docs/master

annotate discussion.roff @ 121:edbc6e1dc636

New text on Standard Libraries plus spellchecking.
author markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de>
date Tue, 26 Jun 2012 22:06:20 +0200
parents e49780100ffb
children c234656329e0
rev   line source
meillo@58 1 .H0 "Discussion
meillo@0 2 .P
meillo@58 3 This main chapter discusses the practical work done in the mmh project.
meillo@104 4 It is structured along the goals to achieve.
meillo@104 5 The concrete work done
meillo@58 6 is described in the examples of how the general goals were achieved.
meillo@87 7 The discussion compares the current version of mmh with the state of
meillo@87 8 nmh just before the mmh project started, i.e. Fall 2011.
meillo@87 9 Current changes of nmh will be mentioned only as side notes.
meillo@87 10 .\" XXX where do I discuss the parallel development of nmh?
meillo@58 11
meillo@58 12
meillo@58 13
meillo@100 14 .H1 "Stream-Lining
meillo@58 15
meillo@0 16 .P
meillo@58 17 MH had been considered an all-in-one system for mail handling.
meillo@58 18 The community around nmh has a similar understanding.
meillo@87 19 In fundamental difference, mmh shall be a MUA only.
meillo@87 20 I believe that the development of all-in-one mail systems is obsolete.
meillo@87 21 Today, email is too complex to be fully covered by single projects.
meillo@87 22 Such a project won't be able to excel in all aspects.
meillo@87 23 Instead, the aspects of email should be covered my multiple projects,
meillo@87 24 which then can be combined to form a complete system.
meillo@87 25 Excellent implementations for the various aspects of email exist already.
meillo@87 26 Just to name three examples: Postfix is a specialized MTA,
meillo@87 27 Procmail is a specialized MDA, and Fetchmail is a specialized MRA.
meillo@89 28 I believe that it is best to use such specialized tools instead of
meillo@87 29 providing the same function again as a side-component in the project.
meillo@58 30 .P
meillo@87 31 Doing something well, requires to focus on a small set of specific aspects.
meillo@87 32 Under the assumption that focused development produces better results
meillo@100 33 in the particular area, specialized projects will be superior
meillo@87 34 in their field of focus.
meillo@87 35 Hence, all-in-one mail system projects \(en no matter if monolithic
meillo@87 36 or modular \(en will never be the best choice in any of the fields.
meillo@87 37 Even in providing the best consistent all-in-one system they are likely
meillo@87 38 to be beaten by projects that focus only on integrating existing mail
meillo@89 39 components to a homogeneous system.
meillo@87 40 .P
meillo@87 41 The limiting resource in Free Software community development
meillo@87 42 is usually man power.
meillo@87 43 If the development power is spread over a large development area,
meillo@87 44 it becomes even more difficult to compete with the specialists in the
meillo@87 45 various fields.
meillo@87 46 The concrete situation for MH-based mail systems is even tougher,
meillo@87 47 given the small and aged community, including both developers and users,
meillo@87 48 it has.
meillo@87 49 .P
meillo@87 50 In consequence, I believe that the available development resources
meillo@100 51 should focus on the point where MH is most unique.
meillo@87 52 This is clearly the user interface \(en the MUA.
meillo@87 53 Peripheral parts should be removed to stream-line mmh for the MUA task.
meillo@60 54
meillo@60 55
meillo@100 56 .H2 "Mail Transfer Facilities
meillo@60 57 .P
meillo@60 58 In contrast to nmh, which also provides mail submission and mail retrieval
meillo@87 59 agents, mmh is a MUA only.
meillo@100 60 This general difference initiated the development of mmh.
meillo@66 61 Removing the mail transfer facilities had been the first work task
meillo@76 62 in the mmh project.
meillo@60 63 .P
meillo@105 64 Focusing on one mail agent role only is motivated by Eric Allman's
meillo@105 65 experience with Sendmail.
meillo@105 66 He identified limiting Sendmail the MTA task had be one reason for
meillo@105 67 its success:
meillo@105 68 .[ [
meillo@105 69 costales sendmail
meillo@105 70 .], p. xviii]
meillo@105 71 .QS
meillo@105 72 Second, I limited myself to the routing function \(en
meillo@110 73 I wouldn't write user agents or delivery back-ends.
meillo@105 74 This was a departure of the dominant through of the time,
meillo@105 75 in which routing logic, local delivery, and often the network code
meillo@105 76 were incorporated directly into the user agents.
meillo@105 77 .QE
meillo@105 78 .P
meillo@105 79 In mmh, the Mail Submission Agent (MSA) is called
meillo@105 80 \fIMessage Transfer Service\fP (MTS).
meillo@105 81 This facility, implemented by the
meillo@105 82 .Pn post
meillo@105 83 command, established network connections and spoke SMTP to submit
meillo@60 84 messages for relay to the outside world.
meillo@105 85 The changes in email demanded changes in this part of nmh too.
meillo@89 86 Encryption and authentication for network connections
meillo@87 87 needed to be supported, hence TLS and SASL were introduced into nmh.
meillo@87 88 This added complexity to nmh without improving it in its core functions.
meillo@87 89 Also, keeping up with recent developments in the field of
meillo@87 90 mail transfer requires development power and specialists.
meillo@87 91 In mmh this whole facility was simply cut off.
meillo@76 92 .Ci f6aa95b724fd8c791164abe7ee5468bf5c34f226
meillo@76 93 .Ci fecd5d34f65597a4dfa16aeabea7d74b191532c3
meillo@76 94 .Ci 156d35f6425bea4c1ed3c4c79783dc613379c65b
meillo@87 95 Instead, mmh depends on an external MSA.
meillo@60 96 The only outgoing interface available to mmh is the
meillo@60 97 .Pn sendmail
meillo@87 98 command, which almost any MSA provides.
meillo@87 99 If not, a wrapper program can be written.
meillo@87 100 It must read the message from the standard input, extract the
meillo@87 101 recipient addresses from the message header, and hand the message
meillo@87 102 over to the MSA.
meillo@87 103 For example, a wrapper script for qmail would be:
meillo@87 104 .VS
meillo@87 105 #!/bin/sh
meillo@87 106 # ignore command line arguments
meillo@87 107 exec qmail-inject
meillo@87 108 VE
meillo@87 109 The requirement to parse the recipient addresses out of the message header
meillo@87 110 is likely to be removed in the future.
meillo@87 111 Then mmh would give the recipient addresses as command line arguments.
meillo@100 112 This appears to be the better interface.
meillo@87 113 .\" XXX implement it
meillo@60 114 .P
meillo@60 115 To retrieve mail, the
meillo@60 116 .Pn inc
meillo@100 117 command acted as Mail Retrieval Agent (MRA).
meillo@100 118 It established network connections
meillo@76 119 and spoke POP3 to retrieve mail from remote servers.
meillo@76 120 As with mail submission, the network connections required encryption and
meillo@87 121 authentication, thus TLS and SASL were added.
meillo@87 122 Support for message retrieval through IMAP will become necessary
meillo@100 123 to be added soon, too, and likewise for any other changes in mail transfer.
meillo@100 124 Not so for mmh because it has dropped the support for retrieving mail
meillo@100 125 from remote locations.
meillo@76 126 .Ci ab7b48411962d26439f92f35ed084d3d6275459c
meillo@76 127 Instead, it depends on an external tool to cover this task.
meillo@100 128 In mmh exist two paths for messages to enter mmh's mail storage:
meillo@100 129 (1) Mail can be incorporated with
meillo@60 130 .Pn inc
meillo@87 131 from the system maildrop, or (2) with
meillo@60 132 .Pn rcvstore
meillo@87 133 by reading them, one at a time, from the standard input.
meillo@60 134 .P
meillo@60 135 With the removal of the MSA and MRA, mmh converted from an all-in-one
meillo@87 136 mail system to being a MUA only.
meillo@60 137 Now, of course, mmh depends on third-party software.
meillo@87 138 An external MSA is required to transfer mail to the outside world;
meillo@60 139 an external MRA is required to retrieve mail from remote machines.
meillo@60 140 There exist excellent implementations of such software,
meillo@76 141 which do this specific task likely better than the internal
meillo@87 142 versions had done it.
meillo@87 143 Also, the best suiting programs can be freely chosen.
meillo@60 144 .P
meillo@60 145 As it had already been possible to use an external MSA or MRA,
meillo@60 146 why not keep the internal version for convenience?
meillo@76 147 The question whether there is sense in having a fall-back pager in all
meillo@76 148 the command line tools, for the cases when
meillo@60 149 .Pn more
meillo@60 150 or
meillo@60 151 .Pn less
meillo@76 152 aren't available, appears to be ridiculous.
meillo@100 153 Of course, MSAs and MRAs are more complex than text pagers
meillo@87 154 and not necessarily available but still the concept of orthogonal
meillo@87 155 design holds: ``Write programs that do one thing and do it well.''
meillo@87 156 .[
meillo@87 157 mcilroy unix phil
meillo@87 158 p. 53
meillo@87 159 .]
meillo@87 160 .[
meillo@87 161 mcilroy bstj foreword
meillo@87 162 .]
meillo@87 163 Here, this part of the Unix philosophy was applied not only
meillo@87 164 to the programs but to the project itself.
meillo@87 165 In other words:
meillo@87 166 ``Develop projects that focus on one thing and do it well.''
meillo@87 167 Projects grown complex should be split for the same reasons programs grown
meillo@87 168 complex should be split.
meillo@100 169 If it is conceptionally more elegant to have the MSA and MRA as
meillo@87 170 separate projects then they should be separated.
meillo@87 171 This is the case here, in my opinion.
meillo@87 172 The RFCs propose this separation by clearly distinguishing the different
meillo@87 173 mail handling tasks.
meillo@87 174 .[
meillo@87 175 rfc 821
meillo@87 176 .]
meillo@87 177 The small interfaces between the mail agents support the separation.
meillo@76 178 .P
meillo@87 179 In the beginning, email had been small and simple.
meillo@100 180 At that time,
meillo@60 181 .Pn /bin/mail
meillo@100 182 had covered anything there was to email and still had been small
meillo@100 183 and simple.
meillo@100 184 Later, the essential complexity of email increased.
meillo@87 185 (Essential complexity is the complexity defined by the problem itself.\0
meillo@87 186 .[[
meillo@87 187 brooks no silver bullet
meillo@87 188 .]])
meillo@87 189 Email systems reacted to this change: They grew.
meillo@100 190 RFCs started to introduce the concept of mail agents to separate the
meillo@100 191 various tasks because they became more extensive and new tasks appeared.
meillo@100 192 As the mail systems grew even more, parts were split off.
meillo@100 193 In nmh, for instance, the POP server, which was included in the original
meillo@100 194 MH, was removed.
meillo@100 195 Now is the time to go one step further and split the MSA and MRA off, too.
meillo@87 196 Not only does this decrease the code size of the project,
meillo@87 197 but, more important, it unburdens mmh of the whole field of
meillo@87 198 message transfer with all its implications for the project.
meillo@100 199 There is no more need to concern with changes in network transfer.
meillo@76 200 This independence is received by depending on an external program
meillo@76 201 that covers the field.
meillo@76 202 Today, this is a reasonable exchange.
meillo@60 203 .P
meillo@100 204 Functionality can be added in three different ways:
meillo@87 205 .BU
meillo@87 206 Implementing the function originally in the project.
meillo@87 207 .BU
meillo@87 208 Depending on a library that provides the function.
meillo@87 209 .BU
meillo@87 210 Depending on a program that provides the function.
meillo@87 211 .P
meillo@87 212 Whereas adding the function originally to the project increases the
meillo@76 213 code size most and requires most maintenance and development work,
meillo@87 214 it makes the project most independent of other software.
meillo@87 215 Using libraries or external programs require less maintenance work
meillo@87 216 but introduces dependencies on external software.
meillo@87 217 Programs have the smallest interfaces and provide the best separation
meillo@87 218 but possibly limit the information exchange.
meillo@87 219 External libraries are stronger connected than external programs,
meillo@87 220 thus information can be exchanged more flexible.
meillo@87 221 Adding code to a project increases maintenance work.
meillo@87 222 .\" XXX ref
meillo@100 223 Implementing complex functions originally in the project adds
meillo@87 224 a lot of code.
meillo@87 225 This should be avoided if possible.
meillo@66 226 Hence, the dependencies only change in kind, not in their existence.
meillo@66 227 In mmh, library dependencies on
meillo@66 228 .Pn libsasl2
meillo@66 229 and
meillo@66 230 .Pn libcrypto /\c
meillo@66 231 .Pn libssl
meillo@66 232 were treated against program dependencies on an MSA and an MRA.
meillo@87 233 This also meant treating build-time dependencies against run-time
meillo@87 234 dependencies.
meillo@66 235 Besides program dependencies providing the stronger separation
meillo@66 236 and being more flexible, they also allowed
meillo@66 237 over 6\|000 lines of code to be removed from mmh.
meillo@66 238 This made mmh's code base about 12\|% smaller.
meillo@87 239 Reducing the project's code size by such an amount without actually
meillo@87 240 losing functionality is a convincing argument.
meillo@87 241 Actually, as external MSAs and MRAs are likely superior to the
meillo@87 242 project's internal versions, the common user even gains functionality.
meillo@66 243 .P
meillo@76 244 Users of MH should not have problems to set up an external MSA and MRA.
meillo@60 245 Also, the popular MSAs and MRAs have large communities and a lot
meillo@60 246 of documentation available.
meillo@87 247 Choices for MSAs range from full-featured MTAs like
meillo@60 248 .I Postfix
meillo@87 249 over mid-size MTAs like
meillo@60 250 .I masqmail
meillo@60 251 and
meillo@60 252 .I dma
meillo@60 253 to small forwarders like
meillo@60 254 .I ssmtp
meillo@60 255 and
meillo@60 256 .I nullmailer .
meillo@60 257 Choices for MRAs include
meillo@60 258 .I fetchmail ,
meillo@60 259 .I getmail ,
meillo@60 260 .I mpop
meillo@60 261 and
meillo@60 262 .I fdm .
meillo@60 263
meillo@60 264
meillo@100 265 .H2 "Non-MUA Tools
meillo@60 266 .P
meillo@87 267 One goal of mmh is to remove the tools that are not part of the MUA's task.
meillo@89 268 Further more, any tools that don't improve the MUA's job significantly
meillo@87 269 should be removed.
meillo@87 270 Loosely related and rarely used tools distract from the lean appearance.
meillo@87 271 They require maintenance work without adding much to the core task.
meillo@100 272 By removing these tools, the project shall become more stream-lined
meillo@87 273 and focused.
meillo@76 274 In mmh the following tools are not available anymore:
meillo@62 275 .BU
meillo@58 276 .Pn conflict
meillo@87 277 was removed
meillo@76 278 .Ci 8b235097cbd11d728c07b966cf131aa7133ce5a9
meillo@87 279 because it is a mail system maintenance tool that is not MUA-related.
meillo@87 280 It even checked
meillo@58 281 .Fn /etc/passwd
meillo@58 282 and
meillo@58 283 .Fn /etc/group
meillo@87 284 for consistency, which is completely unrelated to email.
meillo@87 285 A tool like
meillo@87 286 .Pn conflict
meillo@87 287 is surely useful, but it should not be shipped with mmh.
meillo@76 288 .\" XXX historic reasons?
meillo@62 289 .BU
meillo@58 290 .Pn rcvtty
meillo@87 291 was removed
meillo@87 292 .Ci 14767c94b3827be7c867196467ed7aea5f6f49b0
meillo@89 293 because its use case of writing to the user's terminal
meillo@76 294 on receiving of mail is obsolete.
meillo@87 295 If users like to be informed of new mail, the shell's
meillo@58 296 .Ev MAILPATH
meillo@87 297 variable or graphical notifications are technically more appealing.
meillo@100 298 Writing directly to terminals is hardly ever wanted today.
meillo@62 299 If though one wants to have it this way, the standard tool
meillo@58 300 .Pn write
meillo@58 301 can be used in a way similar to:
meillo@82 302 .VS
meillo@58 303 scan -file - | write `id -un`
meillo@82 304 VE
meillo@62 305 .BU
meillo@58 306 .Pn viamail
meillo@87 307 was removed
meillo@87 308 .Ci eda72d6a7a7c20ff123043fb7f19c509ea01f932
meillo@87 309 when the new attachment system was activated, because
meillo@58 310 .Pn forw
meillo@76 311 could then cover the task itself.
meillo@62 312 The program
meillo@58 313 .Pn sendfiles
meillo@62 314 was rewritten as a shell script wrapper around
meillo@58 315 .Pn forw .
meillo@76 316 .Ci 0e82199cf3c991a173e0ac8aa776efdb3ded61e6
meillo@62 317 .BU
meillo@58 318 .Pn msgchk
meillo@87 319 was removed
meillo@87 320 .Ci bb9360ead7eb7a3fedcce2eeedfc660014e41dbe ,
meillo@87 321 because it lost its use case when POP support was removed.
meillo@76 322 A call to
meillo@58 323 .Pn msgchk
meillo@87 324 provided hardly more information than:
meillo@82 325 .VS
meillo@58 326 ls -l /var/mail/meillo
meillo@82 327 VE
meillo@100 328 It did distinguish between old and new mail, but
meillo@100 329 this detail information can be retrieved with
meillo@76 330 .Pn stat (1),
meillo@62 331 too.
meillo@100 332 A small shell script could be written to print the information
meillo@76 333 in a similar way, if truly necessary.
meillo@76 334 As mmh's
meillo@76 335 .Pn inc
meillo@87 336 only incorporates mail from the user's local maildrop,
meillo@62 337 and thus no data transfers over slow networks are involved,
meillo@76 338 there's hardly any need to check for new mail before incorporating it.
meillo@62 339 .BU
meillo@58 340 .Pn msh
meillo@87 341 was removed
meillo@76 342 .Ci 916690191222433a6923a4be54b0d8f6ac01bd02
meillo@87 343 because the tool was in conflict with the philosophy of MH.
meillo@76 344 It provided an interactive shell to access the features of MH,
meillo@76 345 but it wasn't just a shell, tailored to the needs of mail handling.
