
meillo@123	4015 .Pn send .
meillo@123	4016 The situation is the same as if
meillo@123	4017 .Pn grep
meillo@220	4018 would page its output without using
meillo@123	4019 .Pn more
meillo@123	4020 just because both programs are part of the same code base.
meillo@123	4021 .P
meillo@220	4022 The clear separation on the surface of nmh
meillo@220	4023 \(en the tool chest approach \(en
meillo@123	4024 is violated on the level below.
meillo@122	4025 This violation is for the sake of time performance.
meillo@220	4026 Decades ago, sacrificing readability and conceptional beauty
meillo@220	4027 for speed might have been necessary to prevent MH from being
meillo@220	4028 unusably slow, but today this is not the case anymore.
meillo@220	4029 No longer should speed improvements that became unnecessary be kept.
meillo@220	4030 No longer should readability or conceptional beauty be sacrificed.
meillo@220	4031 No longer should the Unix philosophy's ``one tool, one job''
meillo@220	4032 guideline be violated.
meillo@123	4033 Therefore, mmh's
meillo@123	4034 .Pn comp
meillo@220	4035 no longer sends messages.
meillo@220	4036 .P
meillo@123	4037 In mmh, different jobs are divided among separate programs that
meillo@122	4038 invoke each other as needed.
meillo@123	4039 In consequence,
meillo@123	4040 .Pn comp
meillo@123	4041 invokes
meillo@123	4042 .Pn whatnow
meillo@123	4043 which thereafter invokes
meillo@220	4044 .Pn send
meillo@168	4045 .Ci 3df5ab3c116e6d4a2fb4bb5cc9dfc5f781825815
meillo@220	4046 .Ci c73c00bfccd22ec77e9593f47462aeca4a8cd9c0 .
meillo@123	4047 The clear separation on the surface is maintained on the level below.
meillo@220	4048 Human users and other tools use the same interface \(en
meillo@123	4049 annotations, for example, are made by invoking
meillo@123	4050 .Pn anno ,
meillo@220	4051 no matter if requested by programs or by human beings
meillo@168	4052 .Ci 469a4163c2a1a43731d412eaa5d9cae7d670c48b
meillo@168	4053 .Ci aed384169af5204b8002d06e7a22f89197963d2d
meillo@220	4054 .Ci 3caf9e298a8861729ca8b8a84f57022b6f3ea742 .
meillo@123	4055 The decrease of tools built from multiple source files and thus
meillo@123	4056 the decrease of
meillo@123	4057 .Fn uip/*sbr.c
meillo@220	4058 files confirm the improvement
meillo@168	4059 .Ci 9e6d91313f01c96b4058d6bf419a8ca9a207bc33
meillo@168	4060 .ci 81744a46ac9f845d6c2b9908074d269275178d2e
meillo@168	4061 .Ci f0f858069d21111f0dbea510044593f89c9b0829
meillo@168	4062 .Ci 0503a6e9be34f24858b55b555a5c948182b9f24b
meillo@168	4063 .Ci 27826f9353e0f0b04590b7d0f8f83e60462b90f0
meillo@168	4064 .Ci d1da1f94ce62160aebb30df4063ccbc53768656b
meillo@220	4065 .Ci c42222869e318fff5dec395eca3e776db3075455 .
meillo@220	4066 This is also visible in the complexity of the build dependency graphs:
meillo@145	4067
meillo@220	4068 .sp
meillo@220	4069 Nmh:
meillo@220	4070 .BP input/deps-nmh.eps .5i
meillo@220	4071 .EP
meillo@220	4072 .sp
meillo@220	4073 Mmh:
meillo@220	4074 .BP input/deps-mmh.eps .8i
meillo@220	4075 .EP
meillo@145	4076
meillo@220	4077 The figures display all program to source file relationships
meillo@220	4078 that are not one-to-one,
meillo@220	4079 i.e. all programs that are built from multiple source files.
meillo@220	4080 The primary source file of each program is omited from the graph.