meillo@76 346 Instead it was one large program that had several MH tools built in.
meillo@76 347 This conflicts with the major feature of MH of being a tool chest.
meillo@76 348 .Pn msh 's
meillo@76 349 main use case had been accessing Bulletin Boards, which have seized to
meillo@62 350 be popular.
meillo@62 351 .P
meillo@62 352 Removing
meillo@58 353 .Pn msh ,
meillo@76 354 together with the truly archaic code relicts
meillo@58 355 .Pn vmh
meillo@58 356 and
meillo@58 357 .Pn wmh ,
meillo@62 358 saved more than 7\|000 lines of C code \(en
meillo@66 359 about 15\|% of the project's original source code amount.
meillo@100 360 Having less code \(en with equal readability, of course \(en
meillo@76 361 for the same functionality is an advantage.
meillo@63 362 Less code means less bugs and less maintenance work.
meillo@76 363 As
meillo@63 364 .Pn rcvtty
meillo@63 365 and
meillo@63 366 .Pn msgchk
meillo@87 367 are assumed to be rarely used and can be implemented in different ways,
meillo@87 368 why should one keep them?
meillo@76 369 Removing them stream-lines mmh.
meillo@63 370 .Pn viamail 's
meillo@63 371 use case is now partly obsolete and partly covered by
meillo@63 372 .Pn forw ,
meillo@76 373 hence there's no reason to still maintain it.
meillo@63 374 .Pn conflict
meillo@76 375 is not related to the mail client, and
meillo@63 376 .Pn msh
meillo@63 377 conflicts with the basic concept of MH.
meillo@76 378 Theses two tools might still be useful, but they should not be part of mmh.
meillo@63 379 .P
meillo@76 380 Finally, there's
meillo@76 381 .Pn slocal .
meillo@76 382 .Pn slocal
meillo@76 383 is an MDA and thus not directly MUA-related.
meillo@100 384 It should be removed from mmh, because including it conflicts with
meillo@100 385 the idea that mmh is a MUA only.
meillo@100 386 .Pn slocal
meillo@100 387 should rather become a separate project.
meillo@87 388 However,
meillo@76 389 .Pn slocal
meillo@76 390 provides rule-based processing of messages, like filing them into
meillo@76 391 different folders, which is otherwise not available in mmh.
meillo@87 392 Although
meillo@76 393 .Pn slocal
meillo@87 394 does neither pull in dependencies nor does it include a separate
meillo@100 395 technical area (cf. Sec. XXX), still,
meillo@100 396 it accounts for about 1\|000 lines of code that need to be maintained.
meillo@76 397 As
meillo@76 398 .Pn slocal
meillo@76 399 is almost self-standing, it should be split off into a separate project.
meillo@76 400 This would cut the strong connection between the MUA mmh and the MDA
meillo@76 401 .Pn slocal .
meillo@87 402 For anyone not using MH,
meillo@87 403 .Pn slocal
meillo@87 404 would become yet another independent MDA, like
meillo@87 405 .I procmail .
meillo@100 406 Then
meillo@87 407 .Pn slocal
meillo@100 408 could be installed without the complete MH system.
meillo@76 409 Likewise, mmh users could decide to use
meillo@76 410 .I procmail
meillo@87 411 without having a second, unused MDA,
meillo@87 412 .Pn slocal ,
meillo@76 413 installed.
meillo@100 414 That appears to be conceptionally the best solution.
meillo@76 415 Yet,
meillo@76 416 .Pn slocal
meillo@87 417 is not split off.
meillo@100 418 I defer the decision over
meillo@78 419 .Pn slocal
meillo@100 420 in need for deeper investigation.
meillo@100 421 In the meanwhile, it remains part of mmh.
meillo@100 422 That does not hurt because
meillo@100 423 .Pn slocal
meillo@100 424 is unrelated to the rest of the project.
meillo@0 425
meillo@58 426
meillo@76 427 .H2 "\fLshow\fP and \fPmhshow\fP
meillo@58 428 .P
meillo@69 429 Since the very beginning \(en already in the first concept paper \(en
meillo@58 430 .Pn show
meillo@62 431 had been MH's message display program.
meillo@58 432 .Pn show
meillo@76 433 mapped message numbers and sequences to files and invoked
meillo@58 434 .Pn mhl
meillo@89 435 to have the files formatted.
meillo@88 436 With MIME, this approach wasn't sufficient anymore.
meillo@100 437 MIME messages can consist of multiple parts. Some parts are not
meillo@100 438 directly displayable and text content might be encoded in
meillo@58 439 foreign charsets.
meillo@58 440 .Pn show 's
meillo@76 441 understanding of messages and
meillo@58 442 .Pn mhl 's
meillo@88 443 display capabilities couldn't cope with the task any longer.
meillo@62 444 .P
meillo@88 445 Instead of extending these tools, additional tools were written from
meillo@88 446 scratch and added to the MH tool chest.
meillo@88 447 Doing so is encouraged by the tool chest approach.
meillo@88 448 Modular design is a great advantage for extending a system,
meillo@88 449 as new tools can be added without interfering with existing ones.
meillo@62 450 First, the new MIME features were added in form of the single program
meillo@58 451 .Pn mhn .
meillo@58 452 The command
meillo@82 453 .Cl "mhn -show 42
meillo@58 454 would show the MIME message numbered 42.
meillo@58 455 With the 1.0 release of nmh in February 1999, Richard Coleman finished
meillo@58 456 the split of
meillo@58 457 .Pn mhn
meillo@88 458 into a set of specialized tools, which together covered the
meillo@88 459 multiple aspects of MIME.
meillo@88 460 One of them was
meillo@69 461 .Pn mhshow ,
meillo@88 462 which replaced
meillo@88 463 .Cl "mhn -show" .
meillo@88 464 It was capable of displaying MIME messages appropriately.
meillo@62 465 .P
meillo@88 466 From then on, two message display tools were part of nmh,
meillo@76 467 .Pn show
meillo@76 468 and
meillo@76 469 .Pn mhshow .
meillo@88 470 To ease the life of users,
meillo@69 471 .Pn show
meillo@69 472 was extended to automatically hand the job over to
meillo@69 473 .Pn mhshow
meillo@69 474 if displaying the message would be beyond
meillo@69 475 .Pn show 's
meillo@69 476 abilities.
meillo@88 477 In consequence, the user would simply invoke
meillo@69 478 .Pn show
meillo@69 479 (possibly through
meillo@69 480 .Pn next
meillo@69 481 or
meillo@69 482 .Pn prev )
meillo@69 483 and get the message printed with either
meillo@69 484 .Pn show
meillo@69 485 or
meillo@69 486 .Pn mhshow ,
meillo@69 487 whatever was more appropriate.
meillo@69 488 .P
meillo@69 489 Having two similar tools for essentially the same task is redundant.
meillo@88 490 Usually,
meillo@88 491 users wouldn't distinguish between
meillo@88 492 .Pn show
meillo@88 493 and
meillo@88 494 .Pn mhshow
meillo@88 495 in their daily mail reading.
meillo@88 496 Having two separate display programs was therefore mainly unnecessary
meillo@88 497 from a user's point of view.
meillo@88 498 Besides, the development of both programs needed to be in sync,
meillo@76 499 to ensure that the programs behaved in a similar way,
meillo@76 500 because they were used like a single tool.
meillo@76 501 Different behavior would have surprised the user.
meillo@69 502 .P
meillo@69 503 Today, non-MIME messages are rather seen to be a special case of
meillo@100 504 MIME messages, although it is the other way round.
meillo@69 505 As
meillo@69 506 .Pn mhshow
meillo@88 507 had already be able to display non-MIME messages, it appeared natural
meillo@69 508 to drop
meillo@69 509 .Pn show
meillo@69 510 in favor of using
meillo@69 511 .Pn mhshow
meillo@69 512 exclusively.
meillo@88 513 .Ci 4c1efddfd499300c7e74263e57d8aa137e84c853
meillo@88 514 Removing
meillo@88 515 .Pn show
meillo@88 516 is no loss in function, because functionally
meillo@88 517 .Pn mhshow
meillo@88 518 covers it completely.
meillo@88 519 The old behavior of
meillo@88 520 .Pn show
meillo@88 521 can still be emulated with the simple command line:
meillo@88 522 .VS
meillo@88 523 mhl `mhpath c`
meillo@88 524 VE
meillo@88 525 .P
meillo@76 526 For convenience,
meillo@76 527 .Pn mhshow
meillo@88 528 was renamed to
meillo@88 529 .Pn show
meillo@88 530 after
meillo@88 531 .Pn show
meillo@88 532 was gone.
meillo@88 533 It is clear that such a rename may confuse future developers when
meillo@88 534 trying to understand the history.
meillo@88 535 Nevertheless, I consider the convenience on the user's side,
meillo@88 536 to call
meillo@88 537 .Pn show
meillo@88 538 when they want a message to be displayed, to outweigh the inconvenience
meillo@88 539 on the developer's side when understanding the project history.
meillo@69 540 .P
meillo@88 541 To prepare for the transition,
meillo@69 542 .Pn mhshow
meillo@69 543 was reworked to behave more like
meillo@69 544 .Pn show
meillo@69 545 first.
meillo@88 546 (cf. Sec. XXX)
meillo@88 547 Once the tools behaved more alike, the replacing appeared to be
meillo@88 548 even more natural.
meillo@88 549 Today, mmh's new
meillo@69 550 .Pn show
meillo@88 551 became the one single message display program again, with the difference
meillo@88 552 that today it handles MIME messages as well as non-MIME messages.
meillo@88 553 The outcome of the transition is one program less to maintain,
meillo@88 554 no second display program for users to deal with,
meillo@88 555 and less system complexity.
meillo@69 556 .P
meillo@88 557 Still, removing the old
meillo@69 558 .Pn show
meillo@88 559 hurts in one regard: It had been such a simple program.
meillo@88 560 Its lean elegance is missing to the new
meillo@69 561 .Pn show .
meillo@88 562 But there is no chance;
meillo@88 563 supporting MIME demands for higher essential complexity.
meillo@58 564
meillo@58 565
meillo@100 566 .H2 "Configure Options
meillo@58 567 .P
meillo@76 568 Customization is a double-edged sword.
meillo@76 569 It allows better suiting setups, but not for free.
meillo@76 570 There is the cost of code complexity to be able to customize.
meillo@76 571 There is the cost of less tested setups, because there are
meillo@72 572 more possible setups and especially corner-cases.
meillo@76 573 And, there is the cost of choice itself.
meillo@76 574 The code complexity directly affects the developers.
meillo@72 575 Less tested code affects both, users and developers.
meillo@76 576 The problem of choice affects the users, for once by having to
meillo@100 577 choose, but also by more complex interfaces that require more documentation.
meillo@72 578 Whenever options add little advantages, they should be considered for
meillo@72 579 removal.
meillo@72 580 I have reduced the number of project-specific configure options from
meillo@72 581 fifteen to three.
meillo@74 582
meillo@76 583 .U3 "Mail Transfer Facilities
meillo@74 584 .P
meillo@85 585 With the removal of the mail transfer facilities five configure
meillo@85 586 options vanished:
meillo@85 587 .P
meillo@85 588 The switches
meillo@85 589 .Sw --with-tls
meillo@85 590 and
meillo@85 591 .Sw --with-cyrus-sasl
meillo@89 592 had activated the support for transfer encryption and authentication.
meillo@85 593 This is not needed anymore.
meillo@85 594 .Ci fecd5d34f65597a4dfa16aeabea7d74b191532c3
meillo@85 595 .Ci 156d35f6425bea4c1ed3c4c79783dc613379c65b
meillo@85 596 .P
meillo@85 597 The configure switch
meillo@85 598 .Sw --enable-pop
meillo@85 599 activated the message retrieval facility.
meillo@85 600 The code area that would be conditionally compiled in for TLS and SASL
meillo@85 601 support had been small.
meillo@85 602 The conditionally compiled code area for POP support had been much larger.
meillo@85 603 Whereas the code base changes would only slightly change on toggling
meillo@85 604 TLS or SASL support, it changed much on toggling POP support.
meillo@85 605 The changes in the code base could hardly be overviewed.
meillo@85 606 By having POP support togglable a second code base had been created,
meillo@85 607 one that needed to be tested.
meillo@85 608 This situation is basically similar for the conditional TLS and SASL
meillo@85 609 code, but there the changes are minor and can yet be overviewed.
meillo@85 610 Still, conditional compilation of a code base creates variations
meillo@85 611 of the original program.
meillo@85 612 More variations require more testing and maintenance work.
meillo@85 613 .P
meillo@85 614 Two other options only specified default configuration values:
meillo@100 615 .Sw --with-mts
meillo@100 616 defined the default transport service, either
meillo@100 617 .Ar smtp
meillo@100 618 or
meillo@100 619 .Ar sendmail .
meillo@85 620 In mmh this fixed to
meillo@85 621 .Ar sendmail .
meillo@85 622 .Ci f6aa95b724fd8c791164abe7ee5468bf5c34f226
meillo@85 623 With
meillo@100 624 .Sw --with-smtpservers
meillo@85 625 default SMTP servers for the
meillo@85 626 .Ar smtp
meillo@85 627 transport service could be specified.
meillo@72 628 .Ci 128545e06224233b7e91fc4c83f8830252fe16c9
meillo@85 629 Both of them became irrelevant.
meillo@72 630
meillo@74 631 .U3 "Backup Prefix
meillo@74 632 .P
meillo@76 633 The backup prefix is the string that was prepended to message
meillo@76 634 filenames to tag them as deleted.
meillo@76 635 By default it had been the comma character `\f(CW,\fP'.
meillo@78 636 In July 2000, Kimmo Suominen introduced
meillo@78 637 the configure option
meillo@78 638 .Sw --with-hash-backup
meillo@78 639 to change the default to the hash symbol `\f(CW#\fP'.
meillo@78 640 The choice was probably personal preference, because first, the
meillo@78 641 option was named
meillo@78 642 .Sw --with-backup-prefix.
meillo@78 643 and had the prefix symbol as argument.
meillo@100 644 But giving the hash symbol as argument caused too many problems
meillo@100 645 for Autoconf,
meillo@100 646 thus the option was limited to use the hash symbol as the default prefix.
meillo@100 647 This supports the assumption, that the choice for the hash was
meillo@100 648 personal preference only.
meillo@100 649 Being related or not, words that start with the hash symbol
meillo@78 650 introduce a comment in the Unix shell.
meillo@72 651 Thus, the command line
meillo@72 652 .Cl "rm #13 #15
meillo@72 653 calls
meillo@72 654 .Pn rm
meillo@72 655 without arguments because the first hash symbol starts the comment
meillo@72 656 that reaches until the end of the line.
meillo@72 657 To delete the backup files,
meillo@72 658 .Cl "rm ./#13 ./#15"
meillo@72 659 needs to be used.
meillo@100 660 Using the hash as backup prefix can be seen as a precaution against
meillo@78 661 data loss.
meillo@78 662 .P
meillo@72 663 I removed the configure option but added the profile entry
meillo@72 664 .Pe backup-prefix ,
meillo@72 665 which allows to specify an arbitrary string as backup prefix.
meillo@72 666 .Ci 6c40d481d661d532dd527eaf34cebb6d3f8ed086
meillo@76 667 Profile entries are the common method to change mmh's behavior.
meillo@76 668 This change did not remove the choice but moved it to a location where
meillo@72 669 it suited better.
meillo@76 670 .P
meillo@78 671 Eventually, however, the new trash folder concept
meillo@78 672 .Cf "Sec. XXX
meillo@78 673 obsoleted the concept of the backup prefix completely.
meillo@78 674 .Ci 8edc5aaf86f9f77124664f6801bc6c6cdf258173
meillo@100 675 .\" (Well, there still are corner-cases to remove until the backup
meillo@100 676 .\" prefix can be laid to rest, eventually.)
meillo@72 677 .\" FIXME: Do this work in the code!
meillo@76 678
meillo@76 679 .U3 "Editor and Pager
meillo@74 680 .P
meillo@74 681 The two configure options
meillo@74 682 .CW --with-editor=EDITOR
meillo@74 683 .CW --with-pager=PAGER
meillo@74 684 were used to specify the default editor and pager at configure time.
meillo@109 685 Doing so at configure time made sense in the eighties,
meillo@76 686 when the set of available editors and pagers varied much across
meillo@76 687 different systems.
meillo@89 688 Today, the situation is more homogeneous.
meillo@74 689 The programs
meillo@74 690 .Pn vi
meillo@74 691 and
meillo@74 692 .Pn more
meillo@76 693 can be expected to be available on every Unix system,
meillo@74 694 as they are specified by POSIX since two decades.
meillo@74 695 (The specifications for
meillo@74 696 .Pn vi
meillo@74 697 and
meillo@74 698 .Pn more
meillo@74 699 appeared in
meillo@74 700 .[
meillo@74 701 posix 1987
meillo@74 702 .]
meillo@74 703 and,
meillo@74 704 .[
meillo@74 705 posix 1992
meillo@74 706 .]
meillo@74 707 respectively.)
meillo@74 708 As a first step, these two tools were hard-coded as defaults.
meillo@74 709 .Ci 5d43a99db70c12a673028c7758c20cbe3e13ef5f
meillo@74 710 Not changed were the
meillo@74 711 .Pe editor
meillo@74 712 and
meillo@74 713 .Pe moreproc
meillo@76 714 profile entries, which allowed the user to override the system defaults.
meillo@74 715 Later, the concept was reworked to respect the standard environment
meillo@74 716 variables
meillo@74 717 .Ev VISUAL
meillo@74 718 and
meillo@74 719 .Ev PAGER
meillo@76 720 if they are set.
meillo@74 721 Today, mmh determines the editor to use in the following order,
meillo@74 722 taking the first available and non-empty item:
meillo@74 723 .IP (1)
meillo@74 724 Environment variable
meillo@74 725 .Ev MMHEDITOR
meillo@74 726 .IP (2)
meillo@74 727 Profile entry
meillo@74 728 .Pe Editor
meillo@74 729 .IP (3)
meillo@74 730 Environment variable
meillo@74 731 .Ev VISUAL
meillo@74 732 .IP (4)
meillo@74 733 Environment variable
meillo@74 734 .Ev EDITOR
meillo@74 735 .IP (5)
meillo@74 736 Command
meillo@74 737 .Pn vi .
meillo@74 738 .P
meillo@76 739 .Ci f85f4b7ae62e3d05a945dcd46ead51f0a2a89a9b
meillo@76 740 .P
meillo@89 741 The pager to use is determined in a similar order,
meillo@74 742 also taking the first available and non-empty item:
meillo@74 743 .IP (1)
meillo@74 744 Environment variable
meillo@74 745 .Ev MMHPAGER
meillo@74 746 .IP (2)
meillo@74 747 Profile entry
meillo@74 748 .Pe Pager
meillo@74 749 (replaces
meillo@74 750 .Pe moreproc )
meillo@74 751 .IP (3)
meillo@74 752 Environment variable
meillo@74 753 .Ev PAGER
meillo@74 754 .IP (4)
meillo@74 755 Command
meillo@74 756 .Pn more .
meillo@74 757 .P
meillo@74 758 .Ci 0c4214ea2aec6497d0d67b436bbee9bc1d225f1e
meillo@74 759 .P
meillo@76 760 By respecting the
meillo@74 761 .Ev VISUAL /\c
meillo@74 762 .Ev EDITOR
meillo@74 763 and
meillo@74 764 .Ev PAGER
meillo@76 765 environment variables,
meillo@76 766 the new behavior confirms better to the common style on Unix systems.
meillo@76 767 Additionally, the new approach is more uniform and clearer to users.
meillo@72 768
meillo@72 769
meillo@76 770 .U3 "ndbm
meillo@72 771 .P
meillo@74 772 .Pn slocal
meillo@78 773 used to depend on
meillo@74 774 .I ndbm ,
meillo@74 775 a database library.
meillo@76 776 The database is used to store the `\fLMessage-ID\fP's of all
meillo@76 777 messages delivered.
meillo@74 778 This enables
meillo@74 779 .Pn slocal
meillo@74 780 to suppress delivering the same message to the same user twice.
meillo@74 781 (This features was enabled by the
meillo@74 782 .Sw -suppressdup
meillo@74 783 switch.)
meillo@74 784 .P
meillo@100 785 A variety of versions of the database library exist.
meillo@78 786 .[
meillo@78 787 wolter unix incompat notes dbm
meillo@78 788 .]
meillo@74 789 Complicated autoconf code was needed to detect them correctly.
meillo@74 790 Further more, the configure switches
meillo@74 791 .Sw --with-ndbm=ARG
meillo@74 792 and
meillo@74 793 .Sw --with-ndbmheader=ARG
meillo@74 794 were added to help with difficult setups that would
meillo@78 795 not be detected automatically or correctly.
meillo@74 796 .P
meillo@74 797 By removing the suppress duplicates feature of
meillo@74 798 .Pn slocal ,
meillo@74 799 the dependency on
meillo@74 800 .I ndbm
meillo@78 801 vanished and 120 lines of complex autoconf code could be saved.
meillo@74 802 .Ci ecd6d6a20cb7a1507e3a20d6c4cb3a1cf14c6bbf
meillo@89 803 The change removed functionality too, but that is minor to the
meillo@78 804 improvement by dropping the dependency and the complex autoconf code.
meillo@72 805
meillo@74 806 .U3 "mh-e Support
meillo@72 807 .P
meillo@74 808 The configure option
meillo@74 809 .Sw --disable-mhe
meillo@74 810 was removed when the mh-e support was reworked.
meillo@74 811 Mh-e is the Emacs front-end to MH.
meillo@76 812 It requires MH to provide minor additional functions.
meillo@76 813 The
meillo@76 814 .Sw --disable-mhe
meillo@76 815 configure option could switch these extensions off.
meillo@76 816 After removing the support for old versions of mh-e,
meillo@74 817 only the
meillo@74 818 .Sw -build
meillo@76 819 switches of
meillo@74 820 .Pn forw
meillo@74 821 and
meillo@74 822 .Pn repl
meillo@76 823 are left to be mh-e extensions.
meillo@76 824 They are now always built in because they add little code and complexity.
meillo@76 825 In consequence, the
meillo@74 826 .Sw --disable-mhe
meillo@76 827 configure option was removed
meillo@72 828 .Ci a7ce7b4a580d77b6c2c4d980812beb589aa4c643
meillo@74 829 Removing the option removed a second code setup that would have
meillo@74 830 needed to be tested.
meillo@76 831 This change was first done in nmh and thereafter merged into mmh.
meillo@76 832 .P
meillo@76 833 The interface changes in mmh require mh-e to be adjusted in order
meillo@76 834 to be able to use mmh as back-end.
meillo@76 835 This will require minor changes to mh-e, but removing the
meillo@76 836 .Sw -build
meillo@76 837 switches would require more rework.
meillo@72 838
meillo@74 839 .U3 "Masquerading
meillo@72 840 .P
meillo@74 841 The configure option
meillo@74 842 .Sw --enable-masquerade
meillo@76 843 could take up to three arguments:
meillo@76 844 `draft_from', `mmailid', and `username_extension'.
meillo@74 845 They activated different types of address masquerading.
meillo@74 846 All of them were implemented in the SMTP-speaking
meillo@74 847 .Pn post
meillo@76 848 command, which provided an MSA.
meillo@76 849 Address masquerading is an MTA's task and mmh does not cover
meillo@76 850 this field anymore.
meillo@76 851 Hence, true masquerading needs to be implemented in the external MTA.
meillo@74 852 .P
meillo@74 853 The
meillo@74 854 .I mmailid
meillo@74 855 masquerading type is the oldest one of the three and the only one
meillo@74 856 available in the original MH.
meillo@74 857 It provided a
meillo@74 858 .I username
meillo@74 859 to
meillo@74 860 .I fakeusername
meillo@76 861 mapping, based on the password file's GECOS field.
meillo@74 862 The man page
meillo@74 863 .Mp mh-tailor(5)
meillo@74 864 described the use case as being the following:
meillo@98 865 .QS
meillo@74 866 This is useful if you want the messages you send to always
meillo@74 867 appear to come from the name of an MTA alias rather than your
meillo@74 868 actual account name. For instance, many organizations set up
meillo@74 869 `First.Last' sendmail aliases for all users. If this is
meillo@74 870 the case, the GECOS field for each user should look like:
meillo@74 871 ``First [Middle] Last <First.Last>''
meillo@98 872 .QE
meillo@74 873 .P
meillo@74 874 As mmh sends outgoing mail via the local MTA only,
meillo@76 875 the best location to do such global rewrites is there.
meillo@74 876 Besides, the MTA is conceptionally the right location because it
meillo@74 877 does the reverse mapping for incoming mail (aliasing), too.
meillo@76 878 Further more, masquerading set up there is readily available for all
meillo@74 879 mail software on the system.
meillo@76 880 Hence, mmailid masquerading was removed.
meillo@74 881 .Ci 0836c8000ccb34b59410ef1c15b1b7feac70ce5f
meillo@74 882 .P
meillo@74 883 The
meillo@74 884 .I username_extension
meillo@76 885 masquerading type did not replace the username but would append a suffix,
meillo@76 886 specified by the
meillo@74 887 .Ev USERNAME_EXTENSION
meillo@76 888 environment variable, to it.
meillo@76 889 This provided support for the
meillo@74 890 .I user-extension
meillo@74 891 feature of qmail and the similar
meillo@74 892 .I "plussed user
meillo@74 893 processing of sendmail.
meillo@74 894 The decision to remove this username_extension masquerading was
meillo@74 895 motivated by the fact that
meillo@74 896 .Pn spost
meillo@76 897 hadn't supported it already.
meillo@76 898 .Ci 2abae0bfd0ad5bf898461e50aa4b466d641f23d9
meillo@76 899 Username extensions are possible in mmh, but less convenient to use.
meillo@76 900 .\" XXX format file %(getenv USERNAME_EXTENSION)
meillo@74 901 .P
meillo@74 902 The
meillo@74 903 .I draft_from
meillo@74 904 masquerading type instructed
meillo@74 905 .Pn post
meillo@84 906 to use the value of the
meillo@84 907 .Hd From
meillo@84 908 header field as SMTP envelope sender.
meillo@76 909 Sender addresses could be replaced completely.
meillo@74 910 .Ci b14ea6073f77b4359aaf3fddd0e105989db9
meillo@76 911 Mmh offers a kind of masquerading similar in effect, but
meillo@74 912 with technical differences.
meillo@76 913 As mmh does not transfer messages itself, the local MTA has final control
meillo@76 914 over the sender's address. Any masquerading mmh introduces may be reverted
meillo@76 915 by the MTA.
meillo@76 916 In times of pedantic spam checking, an MTA will take care to use
meillo@76 917 sensible envelope sender addresses to keep its own reputation up.
meillo@84 918 Nonetheless, the MUA can set the
meillo@84 919 .Hd From
meillo@84 920 header field and thereby propose
meillo@76 921 a sender address to the MTA.
meillo@74 922 The MTA may then decide to take that one or generate the canonical sender
meillo@74 923 address for use as envelope sender address.
meillo@74 924 .P
meillo@74 925 In mmh, the MTA will always extract the recipient and sender from the
meillo@84 926 message header (\c
meillo@74 927 .Pn sendmail 's
meillo@74 928 .Sw -t
meillo@74 929 switch).
meillo@84 930 The
meillo@84 931 .Hd From
meillo@84 932 header field of the draft may be set arbitrary by the user.
meillo@74 933 If it is missing, the canonical sender address will be generated by the MTA.
meillo@74 934
meillo@74 935 .U3 "Remaining Options
meillo@74 936 .P
meillo@74 937 Two configure options remain in mmh.
meillo@74 938 One is the locking method to use:
meillo@74 939 .Sw --with-locking=[dot|fcntl|flock|lockf] .
meillo@76 940 The idea of removing all methods except the portable dot locking
meillo@76 941 and having that one as the default is appealing, but this change
meillo@76 942 requires deeper technical investigation into the topic.
meillo@76 943 The other option,
meillo@74 944 .Sw --enable-debug ,
meillo@74 945 compiles the programs with debugging symbols and does not strip them.
meillo@74 946 This option is likely to stay.
meillo@72 947
meillo@72 948
meillo@58 949
meillo@63 950
meillo@100 951 .H2 "Command Line Switches
meillo@58 952 .P
meillo@93 953 The command line switches of MH tools follow the X Window style.
meillo@93 954 They are words, introduced by a single dash.
meillo@93 955 For example:
meillo@93 956 .Cl "-truncate" .
meillo@93 957 Every program in mmh has two generic switches:
meillo@93 958 .Sw -help ,
meillo@93 959 to print a short message on how to use the program, and
meillo@93 960 .Sw -Version ,
meillo@93 961 to tell what version of mmh the program belongs to.
meillo@93 962 .P
meillo@93 963 Switches change the behavior of programs.
meillo@93 964 Programs that do one thing in one way require no switches.
meillo@93 965 In most cases, doing something in exactly one way is too limiting.
meillo@97 966 If there is basically one task to accomplish, but it should be done
meillo@93 967 in various ways, switches are a good approach to alter the behavior
meillo@93 968 of a program.
meillo@93 969 Changing the behavior of programs provides flexibility and customization
meillo@97 970 to users, but at the same time it complicates the code, documentation and
meillo@93 971 usage of the program.
meillo@97 972 .\" XXX: Ref
meillo@93 973 Therefore, the number of switches should be kept small.
meillo@93 974 A small set of well-chosen switches does no harm.
meillo@93 975 But usually, the number of switches increases over time.
meillo@93 976 Already in 1985, Rose and Romine have identified this as a major
meillo@93 977 problem of MH:
meillo@93 978 .[ [
meillo@93 979 rose romine real work
meillo@93 980 .], p. 12]
meillo@98 981 .QS
meillo@93 982 A complaint often heard about systems which undergo substantial development
meillo@93 983 by many people over a number of years, is that more and more options are
meillo@93 984 introduced which add little to the functionality but greatly increase the
meillo@93 985 amount of information a user needs to know in order to get useful work done.
meillo@93 986 This is usually referred to as creeping featurism.
meillo@93 987 .QP
meillo@93 988 Unfortunately MH, having undergone six years of off-and-on development by
meillo@93 989 ten or so well-meaning programmers (the present authors included),
meillo@93 990 suffers mightily from this.
meillo@98 991 .QE
meillo@93 992 .P
meillo@97 993 Being reluctant to adding new switches \(en or `options',
meillo@97 994 as Rose and Romine call them \(en is one part of a counter-action,
meillo@97 995 the other part is removing hardly used switches.
meillo@97 996 Nmh's tools had lots of switches already implemented,
meillo@97 997 hence, cleaning up by removing some of them was the more important part
meillo@97 998 of the counter-action.
meillo@93 999 Removing existing functionality is always difficult because it
meillo@93 1000 breaks programs that use these functions.
meillo@93 1001 Also, for every obsolete feature, there'll always be someone who still
meillo@93 1002 uses it and thus opposes its removal.
meillo@93 1003 This puts the developer into the position,
meillo@93 1004 where sensible improvements to style are regarded as destructive acts.
meillo@97 1005 Yet, living with the featurism is far worse, in my eyes, because
meillo@97 1006 future needs will demand adding further features,
meillo@93 1007 worsening the situation more and more.
meillo@93 1008 Rose and Romine added in a footnote,
meillo@93 1009 ``[...]
meillo@93 1010 .Pn send
meillo@93 1011 will no doubt acquire an endless number of switches in the years to come.''
meillo@97 1012 Although clearly humorous, the comment points to the nature of the problem.
meillo@97 1013 Refusing to add any new switches would encounter the problem at its root,
meillo@97 1014 but this is not practical.
meillo@97 1015 New needs will require new switches and it would be unwise to block
meillo@97 1016 them strictly.
meillo@97 1017 Nevertheless, removing obsolete switches still is an effective approach
meillo@97 1018 to deal with the problem.
meillo@97 1019 Working on an experimental branch without an established user base,
meillo@97 1020 eased my work because I did not offend users when I removed existing
meillo@110 1021 functions.
meillo@93 1022 .P
meillo@93 1023 Rose and Romine counted 24 visible and 9 more hidden switches for
meillo@93 1024 .Pn send .
meillo@97 1025 In nmh, they increased up to 32 visible and 12 hidden ones.
meillo@97 1026 At the time of writing, no more than 7 visible switches and 1 hidden switch
meillo@97 1027 have remained in mmh's
meillo@97 1028 .Pn send .
meillo@97 1029 (These numbers include two generic switches, help and version.)
meillo@93 1030 .P
meillo@97 1031 Fig. XXX
meillo@93 1032 .\" XXX Ref
meillo@97 1033 displays the number of switches for each of the tools that is available
meillo@97 1034 in both, nmh and mmh.
meillo@100 1035 The tools are sorted by the number of switches they had in nmh.
meillo@100 1036 Visible and hidden switches were counted,
meillo@97 1037 but not the generic help and version switches.
meillo@93 1038 Whereas in the beginning of the project, the average tool had 11 switches,
meillo@93 1039 now it has no more than 5 \(en only half as many.
meillo@93 1040 If the `no' switches and similar inverse variant are folded onto
meillo@100 1041 their counter-parts, the average tool had 8 switches in pre-mmh times and
meillo@100 1042 has 4 now.
meillo@93 1043 The total number of functional switches in mmh dropped from 465
meillo@93 1044 to 234.
meillo@58 1045
meillo@93 1046 .KS
meillo@93 1047 .in 1c
meillo@93 1048 .so input/switches.grap
meillo@93 1049 .KE
meillo@58 1050
meillo@93 1051 .P
meillo@93 1052 A part of the switches vanished after functions were removed.
meillo@93 1053 This was the case for network mail transfer, for instance.
meillo@97 1054 Sometimes, however, the work flow was the other way:
meillo@97 1055 I looked through the
meillo@97 1056 .Mp mh-chart (7)
meillo@97 1057 man page to identify the tools with apparently too many switches.
meillo@97 1058 Then considering the value of each of the switches by examining
meillo@97 1059 the tool's man page and source code, aided by recherche and testing.
meillo@97 1060 This way, the removal of functions was suggested by the aim to reduce
meillo@97 1061 the number of switches per command.
meillo@97 1062
meillo@58 1063
meillo@93 1064 .U3 "Draft Folder Facility
meillo@93 1065 .P
meillo@100 1066 A change early in the project was the complete transition from
meillo@93 1067 the single draft message to the draft folder facility.
meillo@97 1068 .Ci 337338b404931f06f0db2119c9e145e8ca5a9860
meillo@109 1069 The draft folder facility was introduced in the mid-eighties, when
meillo@100 1070 Rose and Romine called it a ``relatively new feature''.
meillo@93 1071 .[
meillo@93 1072 rose romine real work
meillo@93 1073 .]
meillo@110 1074 Since then, the facility had existed but was inactive by default.
meillo@93 1075 The default activation and the related rework of the tools made it
meillo@93 1076 possible to remove the
meillo@93 1077 .Sw -[no]draftfolder ,
meillo@93 1078 and
meillo@93 1079 .Sw -draftmessage
meillo@93 1080 switches from
meillo@93 1081 .Pn comp ,
meillo@93 1082 .Pn repl ,
meillo@93 1083 .Pn forw ,
meillo@93 1084 .Pn dist ,
meillo@93 1085 .Pn whatnow ,
meillo@93 1086 and
meillo@93 1087 .Pn send .
meillo@97 1088 .Ci 337338b404931f06f0db2119c9e145e8ca5a9860
meillo@97 1089 The only flexibility removed with this change is having multiple
meillo@97 1090 draft folders within one profile.
meillo@97 1091 I consider this a theoretical problem only.
meillo@93 1092 In the same go, the
meillo@93 1093 .Sw -draft
meillo@93 1094 switch of
meillo@93 1095 .Pn anno ,
meillo@93 1096 .Pn refile ,
meillo@93 1097 and
meillo@93 1098 .Pn send
meillo@93 1099 was removed.
meillo@93 1100 The special-casing of `the' draft message became irrelevant after
meillo@93 1101 the rework of the draft system.
meillo@93 1102 (See Sec. XXX.)
meillo@95 1103 Equally,
meillo@95 1104 .Pn comp
meillo@95 1105 lost its
meillo@95 1106 .Sw -file
meillo@95 1107 switch.
meillo@95 1108 The draft folder facility, together with the
meillo@95 1109 .Sw -form
meillo@95 1110 switch, are sufficient.
meillo@93 1111
meillo@95 1112
meillo@102 1113 .U3 "In Place Editing
meillo@93 1114 .P
meillo@93 1115 .Pn anno
meillo@93 1116 had the switches
meillo@93 1117 .Sw -[no]inplace
meillo@100 1118 to either annotate the message in place and thus preserve hard links,
meillo@93 1119 or annotate a copy to replace the original message, breaking hard links.
meillo@97 1120 Following the assumption that linked messages should truly be the
meillo@97 1121 same message, and annotating it should not break the link, the
meillo@93 1122 .Sw -[no]inplace
meillo@93 1123 switches were removed and the previous default
meillo@93 1124 .Sw -inplace
meillo@93 1125 was made the only behavior.
meillo@97 1126 .Ci c8195849d2e366c569271abb0f5f60f4ebf0b4d0
meillo@93 1127 The
meillo@93 1128 .Sw -[no]inplace
meillo@93 1129 switches of
meillo@93 1130 .Pn repl ,
meillo@93 1131 .Pn forw ,
meillo@93 1132 and
meillo@93 1133 .Pn dist
meillo@93 1134 could be removed, too, as they were simply passed through to
meillo@93 1135 .Pn anno .
meillo@93 1136 .P
meillo@93 1137 .Pn burst
meillo@93 1138 also had
meillo@93 1139 .Sw -[no]inplace
meillo@95 1140 switches, but with different meaning.
meillo@95 1141 With
meillo@95 1142 .Sw -inplace ,
meillo@95 1143 the digest had been replaced by the table of contents (i.e. the
meillo@110 1144 introduction text) and the burst messages were placed right
meillo@95 1145 after this message, renumbering all following messages.
meillo@95 1146 Also, any trailing text of the digest was lost, though,
meillo@95 1147 in practice, it usually consists of an end-of-digest marker only.
meillo@95 1148 Nontheless, this behavior appeared less elegant than the
meillo@95 1149 .Sw -noinplace
meillo@95 1150 behavior, which already had been the default.
meillo@95 1151 Nmh's
meillo@95 1152 .Mp burst (1)
meillo@95 1153 man page reads:
meillo@95 1154 .sp \n(PDu
meillo@98 1155 .QS
meillo@93 1156 If -noinplace is given, each digest is preserved, no table
meillo@93 1157 of contents is produced, and the messages contained within
meillo@93 1158 the digest are placed at the end of the folder. Other messages
meillo@93 1159 are not tampered with in any way.
meillo@98 1160 .QE
meillo@95 1161 .LP
meillo@93 1162 The decision to drop the
meillo@93 1163 .Sw -inplace
meillo@95 1164 behavior was supported by the code complexity and the possible data loss
meillo@95 1165 it caused.
meillo@93 1166 .Sw -noinplace
meillo@95 1167 was chosen to be the definitive behavior.
meillo@97 1168 .Ci 68a686adeb39223a5e1ad35e4a24890ec053679d
meillo@93 1169
meillo@95 1170
meillo@95 1171 .U3 "Forms and Format Strings
meillo@93 1172 .P
meillo@95 1173 Historically, the tools that had
meillo@95 1174 .Sw -form
meillo@95 1175 switches to supply a form file had
meillo@95 1176 .Sw -format
meillo@95 1177 switches as well to supply the contents of a form file as a string
meillo@95 1178 on the command line directly.
meillo@95 1179 In consequence, the following two lines equaled:
meillo@95 1180 .VS
meillo@95 1181 scan -form scan.mailx
meillo@95 1182 scan -format "`cat .../scan.mailx`"
meillo@95 1183 VE
meillo@95 1184 The
meillo@95 1185 .Sw -format
meillo@95 1186 switches were dropped in favor for extending the
meillo@95 1187 .Sw -form
meillo@95 1188 switches.
meillo@97 1189 .Ci f51956be123db66b00138f80464d06f030dbb88d
meillo@95 1190 If their argument starts with an equal sign (`='),
meillo@95 1191 then the rest of the argument is taken as a format string,
meillo@95 1192 otherwise the arguments is treated as the name of a format file.
meillo@95 1193 Thus, now the following two lines equal:
meillo@95 1194 .VS
meillo@95 1195 scan -form scan.mailx
meillo@95 1196 scan -form "=`cat .../scan.mailx`"
meillo@95 1197 VE
meillo@95 1198 This rework removed the prefix collision between
meillo@95 1199 .Sw -form
meillo@95 1200 and
meillo@95 1201 .Sw -format .
meillo@95 1202 Now, typing
meillo@95 1203 .Sw -fo
meillo@95 1204 suffices to specify form or format string.
meillo@95 1205 .P
meillo@95 1206 The different meaning of
meillo@95 1207 .Sw -format
meillo@95 1208 for
meillo@95 1209 .Pn repl
meillo@95 1210 and
meillo@95 1211 .Pn forw
meillo@95 1212 was removed in mmh.
meillo@95 1213 .Pn forw
meillo@95 1214 was completely switched to MIME-type forwarding, thus removing the
meillo@95 1215 .Sw -[no]format .
meillo@97 1216 .Ci 6e271608b7b9c23771523f88d23a4d3593010cf1
meillo@95 1217 For
meillo@95 1218 .Pn repl ,
meillo@95 1219 the
meillo@95 1220 .Sw -[no]format
meillo@95 1221 switches were reworked to
meillo@95 1222 .Sw -[no]filter
meillo@95 1223 switches.
meillo@97 1224 .Ci 67411b1f95d6ec987b4c732459e1ba8a8ac192c6
meillo@95 1225 The
meillo@95 1226 .Sw -format
meillo@95 1227 switches of
meillo@95 1228 .Pn send
meillo@95 1229 and
meillo@95 1230 .Pn post ,
meillo@95 1231 which had a third meaning,
meillo@95 1232 were removed likewise.
meillo@97 1233 .Ci f3cb7cde0e6f10451b6848678d95860d512224b9
meillo@95 1234 Eventually, the ambiguity of the
meillo@95 1235 .Sw -format
meillo@95 1236 switches was resolved by not anymore having any such switch in mmh.
meillo@95 1237
meillo@95 1238
meillo@95 1239 .U3 "MIME Tools
meillo@95 1240 .P
meillo@95 1241 The MIME tools, which were once part of
meillo@100 1242 .Pn mhn
meillo@100 1243 [sic!],
meillo@95 1244 had several switches that added little practical value to the programs.
meillo@95 1245 The
meillo@95 1246 .Sw -[no]realsize
meillo@95 1247 switches of
meillo@95 1248 .Pn mhbuild
meillo@95 1249 and
meillo@95 1250 .Pn mhlist
meillo@97 1251 were removed, doing real size calculations always now
meillo@97 1252 .Ci 8d8f1c3abc586c005c904e52c4adbfe694d2201c ,
meillo@97 1253 as
meillo@95 1254 ``This provides an accurate count at the expense of a small delay.''
meillo@95 1255 This small delay is not noticable on modern systems.
meillo@95 1256 .P
meillo@95 1257 The
meillo@95 1258 .Sw -[no]check
meillo@95 1259 switches were removed together with the support for
meillo@95 1260 .Hd Content-MD5
meillo@95 1261 header fields.
meillo@95 1262 .[
meillo@95 1263 rfc 1864
meillo@95 1264 .]
meillo@97 1265 .Ci 31dc797eb5178970d68962ca8939da3fd9a8efda
meillo@95 1266 (See Sec. XXX)
meillo@95 1267 .P
meillo@95 1268 The
meillo@95 1269 .Sw -[no]ebcdicsafe
meillo@95 1270 and
meillo@95 1271 .Sw -[no]rfc934mode
meillo@95 1272 switches of
meillo@95 1273 .Pn mhbuild
meillo@95 1274 were removed because they are considered obsolete.
meillo@97 1275 .Ci 01a3480928da485b4d6109d36d751dfa71799d58
meillo@97 1276 .Ci 3363e2624dce0eb8164cf8b3f1ab385c8ff72e88
meillo@95 1277 .P
meillo@95 1278 Content caching of external MIME parts, activated with the
meillo@95 1279 .Sw -rcache
meillo@95 1280 and
meillo@95 1281 .Sw -wcache
meillo@95 1282 switches was completely removed.
meillo@97 1283 .Ci d1fefd9f614e4dc3cda16da6c69133c1b2005269
meillo@97 1284 External MIME parts are rare today, having a caching facility
meillo@96 1285 for them is appears to be unnecessary.
meillo@95 1286 .P
meillo@95 1287 In pre-MIME times,
meillo@95 1288 .Pn mhl
meillo@95 1289 had covered many tasks that are part of MIME handling today.
meillo@95 1290 Therefore,
meillo@95 1291 .Pn mhl
meillo@95 1292 could be simplified to a large extend, reducing the number of its
meillo@95 1293 switches from 21 to 6.
meillo@97 1294 .Ci 350ad6d3542a07639213cf2a4fe524e829c1e7b6
meillo@97 1295 .Ci 0e46503be3c855bddaeae3843e1b659279c35d70
meillo@95 1296
meillo@95 1297
meillo@95 1298 .U3 "Mail Transfer Switches
meillo@95 1299 .P
meillo@95 1300 With the removal of the mail transfer facilities, a lot of switches
meillo@95 1301 vanished automatically.
meillo@95 1302 .Pn inc
meillo@95 1303 lost 9 switches, namely
meillo@95 1304 .Sw -host ,
meillo@95 1305 .Sw -port ,
meillo@95 1306 .Sw -user ,
meillo@95 1307 .Sw -proxy ,
meillo@95 1308 .Sw -snoop ,
meillo@95 1309 .Sw -[no]pack ,
meillo@95 1310 as well as
meillo@95 1311 .Sw -sasl
meillo@95 1312 and
meillo@95 1313 .Sw -saslmech .
meillo@95 1314 .Pn send
meillo@95 1315 and
meillo@95 1316 .Pn post
meillo@95 1317 lost 11 switches each, namely
meillo@95 1318 .Sw -server ,
meillo@95 1319 .Sw -port ,
meillo@95 1320 .Sw -client ,
meillo@95 1321 .Sw -user ,
meillo@95 1322 .Sw -mail ,
meillo@95 1323 .Sw -saml ,
meillo@95 1324 .Sw -send ,
meillo@95 1325 .Sw -soml ,
meillo@95 1326 .Sw -snoop ,
meillo@95 1327 as well as
meillo@95 1328 .Sw -sasl ,
meillo@95 1329 .Sw -saslmech ,
meillo@95 1330 and
meillo@95 1331 .Sw -tls .
meillo@95 1332 .Pn send
meillo@95 1333 had the switches only to pass them further to
meillo@95 1334 .Pn post ,
meillo@95 1335 because the user would invoke
meillo@95 1336 .Pn post
meillo@95 1337 not directly, but through
meillo@95 1338 .Pn send .
meillo@95 1339 All these switches, except
meillo@95 1340 .Sw -snoop
meillo@95 1341 were usually defined as default switches in the user's profile,
meillo@95 1342 but hardly given in interactive usage.
meillo@95 1343 .P
meillo@95 1344 Of course, those switches did not really ``vanish'', but the configuration
meillo@95 1345 they did was handed over to external MSAs and MRAs.
meillo@95 1346 Instead of setting up the mail transfer in mmh, it is set up in
meillo@95 1347 external tools.
meillo@95 1348 Yet, this simplifies mmh.
meillo@95 1349 Specialized external tools will likely have simple configuration files.
meillo@95 1350 Hence, instead of having one complicated central configuration file,
meillo@95 1351 the configuration of each domain is separate.
meillo@95 1352 Although the user needs to learn to configure each of the tools,
meillo@95 1353 each configuration is likely much simpler.
meillo@95 1354
meillo@95 1355
meillo@95 1356 .U3 "Maildrop Formats
meillo@95 1357 .P
meillo@95 1358 With the removal of MMDF maildrop format support,
meillo@95 1359 .Pn packf
meillo@95 1360 and
meillo@95 1361 .Pn rcvpack
meillo@95 1362 no longer needed their
meillo@95 1363 .Sw -mbox
meillo@95 1364 and
meillo@95 1365 .Sw -mmdf
meillo@95 1366 switches.
meillo@95 1367 .Sw -mbox
meillo@95 1368 is the sole behavior now.
meillo@97 1369 .Ci 3916ab66ad5d183705ac12357621ea8661afd3c0
meillo@95 1370 In the same go,
meillo@95 1371 .Pn packf
meillo@97 1372 and
meillo@97 1373 .Pn rcvpack
meillo@97 1374 were reworked (see Sec. XXX) and their
meillo@95 1375 .Sw -file
meillo@95 1376 switch became unnecessary.
meillo@97 1377 .Ci ca1023716d4c2ab890696f3e41fa0d94267a940e
meillo@95 1378
meillo@95 1379
meillo@95 1380 .U3 "Terminal Magic
meillo@95 1381 .P
meillo@95 1382 Mmh's tools will no longer clear the screen (\c
meillo@95 1383 .Pn scan 's
meillo@95 1384 and
meillo@95 1385 .Pn mhl 's
meillo@95 1386 .Sw -[no]clear
meillo@97 1387 switches
meillo@97 1388 .Ci e57b17343dcb3ff373ef4dd089fbe778f0c7c270
meillo@97 1389 .Ci 943765e7ac5693ae177fd8d2b5a2440e53ce816e ).
meillo@95 1390 Neither will
meillo@95 1391 .Pn mhl
meillo@95 1392 ring the bell (\c
meillo@97 1393 .Sw -[no]bell
meillo@97 1394 .Ci e11983f44e59d8de236affa5b0d0d3067c192e24 )
meillo@95 1395 nor page the output itself (\c
meillo@97 1396 .Sw -length
meillo@97 1397 .Ci 5b9d883db0318ed2b84bb82dee880d7381f99188 ).
meillo@95 1398 .P
meillo@95 1399 Generally, the pager to use is no longer specified with the
meillo@95 1400 .Sw -[no]moreproc
meillo@95 1401 command line switches for
meillo@95 1402 .Pn mhl
meillo@95 1403 and
meillo@95 1404 .Pn show /\c
meillo@95 1405 .Pn mhshow .
meillo@97 1406 .Ci 39e87a75b5c2d3572ec72e717720b44af291e88a
meillo@95 1407 .P
meillo@95 1408 .Pn prompter
meillo@95 1409 lost its
meillo@95 1410 .Sw -erase
meillo@95 1411 and
meillo@95 1412 .Sw -kill
meillo@95 1413 switches because today the terminal cares for the line editing keys.
meillo@95 1414
meillo@95 1415
meillo@95 1416 .U3 "Header Printing
meillo@95 1417 .P
meillo@95 1418 .Pn folder 's
meillo@95 1419 data output is self-explaining enough that
meillo@95 1420 displaying the header line makes few sense.
meillo@95 1421 Hence, the
meillo@95 1422 .Sw -[no]header
meillo@95 1423 switch was removed and headers are never printed.
meillo@97 1424 .Ci 601cc73d1fa05ce96faa728f036d6c51b91701c7
meillo@95 1425 .P
meillo@95 1426 In
meillo@95 1427 .Pn mhlist ,
meillo@95 1428 the
meillo@95 1429 .Sw -[no]header
meillo@95 1430 switches were removed, too.
meillo@97 1431 .Ci b24f96523aaf60e44e04a3ffb1d22e69a13a602f
meillo@95 1432 But in this case headers are always printed,
meillo@95 1433 because the output is not self-explaining.
meillo@95 1434 .P
meillo@95 1435 .Pn scan
meillo@95 1436 also had
meillo@95 1437 .Sw -[no]header
meillo@95 1438 switches.
meillo@95 1439 Printing the header had been sensible until the introduction of
meillo@95 1440 format strings made it impossible to display the column headings.
meillo@95 1441 Only the folder name and the current date remained to be printed.
meillo@95 1442 As this information can be perfectly retrieved by
meillo@95 1443 .Pn folder
meillo@95 1444 and
meillo@95 1445 .Pn date ,
meillo@95 1446 consequently, the switches were removed.
meillo@97 1447 .Ci c477dc5d1d03fa6d9a8ab3dd3508c63cbddc044e
meillo@95 1448 .P
meillo@95 1449 By removing all
meillo@95 1450 .Sw -header
meillo@95 1451 switches, the collision with
meillo@95 1452 .Sw -help
meillo@95 1453 on the first two letters was resolved.
meillo@95 1454 Currently,
meillo@95 1455 .Sw -h
meillo@95 1456 evaluates to
meillo@95 1457 .Sw -help
meillo@95 1458 for all tools of mmh.
meillo@95 1459
meillo@95 1460
meillo@95 1461 .U3 "Suppressing Edits or the WhatNow Shell
meillo@95 1462 .P
meillo@95 1463 The
meillo@95 1464 .Sw -noedit
meillo@100 1465 switch of
meillo@95 1466 .Pn comp ,
meillo@95 1467 .Pn repl ,
meillo@95 1468 .Pn forw ,
meillo@95 1469 .Pn dist ,
meillo@95 1470 and
meillo@95 1471 .Pn whatnow
meillo@95 1472 was removed, but it can now be replaced by specifying
meillo@95 1473 .Sw -editor
meillo@95 1474 with an empty argument.
meillo@97 1475 .Ci 75fca31a5b9d5c1a99c74ab14c94438d8852fba9
meillo@95 1476 (Specifying
meillo@95 1477 .Cl "-editor true
meillo@95 1478 is nearly the same, only differing by the previous editor being set.)
meillo@95 1479 .P
meillo@95 1480 The more important change is the removal of the
meillo@95 1481 .Sw -nowhatnowproc
meillo@95 1482 switch.
meillo@97 1483 .Ci ee4f43cf2ef0084ec698e4e87159a94c01940622
meillo@95 1484 This switch had introduced an awkward behavior, as explained in nmh's
meillo@95 1485 man page for
meillo@95 1486 .Mp comp (1):
meillo@98 1487 .QS
meillo@98 1488 The \-editor editor switch indicates the editor to use for
meillo@98 1489 the initial edit. Upon exiting from the editor, comp will
meillo@98 1490 invoke the whatnow program. See whatnow(1) for a discussion
meillo@98 1491 of available options. The invocation of this program can be
meillo@98 1492 inhibited by using the \-nowhatnowproc switch. (In truth of
meillo@98 1493 fact, it is the whatnow program which starts the initial
meillo@98 1494 edit. Hence, \-nowhatnowproc will prevent any edit from
meillo@95 1495 occurring.)
meillo@98 1496 .QE
meillo@95 1497 .P
meillo@95 1498 Effectively, the
meillo@95 1499 .Sw -nowhatnowproc
meillo@100 1500 switch creates only a draft message.
meillo@95 1501 As
meillo@95 1502 .Cl "-whatnowproc true
meillo@95 1503 causes the same behavior, the
meillo@95 1504 .Sw -nowhatnowproc
meillo@95 1505 switch was removed for being redundant.
meillo@100 1506 Likely, the
meillo@95 1507 .Sw -nowhatnowproc
meillo@100 1508 switch was intended to be used by front-ends.
meillo@95 1509
meillo@95 1510
meillo@95 1511 .U3 "Compatibility Switches
meillo@95 1512 .BU
meillo@95 1513 The hidden
meillo@95 1514 .Sw -[no]total
meillo@95 1515 switches of
meillo@95 1516 .Pn flist .
meillo@95 1517 They were simply the inverse of the visible
meillo@95 1518 .Sw -[no]fast
meillo@95 1519 switches:
meillo@95 1520 .Sw -total
meillo@95 1521 was
meillo@95 1522 .Sw -nofast
meillo@95 1523 and
meillo@95 1524 .Sw -nototal
meillo@95 1525 was
meillo@95 1526 .Sw -fast .
meillo@95 1527 I removed the
meillo@95 1528 .Sw -[no]total
meillo@95 1529 legacy.
meillo@97 1530 .Ci ea21fe2c4bd23c639bef251398fae809875732ec
meillo@95 1531 .BU
meillo@95 1532 The
meillo@95 1533 .Sw -subject
meillo@95 1534 switch of
meillo@95 1535 .Pn sortm
meillo@95 1536 existed for compatibility only.
meillo@95 1537 It can be fully replaced by
meillo@95 1538 .Cl "-textfield subject
meillo@95 1539 thus it was removed.
meillo@97 1540 .Ci 00140a3c86e9def69d98ba2ffd4d6e50ef6326ea
meillo@95 1541
meillo@95 1542
meillo@95 1543 .U3 "Various
meillo@95 1544 .BU
meillo@96 1545 In order to avoid prefix collisions among switch names, the
meillo@95 1546 .Sw -version
meillo@95 1547 switch was renamed to
meillo@95 1548 .Sw -Version
meillo@95 1549 (with capital `V').
meillo@97 1550 .Ci 32b2354dbaf4bf934936eb5b102a4a3d2fdd209a
meillo@95 1551 Every program has the
meillo@95 1552 .Sw -version
meillo@95 1553 switch but its first three letters collided with the
meillo@95 1554 .Sw -verbose
meillo@95 1555 switch, present in many programs.
meillo@95 1556 The rename solved this problem once for all.
meillo@95 1557 Although this rename breaks a basic interface, having the
meillo@95 1558 .Sw -V
meillo@95 1559 abbreviation to display the version information, isn't all too bad.
meillo@95 1560 .BU
meillo@95 1561 .Sw -[no]preserve
meillo@95 1562 of
meillo@95 1563 .Pn refile
meillo@95 1564 was removed because what use was it anyway?
meillo@98 1565 .QS
meillo@95 1566 Normally when a message is refiled, for each destination
meillo@95 1567 folder it is assigned the number which is one above the current
meillo@95 1568 highest message number in that folder. Use of the
meillo@95 1569 \-preserv [sic!] switch will override this message renaming, and try
meillo@95 1570 to preserve the number of the message. If a conflict for a
meillo@95 1571 particular folder occurs when using the \-preserve switch,
meillo@95 1572 then refile will use the next available message number which
meillo@95 1573 is above the message number you wish to preserve.
meillo@98 1574 .QE
meillo@95 1575 .BU
meillo@95 1576 The removal of the
meillo@95 1577 .Sw -[no]reverse
meillo@95 1578 switches of
meillo@95 1579 .Pn scan
meillo@97 1580 .Ci 8edc5aaf86f9f77124664f6801bc6c6cdf258173
meillo@95 1581 is a bug fix, supported by the comments
meillo@95 1582 ``\-[no]reverse under #ifdef BERK (I really HATE this)''
meillo@95 1583 by Rose and
meillo@95 1584 ``Lists messages in reverse order with the `\-reverse' switch.
meillo@95 1585 This should be considered a bug.'' by Romine in the documentation.
meillo@97 1586 The question remains why neither Rose and Romine had fixed this
meillo@109 1587 bug in the eighties when they wrote these comments nor has anyone
meillo@95 1588 thereafter.
meillo@93 1589
meillo@93 1590
meillo@93 1591 .ig
meillo@93 1592
meillo@95 1593 forw: [no]dashstuffing(mhl)
meillo@93 1594
meillo@95 1595 mhshow: [no]pause [no]serialonly
meillo@93 1596
meillo@93 1597 mhmail: resent queued
meillo@93 1598 inc: snoop, (pop)
meillo@93 1599
meillo@95 1600 mhl: [no]faceproc folder sleep
meillo@95 1601 [no]dashstuffing(forw) digest list volume number issue number
meillo@93 1602
meillo@95 1603 prompter: [no]doteof
meillo@93 1604
meillo@93 1605 refile: [no]preserve [no]unlink [no]rmmproc
meillo@93 1606
meillo@95 1607 send: [no]forward [no]mime [no]msgid
meillo@93 1608 [no]push split [no]unique (sasl) width snoop [no]dashstuffing
meillo@93 1609 attach attachformat
meillo@93 1610 whatnow: (noedit) attach
meillo@93 1611
meillo@93 1612 slocal: [no]suppressdups
meillo@93 1613
meillo@95 1614 spost: [no]filter [no]backup width [no]push idanno
meillo@93 1615 [no]check(whom) whom(whom)
meillo@93 1616
meillo@93 1617 whom: ???
meillo@93 1618
meillo@95 1619 ..
meillo@93 1620
meillo@93 1621
meillo@93 1622 .ig
meillo@93 1623
meillo@93 1624 .P
meillo@93 1625 In the best case, all switches are unambiguous on the first character,
meillo@93 1626 or on the three-letter prefix for the `no' variants.
meillo@96 1627 Reducing switch prefix collisions, shortens the necessary prefix length
meillo@93 1628 the user must type.
meillo@93 1629 Having less switches helps best.
meillo@93 1630
meillo@93 1631 ..
meillo@58 1632
meillo@95 1633
meillo@102 1634 .\" XXX: whatnow prompt commands
meillo@102 1635
meillo@102 1636
meillo@95 1637
meillo@95 1638
meillo@74 1639 .H1 "Modernizing
meillo@102 1640 .P
meillo@118 1641 In the over thirty years of MH's existence, its code base was
meillo@118 1642 extended more and more.
meillo@118 1643 New features entered the project and became alternatives to the
meillo@118 1644 existing behavior.
meillo@118 1645 Relicts from several decades have gathered in the code base,
meillo@118 1646 but seldom obsolete features were dropped.
meillo@118 1647 This section describes the removing of old code
meillo@118 1648 and the modernizing of the default setup.
meillo@118 1649 It focuses on the functional aspect only;
meillo@118 1650 the non-functional aspects of code style are discussed in
meillo@118 1651 .\" FIXME REF
meillo@118 1652 Sec. XXX.
meillo@58 1653
meillo@58 1654
meillo@100 1655 .H2 "Code Relicts
meillo@0 1656 .P
meillo@109 1657 My position to drop obsolete functions of mmh, in order to remove old code,
meillo@104 1658 is much more revolutional than the nmh community likes to have it.
meillo@104 1659 Working on an experimental version, I was able to quickly drop
meillo@104 1660 functionality I considered ancient.
meillo@104 1661 The need for consensus with peers would have slowed this process down.
meillo@104 1662 Without the need to justify my decisions, I was able to rush forward.
meillo@110 1663 In December 2011, Paul Vixie motivated the nmh developers to just
meillo@104 1664 do the work:
meillo@104 1665 .[
meillo@104 1666 paul vixie edginess nmh-workers
meillo@104 1667 .]
meillo@104 1668 .QS
meillo@104 1669 let's stop walking on egg shells with this code base. there's no need to
meillo@104 1670 discuss whether to keep using vfork, just note in [sic!] passing, [...]
meillo@104 1671 we don't need a separate branch for removing vmh
meillo@104 1672 or ridding ourselves of #ifdef's or removing posix replacement functions
meillo@104 1673 or depending on pure ansi/posix "libc".
meillo@104 1674 .QP
meillo@104 1675 these things should each be a day or two of work and the "main branch"
meillo@104 1676 should just be modern. [...]
meillo@104 1677 let's push forward, aggressively.
meillo@104 1678 .QE
meillo@104 1679 .LP
meillo@104 1680 I did so already in the months before.
meillo@104 1681 I pushed forward.
meillo@104 1682 I simply dropped the cruft.
meillo@104 1683 .P
meillo@104 1684 The decision to drop a feature was based on literature research and
meillo@104 1685 careful thinking, but whether having had contact to this particular
meillo@104 1686 feature within my own computer life served as a rule of thumb.
meillo@109 1687 Always, I explained my reasons in the commit messages
meillo@109 1688 in the version control system.
meillo@104 1689 Hence, others can comprehend my view and argue for undoing the change
meillo@104 1690 if I have missed an important aspect.
meillo@109 1691 I was quick in dropping parts.
meillo@109 1692 I rather re-included falsely dropped parts than going a slower pace.
meillo@109 1693 Mmh is experimental work; it required tough decisions.
meillo@12 1694
meillo@102 1695
meillo@104 1696 .U3 "Forking
meillo@12 1697 .P
meillo@109 1698 Being a tool chest, MH creates many processes.
meillo@104 1699 In earlier times
meillo@104 1700 .Fu fork()
meillo@104 1701 had been an expensive system call, because the process's image needed
meillo@104 1702 to be duplicated completely at once.
meillo@109 1703 This was especially painful in the common case when the image gets
meillo@104 1704 replaced by a call to
meillo@104 1705 .Fu exec()
meillo@104 1706 right after having forked the child process.
meillo@104 1707 The
meillo@104 1708 .Fu vfork()
meillo@104 1709 system call was invented to speed up this particular case.
meillo@104 1710 It completely omits the duplication of the image.
meillo@104 1711 On old systems this resulted in significant speed ups.
meillo@104 1712 Therefore MH used
meillo@104 1713 .Fu vfork()
meillo@104 1714 whenever possible.
meillo@12 1715 .P
meillo@104 1716 Modern memory management units support copy-on-write semantics, which make
meillo@104 1717 .Fu fork()
meillo@104 1718 almost as fast as
meillo@104 1719 .Fu vfork() .
meillo@104 1720 The man page of
meillo@104 1721 .Mp vfork (2)
meillo@104 1722 in FreeBSD 8.0 states:
meillo@104 1723 .QS
meillo@104 1724 This system call will be eliminated when proper system sharing mechanisms
meillo@104 1725 are implemented. Users should not depend on the memory sharing semantics
meillo@104 1726 of vfork() as it will, in that case, be made synonymous to fork(2).
meillo@104 1727 .QE
meillo@104 1728 .LP
meillo@104 1729 Vixie supports the removal with the note that ``the last
meillo@104 1730 system on which fork was so slow that an mh user would notice it, was
meillo@104 1731 Eunice. that was 1987''.
meillo@104 1732 .[
meillo@104 1733 nmh-workers vixie edginess
meillo@104 1734 .]
meillo@104 1735 I replaced all calls to
meillo@104 1736 .Fu vfork()
meillo@104 1737 with calls to
meillo@104 1738 .Fu fork() .
meillo@109 1739 .Ci 40821f5c1316e9205a08375e7075909cc9968e7d
meillo@104 1740 .P
meillo@104 1741 Related to the costs of
meillo@104 1742 .Fu fork()
meillo@104 1743 is the probability of its success.
meillo@109 1744 In the eighties, on heavy loaded systems, calls to
meillo@104 1745 .Fu fork()
meillo@104 1746 were prone to failure.
meillo@104 1747 Hence, many of the
meillo@104 1748 .Fu fork()
meillo@104 1749 calls in the code were wrapped into loops to retry the
meillo@104 1750 .Fu fork()
meillo@109 1751 several times, to increase the changes to succeed, eventually.
meillo@109 1752 On modern systems, a failing
meillo@104 1753 .Fu fork()
meillo@109 1754 call is unusual.
meillo@104 1755 Hence, in the rare case when
meillo@104 1756 .Fu fork()
meillo@104 1757 fails, mmh programs simply abort.
meillo@109 1758 .Ci 5fbf37ee68e018998ada61eeab73e035b26834b6
meillo@12 1759
meillo@12 1760
meillo@109 1761 .U3 "Header Fields
meillo@104 1762 .BU
meillo@84 1763 The
meillo@84 1764 .Hd Encrypted
meillo@104 1765 header field was introduced by RFC\|822,
meillo@109 1766 but already marked as legacy in RFC\|2822.
meillo@109 1767 Today, OpenPGP provides the basis for standardized exchange of encrypted
meillo@104 1768 messages [RFC\|4880, RFC\|3156].
meillo@109 1769 Hence, the support for
meillo@104 1770 .Hd Encrypted
meillo@104 1771 header fields is removed in mmh.
meillo@109 1772 .Ci 064527f7b57ab050e5af13e15ad99aeeab125857
meillo@104 1773 .BU
meillo@84 1774 Native support for
meillo@84 1775 .Hd Face
meillo@104 1776 header fields has been removed, as well.
meillo@109 1777 .Ci 8e5be81f784682822f5e868c1bf3c8624682bd23
meillo@104 1778 This feature is similar to the
meillo@84 1779 .Hd X-Face
meillo@84 1780 header field in its intent,
meillo@21 1781 but takes a different approach to store the image.
meillo@84 1782 Instead of encoding the image data directly into the header field,
meillo@109 1783 it contains the hostname and UDP port where the image
meillo@109 1784 date can be retrieved.
meillo@109 1785 There exists even a third Face system,
meillo@109 1786 which is the successor of
meillo@109 1787 .Hd X-Face ,
meillo@109 1788 although it re-uses the
meillo@104 1789 .Hd Face
meillo@109 1790 header field.
meillo@109 1791 It was invented in 2005 and supports colored PNG images.
meillo@104 1792 None of the Face systems described here is popular today.
meillo@104 1793 Hence, mmh has no direct support for them.
meillo@104 1794 .BU
meillo@104 1795 The
meillo@104 1796 .Hd Content-MD5
meillo@104 1797 header field was introduced by RFC\|1864.
meillo@104 1798 It provides detection of data corruption during the transfer.
meillo@104 1799 But it can not ensure verbatim end-to-end delivery of the contents
meillo@104 1800 [RFC\|1864].
meillo@104 1801 The proper approach to verify content integrity in an
meillo@104 1802 end-to-end relationship is the use of digital cryptography.
meillo@104 1803 .\" XXX (RFCs FIXME).
meillo@104 1804 On the other hand, transfer protocols should detect corruption during
meillo@109 1805 the transmission.
meillo@109 1806 The TCP includes a checksum field therefore.
meillo@104 1807 These two approaches in combinations render the
meillo@104 1808 .Hd Content-MD5
meillo@104 1809 header field superfluous.
meillo@109 1810 Not a single one out of 4\|200 messages from two decades
meillo@109 1811 in an nmh-workers mailing list archive contains a
meillo@104 1812 .Hd Content-MD5
meillo@104 1813 header field.
meillo@104 1814 Neither did any of the 60\|000 messages in my personal mail storage.
meillo@104 1815 Removing the support for this header field,
meillo@104 1816 removed the last place where MD5 computation was needed.
meillo@109 1817 .Ci 31dc797eb5178970d68962ca8939da3fd9a8efda
meillo@104 1818 Hence, the MD5 code could be removed as well.
meillo@104 1819 Over 500 lines of code vanished by this one change.
meillo@104 1820
meillo@104 1821
meillo@104 1822 .U3 "MMDF maildrop support
meillo@21 1823 .P
meillo@104 1824 This type of format is conceptionally similar to the mbox format,
meillo@104 1825 but uses a different message delimiter (`\fL^A^A^A^A\fP' instead of
meillo@104 1826 `\fLFrom\0\fP').
meillo@104 1827 Mbox is the de-facto standard maildrop format on Unix,
meillo@109 1828 whereas the MMDF maildrop format became forgotten.
meillo@104 1829 I did drop MMDF maildrop format support.
meillo@109 1830 Mbox is the only packed mailbox format supported in mmh.
meillo@104 1831 .P
meillo@109 1832 The simplifications within the code were moderate.
meillo@109 1833 Mainly, the reading and writing of MMDF mailbox files was removed.
meillo@109 1834 But also, switches of
meillo@109 1835 .Pn packf
meillo@104 1836 and
meillo@109 1837 .Pn rcvpack
meillo@109 1838 could be removed.
meillo@109 1839 .Ci 3916ab66ad5d183705ac12357621ea8661afd3c0
meillo@109 1840 In the message parsing function
meillo@109 1841 .Fn sbr/m_getfld.c ,
meillo@109 1842 knowledge of MMDF packed mail boxes was removed.
meillo@109 1843 .Ci 684ec30d81e1223a282764452f4902ed4ad1c754
meillo@109 1844 Further code structure simplifications may be possible there,
meillo@109 1845 because only one single packed mailbox format is left to be supported.
meillo@104 1846 I have not worked on them yet because
meillo@104 1847 .Fu m_getfld()
meillo@104 1848 is heavily optimized and thus dangerous to touch.
meillo@104 1849 The risk of damaging the intricate workings of the optimized code is
meillo@104 1850 too high.
meillo@104 1851 .\" XXX: move somewhere else
meillo@104 1852 This problem is know to the developers of nmh, too.
meillo@109 1853 They also avoid touching this minefield.
meillo@104 1854
meillo@12 1855
meillo@101 1856 .U3 "Prompter's Control Keys
meillo@20 1857 .P
meillo@20 1858 The program
meillo@20 1859 .Pn prompter
meillo@104 1860 queries the user to fill in a message form.
meillo@104 1861 When used by
meillo@20 1862 .Pn comp
meillo@104 1863 as
meillo@104 1864 .Cl "comp -editor prompter" ,
meillo@20 1865 the resulting behavior is similar to
meillo@20 1866 .Pn mailx .
meillo@51 1867 Apparently,
meillo@20 1868 .Pn prompter
meillo@104 1869 hadn't been touched lately.
meillo@104 1870 Otherwise it's hardly explainable why it
meillo@20 1871 still offered the switches
meillo@84 1872 .Sw -erase
meillo@84 1873 .Ar chr
meillo@20 1874 and
meillo@84 1875 .Sw -kill
meillo@84 1876 .Ar chr
meillo@20 1877 to name the characters for command line editing.
meillo@21 1878 The times when this had been necessary are long time gone.
meillo@20 1879 Today these things work out-of-the-box, and if not, are configured
meillo@20 1880 with the standard tool
meillo@20 1881 .Pn stty .
meillo@104 1882 The switches are removed now
meillo@104 1883 .Ci 0bd9750710cdbab80cfb4036dd87af20afe1552f .
meillo@20 1884
meillo@104 1885
meillo@109 1886 .U3 "Hardcopy Terminal Support
meillo@21 1887 .P
meillo@109 1888 More of a funny anecdote is a check for being connected to a
meillo@109 1889 hardcopy terminal.
meillo@109 1890 It remained in the code until Spring 2012, when I finally removed it
meillo@104 1891 .Ci b7764c4a6b71d37918a97594d866258f154017ca .
meillo@109 1892 I would be truly happy to see such a terminal in action today,
meillo@109 1893 maybe even being able to work on it.
meillo@109 1894 But I fear my chances are null.
meillo@21 1895 .P
meillo@109 1896 The check only prevented a pager to be placed between the printing
meillo@104 1897 program (\c
meillo@104 1898 .Pn mhl )
meillo@104 1899 and the terminal.
meillo@109 1900 In nmh, this could have been ensured statically with the
meillo@104 1901 .Sw -nomoreproc
meillo@109 1902 at the command line, too.
meillo@121 1903 In mmh, setting the profile entry
meillo@104 1904 .Pe Pager
meillo@104 1905 or the environment variable
meillo@104 1906 .Ev PAGER
meillo@104 1907 to
meillo@109 1908 .Pn cat
meillo@109 1909 does the job.
meillo@104 1910
meillo@104 1911
meillo@21 1912
meillo@12 1913
meillo@58 1914 .H2 "Attachments
meillo@22 1915 .P
meillo@101 1916 The mind model of email attachments is unrelated to MIME.
meillo@101 1917 Although the MIME RFCs (2045 through 2049) define the technical
meillo@109 1918 requirements for having attachments, they do not mention the word
meillo@101 1919 ``attachment''.
meillo@101 1920 Instead of attachments, MIME talks about ``multi-part message bodies''
meillo@101 1921 [RFC\|2045], a more general concept.
meillo@101 1922 Multi-part messages are messages
meillo@101 1923 ``in which one or more different
meillo@101 1924 sets of data are combined in a single body''
meillo@101 1925 [RFC\|2046].
meillo@101 1926 MIME keeps its descriptions generic;
meillo@101 1927 it does not imply specific usage models.
meillo@109 1928 One usage model became prevalent: attachments.
meillo@101 1929 The idea is having a main text document with files of arbitrary kind
meillo@101 1930 attached to it.
meillo@101 1931 In MIME terms, this is a multi-part message having a text part first
meillo@110 1932 and parts of arbitrary type following.
meillo@101 1933 .P
meillo@101 1934 MH's MIME support is a direct implementation of the RFCs.
meillo@101 1935 The perception of the topic described in the RFCs is clearly visible
meillo@101 1936 in MH's implementation.
meillo@109 1937 In result, MH had all the MIME features but no idea of attachments.
meillo@109 1938 But users don't need all the MIME features,
meillo@109 1939 they want convenient attachment handling.
meillo@109 1940
meillo@102 1941
meillo@102 1942 .U3 "Composing MIME Messages
meillo@102 1943 .P
meillo@102 1944 In order to improve the situation on the message composing side,
meillo@102 1945 Jon Steinhart had added an attachment system to nmh in 2002.
meillo@101 1946 .Ci 7480dbc14bc90f2d872d434205c0784704213252
meillo@102 1947 In the file
meillo@102 1948 .Fn docs/README-ATTACHMENTS ,
meillo@102 1949 he described his motivation to do so as such:
meillo@101 1950 .QS
meillo@101 1951 Although nmh contains the necessary functionality for MIME message handing,
meillo@101 1952 the interface to this functionality is pretty obtuse.
meillo@101 1953 There's no way that I'm ever going to convince my partner to write
meillo@101 1954 .Pn mhbuild
meillo@101 1955 composition files!
meillo@101 1956 .QE
meillo@102 1957 .LP
meillo@102 1958 With this change, the mind model of attachments entered nmh.
meillo@102 1959 In the same document:
meillo@101 1960 .QS
meillo@101 1961 These changes simplify the task of managing attachments on draft files.
meillo@101 1962 They allow attachments to be added, listed, and deleted.
meillo@101 1963 MIME messages are automatically created when drafts with attachments
meillo@101 1964 are sent.
meillo@101 1965 .QE
meillo@102 1966 .LP
meillo@102 1967 Unfortunately, the attachment system,
meillo@102 1968 like any new facilities in nmh,
meillo@110 1969 was inactive by default.
meillo@101 1970 .P
meillo@101 1971 During my work in Argentina, I tried to improve the attachment system.
meillo@102 1972 But, because of great opposition in the nmh community,
meillo@102 1973 my patch died as a proposal on the mailing list, after long discussions.
meillo@101 1974 .[
meillo@101 1975 nmh-workers attachment proposal
meillo@101 1976 .]
meillo@110 1977 In January 2012, I extended the patch and applied it to mmh.
meillo@101 1978 .Ci 8ff284ff9167eff8f5349481529332d59ed913b1
meillo@102 1979 In mmh, the attachment system is active by default.
meillo@102 1980 Instead of command line switches, the
meillo@102 1981 .Pe Attachment-Header
meillo@102 1982 profile entry is used to specify
meillo@102 1983 the name of the attachment header field.
meillo@102 1984 It is pre-defined to
meillo@102 1985 .Hd Attach .
meillo@101 1986 .P
meillo@101 1987 To add an attachment to a draft, simply add an attachment header:
meillo@101 1988 .VS
meillo@101 1989 To: bob
meillo@101 1990 Subject: The file you wanted
meillo@101 1991 Attach: /path/to/the/file-bob-wanted
meillo@101 1992 --------
meillo@101 1993 Here it is.
meillo@101 1994 VE
meillo@101 1995 The header field can be added to the draft manually in the editor,
meillo@102 1996 or by using the `attach' command at the WhatNow prompt, or
meillo@102 1997 non-interactively with
meillo@101 1998 .Pn anno :
meillo@101 1999 .VS
meillo@102 2000 anno -append -nodate -component Attach -text /path/to/attachment
meillo@101 2001 VE
meillo@102 2002 Drafts with attachment headers are converted to MIME automatically by
meillo@102 2003 .Pn send .
meillo@102 2004 The conversion to MIME is invisible to the user.
meillo@102 2005 The draft stored in the draft folder is always in source form, with
meillo@101 2006 attachment headers.
meillo@101 2007 If the MIMEification fails, for instance because the file to attach
meillo@101 2008 is not accessible, the original draft is not changed.
meillo@101 2009 .P
meillo@102 2010 The attachment system handles the forwarding of messages, too.
meillo@101 2011 If the attachment header value starts with a plus character (`+'),
meillo@101 2012 like in
meillo@101 2013 .Cl "Attach: +bob 30 42" ,
meillo@101 2014 The given messages in the specified folder will be attached.
meillo@101 2015 This allowed to simplify
meillo@101 2016 .Pn forw .
meillo@101 2017 .Ci f41f04cf4ceca7355232cf7413e59afafccc9550
meillo@101 2018 .P
meillo@101 2019 Closely related to attachments is non-ASCII text content,
meillo@101 2020 because it requires MIME too.
meillo@102 2021 In nmh, the user needed to call `mime' at the WhatNow prompt
meillo@101 2022 to have the draft converted to MIME.
meillo@102 2023 This was necessary whenever the draft contained non-ASCII characters.
meillo@101 2024 If the user did not call `mime', a broken message would be sent.
meillo@101 2025 Therefore, the
meillo@101 2026 .Pe automimeproc
meillo@101 2027 profile entry could be specified to have the `mime' command invoked
meillo@102 2028 automatically each time.
meillo@101 2029 Unfortunately, this approach conflicted with with attachment system
meillo@101 2030 because the draft would already be in MIME format at the time
meillo@101 2031 when the attachment system wanted to MIMEify it.
meillo@102 2032 To use nmh's attachment system, `mime' must not be called at the
meillo@102 2033 WhatNow prompt and
meillo@101 2034 .Pe automimeproc
meillo@102 2035 must not be set in the profile.
meillo@101 2036 But then the case of non-ASCII text without attachment headers was
meillo@101 2037 not caught.
meillo@102 2038 All in all, the solution was complex and irritating.
meillo@102 2039 My patch from December 2010 would have simplified the situation.
meillo@102 2040 .P
meillo@101 2041 Mmh's current solution is even more elaborate.
meillo@101 2042 Any necessary MIMEification is done automatically.
meillo@101 2043 There is no `mime' command at the WhatNow prompt anymore.
meillo@102 2044 The draft will be converted automatically to MIME when either an
meillo@102 2045 attachment header or non-ASCII text is present.
meillo@101 2046 Further more, the special meaning of the hash character (`#')
meillo@102 2047 at line beginnings in the draft message is removed.
meillo@102 2048 Users need not at all deal with the whole topic.
meillo@101 2049 .P
meillo@102 2050 Although the new approach does not anymore support arbitrary MIME
meillo@102 2051 compositions directly, the full power of
meillo@101 2052 .Pn mhbuild
meillo@101 2053 can still be accessed.
meillo@102 2054 Given no attachment headers are included, the user can create
meillo@101 2055 .Pn mhbuild
meillo@102 2056 composition drafts like in nmh.
meillo@101 2057 Then, at the WhatNow prompt, he needs to invoke
meillo@101 2058 .Cl "edit mhbuild
meillo@101 2059 to convert it to MIME.
meillo@110 2060 Because the resulting draft does neither contain non-ASCII characters
meillo@102 2061 nor has it attachment headers, the attachment system will not touch it.
meillo@101 2062 .P
meillo@121 2063 The approach taken in mmh is tailored towards todays most common case:
meillo@101 2064 a text part with possibly attachments.
meillo@102 2065 This case is simplified a lot for users.
meillo@102 2066
meillo@112 2067
meillo@102 2068 .U3 "MIME Type Guessing
meillo@102 2069 .P
meillo@102 2070 The use of
meillo@101 2071 .Pn mhbuild
meillo@102 2072 composition drafts had one notable advantage over attachment headers
meillo@102 2073 from the programmer's point of view: The user provides the appropriate
meillo@102 2074 MIME types for files to include.
meillo@102 2075 The attachment system needs to find out the correct MIME type itself.
meillo@102 2076 This is a difficult task, yet it spares the user irritating work.
meillo@102 2077 Determining the correct MIME type of content is partly mechanical,
meillo@102 2078 partly intelligent work.
meillo@102 2079 Forcing the user to find out the correct MIME type,
meillo@102 2080 forces him to do partly mechanical work.
meillo@102 2081 Letting the computer do the work, can lead to bad choices for difficult
meillo@102 2082 content.
meillo@102 2083 For mmh, the latter option was chosen.
meillo@102 2084 .P
meillo@102 2085 Determining the MIME type by the suffix of the file name is a dumb
meillo@102 2086 approach, yet it is simple to implement and provides good results
meillo@102 2087 for the common cases.
meillo@102 2088 Mmh implements this approach in the
meillo@102 2089 .Pn print-mimetype
meillo@102 2090 script.
meillo@112 2091 .Ci 4b5944268ea0da7bb30598a27857304758ea9b44
meillo@102 2092 Using it is the default choice.
meillo@102 2093 .P
meillo@112 2094 A far better, though less portable, approach is the use of
meillo@102 2095 .Pn file .
meillo@102 2096 This standard tool tries to determine the type of files.
meillo@102 2097 Unfortunately, its capabilities and accuracy varies from system to system.
meillo@102 2098 Additionally, its output was only intended for human beings,
meillo@102 2099 but not to be used by programs.
meillo@102 2100 It varies much.
meillo@102 2101 Nevertheless, modern versions of GNU
meillo@102 2102 .Pn file ,
meillo@102 2103 which is prevalent on the popular GNU/Linux systems,
meillo@102 2104 provides MIME type output in machine-readable form.
meillo@102 2105 Although this solution is highly system-dependent,
meillo@102 2106 it solves the difficult problem well.
meillo@102 2107 On systems where GNU
meillo@102 2108 .Pn file ,
meillo@102 2109 version 5.04 or higher, is available it should be used.
meillo@102 2110 One needs to specify the following profile entry to do so:
meillo@112 2111 .Ci 3baec236a39c5c89a9bda8dbd988d643a21decc6
meillo@102 2112 .VS
meillo@102 2113 Mime-Type-Query: file -b --mime
meillo@102 2114 VE
meillo@102 2115 .LP
meillo@102 2116 Other versions of
meillo@102 2117 .Pn file
meillo@102 2118 might possibly be usable with wrapper scripts to reformat the output.
meillo@102 2119 The diversity among
meillo@102 2120 .Pn file
meillo@102 2121 implementations is great; one needs to check the local variant.
meillo@102 2122 .P
meillo@102 2123 If no MIME type can be determined, text content gets sent as
meillo@102 2124 `text/plain' and anything else under the generic fall-back type
meillo@102 2125 `application/octet-stream'.
meillo@102 2126 It is not possible in mmh to override the automatic MIME type guessing
meillo@102 2127 for a specific file.
meillo@102 2128 To do so, the user would need to know in advance for which file
meillo@102 2129 the automatic guessing does fail, or the system would require interaction.
meillo@102 2130 I consider both cases impractical.
meillo@102 2131 The existing solution should be sufficient.
meillo@102 2132 If not, the user may always fall back to
meillo@102 2133 .Pn mhbuild
meillo@102 2134 composition drafts and ignore the attachment system.
meillo@101 2135
meillo@102 2136
meillo@102 2137 .U3 "Storing Attachments
meillo@102 2138 .P
meillo@108 2139 Extracting MIME parts of a message and storing them to disk is done by
meillo@108 2140 .Pn mhstore .
meillo@108 2141 The program has two operation modes,
meillo@108 2142 .Sw -auto
meillo@108 2143 and
meillo@108 2144 .Sw -noauto .
meillo@108 2145 With the former one, each part is stored under the filename given in the
meillo@108 2146 MIME part's meta information, if available.
meillo@108 2147 This naming information is usually available for modern attachments.
meillo@108 2148 If no filename is available, this MIME part is stored as if
meillo@108 2149 .Sw -noauto
meillo@108 2150 would have been specified.
meillo@108 2151 In the
meillo@108 2152 .Sw -noauto
meillo@108 2153 mode, the parts are processed according to rules, defined by
meillo@108 2154 .Pe mhstore-store-*
meillo@108 2155 profile entries.
meillo@108 2156 These rules define generic filename templates for storing
meillo@108 2157 or commands to post-process the contents in arbitrary ways.
meillo@108 2158 If no matching rule is available the part is stored under a generic
meillo@108 2159 filename, built from message number, MIME part number, and MIME type.
meillo@108 2160 .P
meillo@108 2161 The
meillo@108 2162 .Sw -noauto
meillo@108 2163 mode had been the default in nmh because it was considered safe,
meillo@108 2164 in contrast to the
meillo@108 2165 .Sw -auto
meillo@108 2166 mode.
meillo@108 2167 In mmh,
meillo@108 2168 .Sw -auto
meillo@108 2169 is not dangerous anymore.
meillo@108 2170 Two changes were necessary:
meillo@108 2171 .BU
meillo@108 2172 Any directory path is removed from the proposed filename.
meillo@108 2173 Thus, the files are always stored in the expected directory.
meillo@108 2174 .Ci 41b6eadbcecf63c9a66aa5e582011987494abefb
meillo@108 2175 .BU
meillo@108 2176 Tar files are not extracted automatically any more.
meillo@108 2177 Thus, the rest of the file system will not be touched.
meillo@108 2178 .Ci 94c80042eae3383c812d9552089953f9846b1bb6
meillo@108 2179 .LP
meillo@108 2180 Now, the outcome of mmh's
meillo@108 2181 .Cl "mhstore -auto
meillo@110 2182 can be foreseen from the output of
meillo@108 2183 .Cl "mhlist -verbose" .
meillo@108 2184 .P
meillo@108 2185 The
meillo@108 2186 .Sw -noauto
meillo@108 2187 mode is seen to be more powerful but less convenient.
meillo@108 2188 On the other hand,
meillo@108 2189 .Sw -auto
meillo@108 2190 is safe now and
meillo@108 2191 storing attachments under their original name is intuitive.
meillo@108 2192 Hence,
meillo@108 2193 .Sw -auto
meillo@108 2194 serves better as the default option.
meillo@108 2195 .Ci 3410b680416c49a7617491af38bc1929855a331d
meillo@108 2196 .P
meillo@108 2197 Files are stored into the directory given by the
meillo@108 2198 .Pe Nmh-Storage
meillo@108 2199 profile entry, if set, or
meillo@108 2200 into the current working directory, otherwise.
meillo@108 2201 Storing to different directories is only possible with
meillo@108 2202 .Pe mhstore-store-*
meillo@108 2203 profile entries.
meillo@108 2204 .P
meillo@108 2205 Still, in both modes, existing files get overwritten silently.
meillo@108 2206 This can be considered a bug.
meillo@108 2207 Yet, each other behavior has its draw-backs, too.
meillo@108 2208 Refusing to replace files requires adding a
meillo@108 2209 .Sw -force
meillo@108 2210 option.
meillo@108 2211 Users will likely need to invoke
meillo@108 2212 .Pn mhstore
meillo@108 2213 a second time with
meillo@108 2214 .Sw -force
meillo@108 2215 then.
meillo@108 2216 Eventually, only the user can decide in the concrete case.
meillo@108 2217 This requires interaction, which I like to avoid if possible.
meillo@108 2218 Appending a unique suffix to the filename is another bad option.
meillo@108 2219 For now, the behavior remains as it is.
meillo@108 2220 .P
meillo@108 2221 In mmh, only MIME parts of type message are special in
meillo@108 2222 .Pn mhstore 's
meillo@108 2223 .Sw -auto
meillo@108 2224 mode.
meillo@108 2225 Instead of storing message/rfc822 parts as files to disk,
meillo@108 2226 they are stored as messages into the current mail folder.
meillo@108 2227 The same applies to message/partial, only, the parts are reassembled
meillo@108 2228 automatically before.
meillo@108 2229 Parts of type message/external-body are not automatically retrieved
meillo@108 2230 anymore. Instead, Information on how to retrieve them is output.
meillo@108 2231 Not supporting this rare case saved nearly one thousand lines of code.
meillo@108 2232 .Ci 55e1d8c654ee0f7c45b9361ce34617983b454c32
meillo@108 2233 .\" XXX mention somewhere else too: (The profile entry `nmh-access-ftp'
meillo@108 2234 .\" and sbr/ruserpass.c for reading ~/.netrc are gone now.)
meillo@108 2235 Not special anymore is `application/octet-stream; type=tar'.
meillo@108 2236 Automatically extracting such MIME parts had been the dangerous part
meillo@108 2237 of the
meillo@108 2238 .Sw -auto
meillo@108 2239 mode.
meillo@108 2240 .Ci 94c80042eae3383c812d9552089953f9846b1bb6
meillo@108 2241
meillo@102 2242
meillo@102 2243
meillo@102 2244 .U3 "Showing MIME Messages
meillo@102 2245 .P
meillo@114 2246 The program
meillo@114 2247 .Pn mhshow
meillo@114 2248 had been written to display MIME messages.
meillo@114 2249 It implemented the conceptional view of the MIME RFCs.
meillo@114 2250 Nmh's
meillo@114 2251 .Pn mhshow
meillo@114 2252 handled each MIME part independently, presenting them separately
meillo@114 2253 to the user.
meillo@114 2254 This does not match today's understanding of email attachments,
meillo@114 2255 where displaying a message is seen to be a single, integrated operation.
meillo@114 2256 Today, email messages are expected to consist of a main text part
meillo@114 2257 plus possibly attachments.
meillo@114 2258 They are not any more seen to be arbitrary MIME hierarchies with
meillo@114 2259 information on how to display the individual parts.
meillo@114 2260 I adjusted
meillo@114 2261 .Pn mhshow 's
meillo@114 2262 behavior to the modern view on the topic.
meillo@114 2263 .P
meillo@114 2264 Note that this section completely ignores the original
meillo@114 2265 .Pn show
meillo@114 2266 program, because it was not capable to display MIME messages
meillo@114 2267 and is no longer part of mmh.
meillo@114 2268 Although
meillo@114 2269 .Pn mhshow
meillo@114 2270 was renamed to
meillo@114 2271 .Pn show
meillo@114 2272 in mmh, this section uses the name
meillo@114 2273 .Pn mhshow ,
meillo@114 2274 in order to avoid confusion.
meillo@114 2275 .P
meillo@114 2276 In mmh, the basic idea is that
meillo@114 2277 .Pn mhshow
meillo@114 2278 should display a message in one single pager session.
meillo@114 2279 Therefore,
meillo@114 2280 .Pn mhshow
meillo@114 2281 invokes a pager session for all its output,
meillo@114 2282 whenever it prints to a terminal.
meillo@114 2283 .Ci a4197ea6ffc5c1550e8b52d5a654bcaaaee04a4e
meillo@114 2284 In consequence,
meillo@114 2285 .Pn mhl
meillo@114 2286 does no more invoke a pager.
meillo@114 2287 .Ci 0e46503be3c855bddaeae3843e1b659279c35d70
meillo@114 2288 With
meillo@114 2289 .Pn mhshow
meillo@114 2290 replacing the original
meillo@114 2291 .Pn show ,
meillo@114 2292 output from
meillo@114 2293 .Pn mhl
meillo@114 2294 does not go to the terminal directly, but through
meillo@114 2295 .Pn mhshow .
meillo@114 2296 Hence,
meillo@114 2297 .Pn mhl
meillo@114 2298 does not need to invoke a pager.
meillo@114 2299 The one and only job of
meillo@114 2300 .Pn mhl
meillo@114 2301 is to format messages or parts of them.
meillo@114 2302 The only place in mmh, where a pager is invoked is
meillo@114 2303 .Pn mhshow .
meillo@114 2304 .P
meillo@114 2305 .Pe mhshow-show-*
meillo@114 2306 profile entries can be used to display MIME parts in a specific way.
meillo@114 2307 For instance, PDF and Postscript files could be converted to plain text
meillo@114 2308 to display them in the terminal.
meillo@114 2309 In mmh, the displaying of MIME parts will always be done serially.
meillo@114 2310 The request to display the MIME type `multipart/parallel' in parallel
meillo@114 2311 is ignored.
meillo@114 2312 It is simply treated as `multipart/mixed'.
meillo@114 2313 .Ci d0581ba306a7299113a346f9b4c46ce97bc4cef6
meillo@114 2314 This could already be requested with the, now removed,
meillo@114 2315 .Sw -serialonly
meillo@114 2316 switch of
meillo@114 2317 .Pn mhshow .
meillo@114 2318 As MIME parts are always processed exclusively , i.e. serially,
meillo@114 2319 the `%e' escape in
meillo@114 2320 .Pe mhshow-show-*
meillo@114 2321 profile entries became useless and was thus removed.
meillo@114 2322 .Ci a20d405db09b7ccca74d3e8c57550883da49e1ae
meillo@114 2323 .P
meillo@114 2324 In the intended setup, only text content would be displayed.
meillo@114 2325 Non-text content would be converted to text by appropriate
meillo@114 2326 .Pe mhshow-show-*
meillo@114 2327 profile entries before, if possible and wanted.
meillo@114 2328 All output would be displayed in a single pager session.
meillo@114 2329 Other kinds of attachments are ignored.
meillo@114 2330 With
meillo@114 2331 .Pe mhshow-show-*
meillo@114 2332 profile entries for them, they can be displayed serially along
meillo@114 2333 the message.
meillo@114 2334 For parallel display, the attachments need to be stored to disk first.
meillo@114 2335 .P
meillo@114 2336 To display text content in foreign charsets, they need to be converted
meillo@114 2337 to the native charset.
meillo@114 2338 Therefore,
meillo@114 2339 .Pe mhshow-charset-*
meillo@114 2340 profile entries used to be needed.
meillo@121 2341 In mmh, the conversion is done automatically by piping the text through
meillo@114 2342 the
meillo@114 2343 .Pn iconv
meillo@114 2344 command, if necessary.
meillo@114 2345 .Ci 2433122c20baccb10b70b49c04c6b0497b5b3b60
meillo@114 2346 Custom
meillo@114 2347 .Pe mhshow-show-*
meillo@114 2348 rules for textual content might need a
meillo@114 2349 .Cl "iconv -f %c %f |
meillo@114 2350 prefix to have the text converted to the native charset.
meillo@114 2351 .P
meillo@121 2352 Although the conversion of foreign charsets to the native one
meillo@114 2353 has improved, it is not consistent enough.
meillo@114 2354 Further work needs to be done and
meillo@114 2355 the basic concepts in this field need to be re-thought.
meillo@114 2356 Though, the default setup of mmh displays message in foreign charsets
meillo@114 2357 correctly without the need to configure anything.
meillo@114 2358
meillo@114 2359
meillo@114 2360 .ig
meillo@114 2361
meillo@114 2362 .P
meillo@114 2363 mhshow/mhstore: Removed support for retrieving message/external-body parts.
meillo@114 2364 These tools won't download the contents automatically anymore. Instead,
meillo@114 2365 they print the information needed to get the contents. If someone should
meillo@114 2366 really receive one of those rare message/external-body messages, he can
meillo@114 2367 do the job manually. We save nearly a thousand lines of code. That's worth
meillo@114 2368 it!
meillo@114 2369 (The profile entry `nmh-access-ftp' and sbr/ruserpass.c for reading
meillo@114 2370 ~/.netrc are gone now.)
meillo@114 2371 .Ci 55e1d8c654ee0f7c45b9361ce34617983b454c32
meillo@114 2372
meillo@114 2373 ..
meillo@102 2374
meillo@58 2375
meillo@58 2376
meillo@58 2377 .H2 "Digital Cryptography
meillo@22 2378 .P
meillo@58 2379 Signing and encryption.
meillo@112 2380 .P
meillo@112 2381 FIXME
meillo@58 2382
meillo@58 2383
meillo@102 2384
meillo@102 2385 .H2 "Modern Defaults
meillo@22 2386 .P
meillo@116 2387 Nmh has a bunch of convenience-improving features inactive by default,
meillo@116 2388 although one can expect every new user wanting to have them active.
meillo@112 2389 The reason they are inactive by default is the wish to stay compatible
meillo@112 2390 with old versions.
meillo@116 2391 But what is the definition for old versions.
meillo@116 2392 Still, the highly useful draft folder facility is not active by default
meillo@116 2393 although it had been introduced over twenty-five years ago
meillo@112 2394 .[
meillo@112 2395 rose romine real work
meillo@112 2396 .]
meillo@116 2397 \(en the community seems not to care.
meillo@116 2398 This is one of several examples that require new users to build up
meillo@116 2399 their profile before they can access the modern features of nmh.
meillo@116 2400 Without an extensively built-up profile, the setup is hardly usable
meillo@116 2401 for modern emailing.
meillo@116 2402 The point is not the customization of the setup,
meillo@116 2403 but the activating of generally useful facilities.
meillo@112 2404 .P
meillo@116 2405 Yet, the real problem lies less in enabling the features, as this is
meillo@116 2406 straight forward as soon as one knows what he wants.
meillo@116 2407 The real problem is that new users need deep insights into the project
meillo@116 2408 before they find out what they are missing and that nmh actually
meillo@116 2409 provides it already, it just was not activated.
meillo@116 2410 To give an example, I needed one year of using nmh
meillo@102 2411 before I became aware of the existence of the attachment system.
meillo@102 2412 One could argue that this fact disqualifies my reading of the
meillo@102 2413 documentation.
meillo@102 2414 If I would have installed nmh from source back then, I could agree.
meillo@116 2415 Yet, I had used a prepackaged version and had expected that it would
meillo@102 2416 just work.
meillo@121 2417 Nevertheless, I had been convinced by the concepts of MH already
meillo@116 2418 and I am a software developer,
meillo@116 2419 still I required a lot of time to discover the cool features.
meillo@116 2420 How can we expect users to be even more advanced than me,
meillo@116 2421 just to allow them use MH in a convenient and modern way?
meillo@116 2422 Unless they are strongly convinced of the concepts, they will fail.
meillo@116 2423 I have seen friends of me giving up disappointed
meillo@116 2424 before they truly used the system,
meillo@116 2425 although they had been motivated in the beginning.
meillo@116 2426 They suffer hard enough to get used to the toolchest approach,
meillo@116 2427 we should spare them further inconveniences.
meillo@116 2428 .P
meillo@116 2429 Maintaining compatibility for its own sake is for no good.
meillo@116 2430 If any MH implementation would be the back-end of widespread
meillo@116 2431 email clients with large user bases, compatibility would be more
meillo@116 2432 important.
meillo@116 2433 Yet, it appears as if this is not the case.
meillo@116 2434 Hence, compatibility is hardly important for technical reasons.
meillo@116 2435 Its importance originates rather from personal reasons.
meillo@116 2436 Nmh's user base is small and old.
meillo@116 2437 Changing the interfaces would cause inconvenience to long-term users of MH.
meillo@116 2438 It would force them to change their many years old MH configurations.
meillo@116 2439 I do understand this aspect, but it keeps new users from using MH.
meillo@116 2440 By sticking to the old users, new users are kept away.
meillo@116 2441 Yet, the future lies in new users.
meillo@116 2442 Hence, mmh invites new users by providing a convenient and modern setup,
meillo@116 2443 readily usable out-of-the-box.
meillo@116 2444 .P
meillo@116 2445 In mmh, all modern features are active by default.
meillo@116 2446 In consequence, a setup with a profile that defines only the path to the
meillo@116 2447 mail storage, is already convenient to use.
meillo@116 2448 Again, Paul Vixie's ``edginess'' appeal supports the direction I took:
meillo@116 2449 ``the `main branch' should just be modern''.
meillo@116 2450 .[
meillo@116 2451 paul vixie edginess nmh-workers
meillo@116 2452 .]
meillo@116 2453 .P
meillo@116 2454 Modern features that are active in mmh by default include:
meillo@116 2455 .BU
meillo@116 2456 The attachment system (\c
meillo@116 2457 .Hd Attach ).
meillo@116 2458 .Ci 8ff284ff9167eff8f5349481529332d59ed913b1
meillo@116 2459 .BU
meillo@116 2460 The draft folder facility (\c
meillo@116 2461 .Fn +drafts ).
meillo@116 2462 .Ci 337338b404931f06f0db2119c9e145e8ca5a9860
meillo@116 2463 .BU
meillo@116 2464 The unseen sequence (`u')
meillo@116 2465 .Ci c2360569e1d8d3678e294eb7c1354cb8bf7501c1
meillo@116 2466 and the sequence negation prefix (`!').
meillo@116 2467 .Ci db74c2bd004b2dc9bf8086a6d8bf773ac051f3cc
meillo@116 2468 .BU
meillo@116 2469 Quoting the original message in the reply.
meillo@116 2470 .Ci 67411b1f95d6ec987b4c732459e1ba8a8ac192c6
meillo@116 2471 .BU
meillo@116 2472 Forwarding messages using MIME.
meillo@116 2473 .Ci 6e271608b7b9c23771523f88d23a4d3593010cf1
meillo@116 2474
meillo@58 2475
meillo@58 2476
meillo@58 2477
meillo@100 2478 .H1 "Code Style
meillo@22 2479 .P
meillo@118 2480 Kernighan and Pike have emphasized the importance of style in the
meillo@118 2481 preface of their book:
meillo@118 2482 .[ [
meillo@118 2483 kernighan pike practice of programming
meillo@118 2484 .], p. x]
meillo@118 2485 .QS
meillo@118 2486 Chapter 1 discusses programming style.
meillo@118 2487 Good style is so important to good programming that we have chose
meillo@118 2488 to cover it first.
meillo@118 2489 .QE
meillo@118 2490 This section covers changes in mmh that were motivated by the desire
meillo@118 2491 to improve on style.
meillo@118 2492 Many of them follow the rules given in the quoted book.
meillo@118 2493 .[
meillo@118 2494 kernighan pike practice of programming
meillo@118 2495 .]
meillo@118 2496
meillo@118 2497
meillo@118 2498 .H2 "Style
meillo@118 2499 .P
meillo@118 2500 .U3 "Indentation Style
meillo@118 2501 .P
meillo@118 2502 Indentation styles are the holy cow of programmers.
meillo@118 2503 Again Kernighan and Pike:
meillo@118 2504 .[ [
meillo@118 2505 kernighan pike practice of programming
meillo@118 2506 .], p. 10]
meillo@118 2507 .QS
meillo@118 2508 Programmers have always argued about the layout of programs,
meillo@118 2509 but the specific style is much less important than its consistent
meillo@118 2510 application.
meillo@121 2511 Pick one style, preferably ours, use it consistently, and don't waste
meillo@118 2512 time arguing.
meillo@118 2513 .QE
meillo@118 2514 .P
meillo@118 2515 I agree that the constant application is most important,
meillo@118 2516 but I believe that some styles have advantages over others.
meillo@118 2517 For instance the indentation with tab characters only.
meillo@118 2518 Tab characters directly map to the nesting level \(en
meillo@118 2519 one tab, one level.
meillo@118 2520 Tab characters are flexible because developers can adjust them to
meillo@118 2521 whatever width they like to have.
meillo@118 2522 There is no more need to run
meillo@118 2523 .Pn unexpand
meillo@118 2524 or
meillo@118 2525 .Pn entab
meillo@118 2526 programs to ensure the correct mixture of leading tabs and spaces.
meillo@118 2527 The simple rules are: (1) Leading whitespace must consist of tabs only.
meillo@118 2528 (2) Any other whitespace should consist of spaces.
meillo@121 2529 These two rules ensure the integrity of the visual appearance.
meillo@121 2530 Although reformatting existing code should be avoided, I did it.
meillo@118 2531 I did not waste time arguing; I just did it.
meillo@118 2532 .Ci a485ed478abbd599d8c9aab48934e7a26733ecb1
meillo@118 2533
meillo@118 2534 .U3 "Comments
meillo@118 2535 .P
meillo@118 2536 Section 1.6 of
meillo@118 2537 .[ [
meillo@118 2538 kernighan pike practice of programming
meillo@118 2539 .], p. 23]
meillo@118 2540 demands: ``Don't belabor the obvious.''
meillo@118 2541 Hence, I simply removed comments like the following:
meillo@118 2542 .VS
meillo@120 2543 context_replace(curfolder, folder); /* update current folder */
meillo@120 2544 seq_setcur(mp, mp->lowsel); /* update current message */
meillo@120 2545 seq_save(mp); /* synchronize message sequences */
meillo@120 2546 folder_free(mp); /* free folder/message structure */
meillo@120 2547 context_save(); /* save the context file */
meillo@120 2548
meillo@120 2549 [...]
meillo@120 2550
meillo@120 2551 int c; /* current character */
meillo@120 2552 char *cp; /* miscellaneous character pointer */
meillo@120 2553
meillo@120 2554 [...]
meillo@120 2555
meillo@120 2556 /* NUL-terminate the field */
meillo@120 2557 *cp = '\0';
meillo@118 2558 VE
meillo@120 2559 .Ci 426543622b377fc5d091455cba685e114b6df674
meillo@118 2560 .P
meillo@118 2561 The names of the functions explain enough already.
meillo@118 2562
meillo@118 2563 .U3 "Names
meillo@118 2564 .P
meillo@118 2565 Kernighan and Pike suggest:
meillo@118 2566 ``Use active names for functions''.
meillo@118 2567 .[ [
meillo@118 2568 kernighan pike practice of programming
meillo@118 2569 .], p. 4]
meillo@118 2570 One application of this rule was the rename of
meillo@118 2571 .Fu check_charset()
meillo@118 2572 to
meillo@118 2573 .Fu is_native_charset() .
meillo@118 2574 .Ci 8d77b48284c58c135a6b2787e721597346ab056d
meillo@118 2575 The same change fixed a violation of ``Be accurate'' as well.
meillo@118 2576 The code did not match the expectation the function suggested,
meillo@118 2577 as it, for whatever reason, only compared the first ten characters
meillo@118 2578 of the charset name.
meillo@118 2579 .P
meillo@118 2580 More important than using active names is using descriptive names.
meillo@118 2581 Renaming the obscure function
meillo@118 2582 .Fu m_unknown()
meillo@118 2583 was a delightful event.
meillo@118 2584 .Ci 611d68d19204d7cbf5bd585391249cb5bafca846
meillo@118 2585 .P
meillo@118 2586 Magic numbers are generally considered bad style.
meillo@118 2587 Obviously, Kernighan and Pike agree:
meillo@118 2588 ``Give names to magic numbers''.
meillo@118 2589 .[ [
meillo@118 2590 kernighan pike practice of programming
meillo@118 2591 .], p. 19]
meillo@118 2592 One such change was naming the type of input \(en mbox or mail folder \(en
meillo@118 2593 to be scanned:
meillo@118 2594 .VS
meillo@118 2595 #define SCN_MBOX (-1)
meillo@118 2596 #define SCN_FOLD 0
meillo@118 2597 VE
meillo@118 2598 .Ci 7ffb36d28e517a6f3a10272056fc127592ab1c19
meillo@118 2599 .P
meillo@118 2600 The argument
meillo@118 2601 .Ar outnum
meillo@118 2602 of the function
meillo@118 2603 .Fu scan()
meillo@118 2604 in
meillo@118 2605 .Fn uip/scansbr.c
meillo@118 2606 defines the number of the message to be created.
meillo@118 2607 If no message is to be created, the argument is misused to transport
meillo@118 2608 program logic.
meillo@118 2609 This lead to obscure code.
meillo@118 2610 I improved the clarity of the code by introducing two variables:
meillo@118 2611 .VS
meillo@118 2612 int incing = (outnum > 0);
meillo@118 2613 int ismbox = (outnum != 0);
meillo@118 2614 VE
meillo@118 2615 They cover the magic values and are used for conditions.
meillo@118 2616 The variable
meillo@118 2617 .Ar outnum
meillo@118 2618 is only used when it holds an ordinary message number.
meillo@118 2619 .Ci b8b075c77be7794f3ae9ff0e8cedb12b48fd139f
meillo@118 2620 The clarity improvement of the change showed detours in the program logic
meillo@118 2621 of related code parts.
meillo@118 2622 Having the new variables with descriptive names, a more
meillo@121 2623 straight forward implementation became apparent.
meillo@118 2624 Before the clarification was done,
meillo@118 2625 the possibility to improve had not be seen.
meillo@118 2626 .Ci aa60b0ab5e804f8befa890c0a6df0e3143ce0723
meillo@118 2627
meillo@118 2628 .U3 "Rework of \f(CWanno\fP
meillo@118 2629 .P
meillo@118 2630 At the end of their chapter on style,
meillo@118 2631 Kernighan and Pike ask: ``But why worry about style?''
meillo@121 2632 The following example of my rework of
meillo@118 2633 .Pn anno
meillo@121 2634 provides an answer why style is important in the first place.
meillo@118 2635 .P
meillo@120 2636 Until 2002,
meillo@120 2637 .Pn anno
meillo@120 2638 had six functional command line switches,
meillo@120 2639 .Sw -component
meillo@120 2640 and
meillo@120 2641 .Sw -text ,
meillo@120 2642 which took an argument each,
meillo@120 2643 and the two pairs of flags,
meillo@120 2644 .Sw -[no]date
meillo@120 2645 and
meillo@120 2646 .Sw -[no]inplace.,
meillo@120 2647 .Sw -component
meillo@120 2648 and
meillo@120 2649 .Sw -text ,
meillo@120 2650 which took an argument each,
meillo@120 2651 and the two pairs of flags,
meillo@120 2652 .Sw -[no]date
meillo@120 2653 and
meillo@120 2654 .Sw -[no]inplace .
meillo@120 2655 Then Jon Steinhart introduced his attachment system.
meillo@120 2656 In need for more advanced annotation handling, he extended
meillo@120 2657 .Pn anno .
meillo@120 2658 He added five more switches:
meillo@120 2659 .Sw -draft ,
meillo@120 2660 .Sw -list ,
meillo@120 2661 .Sw -delete ,
meillo@120 2662 .Sw -append ,
meillo@120 2663 and
meillo@120 2664 .Sw -number ,
meillo@120 2665 the last one taking an argument.
meillo@121 2666 .Ci 7480dbc14bc90f2d872d434205c0784704213252
meillo@120 2667 Later,
meillo@120 2668 .Sw -[no]preserve
meillo@120 2669 was added.
meillo@121 2670 .Ci d9b1d57351d104d7ec1a5621f090657dcce8cb7f
meillo@120 2671 Then, the Synopsis section of the man page
meillo@120 2672 .Mp anno (1)
meillo@120 2673 read:
meillo@120 2674 .VS
meillo@120 2675 anno [+folder] [msgs] [-component field] [-inplace | -noinplace]
meillo@120 2676 [-date | -nodate] [-draft] [-append] [-list] [-delete]
meillo@120 2677 [-number [num|all]] [-preserve | -nopreserve] [-version]
meillo@120 2678 [-help] [-text body]
meillo@120 2679 VE
meillo@120 2680 .LP
meillo@120 2681 The implementation followed the same structure.
meillo@120 2682 Problems became visible when
meillo@120 2683 .Cl "anno -list -number 42
meillo@120 2684 worked on the current message instead on message number 42,
meillo@120 2685 and
meillo@120 2686 .Cl "anno -list -number l:5
meillo@120 2687 did not work on the last five messages but failed with the misterious
meillo@120 2688 error message: ``anno: missing argument to -list''.
meillo@121 2689 Yet, the invocation matched the specification in the man page.
meillo@120 2690 There, the correct use of
meillo@120 2691 .Sw -number
meillo@120 2692 was defined as being
meillo@120 2693 .Cl "[-number [num|all]]
meillo@120 2694 and the textual description for the combination with
meillo@120 2695 .Sw -list
meillo@120 2696 read:
meillo@120 2697 .QS
meillo@120 2698 The -list option produces a listing of the field bodies for
meillo@120 2699 header fields with names matching the specified component,
meillo@120 2700 one per line. The listing is numbered, starting at 1, if
meillo@120 2701 the -number option is also used.
meillo@120 2702 .QE
meillo@120 2703 .LP
meillo@120 2704 The problem was manifold.
meillo@120 2705 The code required a numeric argument to the
meillo@120 2706 .Sw -number
meillo@120 2707 switch.
meillo@120 2708 If it was missing or non-numeric,
meillo@120 2709 .Pn anno
meillo@120 2710 aborted with an error message that had an off-by-one error,
meillo@120 2711 printing the switch one before the failing one.
meillo@120 2712 Semantically, the argument to the
meillo@120 2713 .Sw -number
meillo@120 2714 switch is only necessary in combination with
meillo@120 2715 .Sw -delete ,
meillo@120 2716 but not with
meillo@120 2717 .Sw -list .
meillo@120 2718 In the former case it is even necessary.
meillo@120 2719 .P
meillo@120 2720 Trying to fix these problems on the surface would not have solved it truly.
meillo@120 2721 The problems discovered originate from a discrepance between the semantic
meillo@120 2722 structure of the problem and the structure implemented in the program.
meillo@120 2723 Such structural differences can not be cured on the surface.
meillo@120 2724 They need to be solved by adjusting the structure of the implementation
meillo@120 2725 to the structure of the problem.
meillo@120 2726 .P
meillo@120 2727 In 2002, the new switches
meillo@120 2728 .Sw -list
meillo@120 2729 and
meillo@120 2730 .Sw -delete
meillo@120 2731 were added in the same way, the
meillo@120 2732 .Sw -number
meillo@120 2733 switch for instance had been added.
meillo@120 2734 Yet, they are of structural different type.
meillo@120 2735 Semantically,
meillo@120 2736 .Sw -list
meillo@120 2737 and
meillo@120 2738 .Sw -delete
meillo@120 2739 introduce modes of operation.
meillo@120 2740 Historically,
meillo@120 2741 .Pn anno
meillo@120 2742 had only one operation mode: adding header fields.
meillo@120 2743 With the extension, it got two moder modes:
meillo@120 2744 listing and deleting header fields.
meillo@120 2745 The structure of the code changes did not pay respect to this
meillo@120 2746 fundamental change to
meillo@120 2747 .Pn anno 's
meillo@120 2748 behavior.
meillo@120 2749 Neither the implementation nor the documentation did clearly
meillo@120 2750 define them as being exclusive modes of operation.
meillo@120 2751 Having identified the problem, I solved it by putting structure into
meillo@120 2752 .Pn anno
meillo@120 2753 and its documentation.
meillo@120 2754 .Ci d54c8db8bdf01e8381890f7729bc0ef4a055ea11
meillo@120 2755 .P
meillo@120 2756 The difference is visible in both, the code and the documentation.
meillo@121 2757 The following code excerpt:
meillo@120 2758 .VS
meillo@120 2759 int delete = -2; /* delete header element if set */
meillo@120 2760 int list = 0; /* list header elements if set */
meillo@120 2761 [...]
meillo@121 2762 case DELETESW: /* delete annotations */
meillo@121 2763 delete = 0;
meillo@121 2764 continue;
meillo@121 2765 case LISTSW: /* produce a listing */
meillo@121 2766 list = 1;
meillo@121 2767 continue;
meillo@120 2768 VE
meillo@121 2769 .LP
meillo@121 2770 was replaced by:
meillo@120 2771 .VS
meillo@120 2772 static enum { MODE_ADD, MODE_DEL, MODE_LIST } mode = MODE_ADD;
meillo@120 2773 [...]
meillo@121 2774 case DELETESW: /* delete annotations */
meillo@121 2775 mode = MODE_DEL;
meillo@121 2776 continue;
meillo@121 2777 case LISTSW: /* produce a listing */
meillo@121 2778 mode = MODE_LIST;
meillo@121 2779 continue;
meillo@120 2780 VE
meillo@120 2781 .LP
meillo@121 2782 The replacement code does not only reflect the problem's structure better,
meillo@121 2783 it is easier to understand as well.
meillo@121 2784 The same applies to the documentation.
meillo@120 2785 The man page was completely reorganized to propagate the same structure.
meillo@121 2786 This is visible in the Synopsis section:
meillo@120 2787 .VS
meillo@120 2788 anno [+folder] [msgs] [-component field] [-text body]
meillo@120 2789 [-append] [-date | -nodate] [-preserve | -nopreserve]
meillo@120 2790 [-Version] [-help]
meillo@120 2791
meillo@120 2792 anno -delete [+folder] [msgs] [-component field] [-text
meillo@120 2793 body] [-number num | all ] [-preserve | -nopreserve]
meillo@120 2794 [-Version] [-help]
meillo@120 2795
meillo@120 2796 anno -list [+folder] [msgs] [-component field] [-number]
meillo@120 2797 [-Version] [-help]
meillo@120 2798 VE
meillo@121 2799 .\" XXX think about explaining the -preserve rework?
meillo@118 2800
meillo@58 2801
meillo@58 2802
meillo@121 2803 .H2 "Standard Libraries
meillo@22 2804 .P
meillo@121 2805 MH is one decade older than the POSIX and ANSI C standards.
meillo@121 2806 Hence, MH included own implementations of functions
meillo@121 2807 that are standardized and thus widely available today,
meillo@121 2808 but were not back then.
meillo@121 2809 Today, twenty years after the POSIX and ANSI C were published,
meillo@121 2810 developers can expect system to comply with these standards.
meillo@121 2811 In consequence, MH-specific replacements for standard functions
meillo@121 2812 can and should be dropped.
meillo@121 2813 Kernighan and Pike advise: ``Use standard libraries.''
meillo@121 2814 .[ [
meillo@121 2815 kernighan pike practice of programming
meillo@121 2816 .], p. 196]
meillo@121 2817 Actually, MH had followed this advice in history,
meillo@121 2818 but it had not adjusted to the changes in this field.
meillo@121 2819 The
meillo@121 2820 .Fu snprintf()
meillo@121 2821 function, for instance, was standardized with C99 and is available
meillo@121 2822 almost everywhere because of its high usefulness.
meillo@121 2823 In mmh, the included implementation of
meillo@121 2824 .Fu snprintf()
meillo@121 2825 was dropped in favor for using the one of the standard library.
meillo@121 2826 Such decisions could limit the portability of mmh,
meillo@121 2827 if systems don't support these standardized and widespread functions.
meillo@121 2828 This compromise is made.
meillo@121 2829 .P
meillo@121 2830 I am not even thirty years old and my C and Unix experience comprises
meillo@121 2831 only five to seven years.
meillo@121 2832 Hence, I need to learn about the history in retrospective.
meillo@121 2833 I have not used those ancient constructs myself.
meillo@121 2834 I have not suffered from their incompatibilities.
meillo@121 2835 I have not longed for standardization.
meillo@121 2836 All my programming experience is from a time when ANSI C and POSIX
meillo@121 2837 were well established already.
meillo@121 2838 I have only read a lot of books about the (good) old times.
meillo@121 2839 This puts me in a difficult positions when working with old code.
meillo@121 2840 I needed to acquire knowledge about old code constructs and ancient
meillo@121 2841 programming styles.
meillo@121 2842 Other know these things by heart from their own experience.
meillo@121 2843 .P
meillo@121 2844 Being aware of these facts, I rather let people with more historic
meillo@121 2845 experience solve the task of replacing ancient code constructs
meillo@121 2846 with standardized ones.
meillo@121 2847 Lyndon Nerenberg covered large parts of this task for the nmh project.
meillo@121 2848 He converted project-specific functions to POSIX replacements,
meillo@121 2849 also removing the conditionals compilation of now standardized features.
meillo@121 2850 Often, I only needed to pull over changes from nmh into mmh.
meillo@121 2851 These changes include many commits; these are among them:
meillo@121 2852 .Ci 768b5edd9623b7238e12ec8dfc409b82a1ed9e2d
meillo@121 2853 .Ci 0052f1024deb0a0a2fc2e5bacf93d45a5a9c9b32 .
meillo@22 2854
meillo@102 2855 .P
meillo@121 2856 During my own work, I have replaced the
meillo@121 2857 .Fu atooi()
meillo@121 2858 function with calls to
meillo@121 2859 .Fu strtoul() ,
meillo@121 2860 with the third parameter \(en the base \(en set to eight.
meillo@121 2861 .Fu strtoul()
meillo@121 2862 is part of C89 and thus safe to use.
meillo@121 2863 .Ci c490c51b3c0f8871b6953bd0c74551404f840a74
meillo@102 2864 .P
meillo@121 2865 I did remove project-included fallback implementations of
meillo@121 2866 .Fu memmove()
meillo@121 2867 and
meillo@121 2868 .Fu strerror() ,
meillo@121 2869 although Peter Maydell had re-included them into nmh in 2008
meillo@121 2870 to support SunOS 4.
meillo@121 2871 Nevertheless, these functions are part of ANSI C.
meillo@121 2872 Systems that do not even provide full ANSI C support should not
meillo@121 2873 put a load on mmh.
meillo@121 2874 .Ci b067ff5c465a5d243ce5a19e562085a9a1a97215
meillo@121 2875 .P
meillo@121 2876 The
meillo@121 2877 .Fu copy()
meillo@121 2878 function copies the string in argument one to the location in two.
meillo@121 2879 In contrast to
meillo@121 2880 .Fu strcpy() ,
meillo@121 2881 it returns a pointer to the terminating null-byte in the destination area.
meillo@121 2882 .Fu copy()
meillo@121 2883 was replaced with
meillo@121 2884 .Fu strcpy() ,
meillo@121 2885 except within
meillo@121 2886 .Fu concat() ,
meillo@121 2887 where
meillo@121 2888 .Fu copy()
meillo@121 2889 is more convenient.
meillo@121 2890 Of course,
meillo@121 2891 .Fu copy()
meillo@121 2892 is locally defined in the source file of
meillo@121 2893 .Fu concat()
meillo@121 2894 now.
meillo@121 2895 .Ci 552fd7253e5ee9e554c5c7a8248a6322aa4363bb
meillo@121 2896 .P
meillo@121 2897 The function
meillo@121 2898 .Fu r1bindex()
meillo@121 2899 had been a generalized version of
meillo@121 2900 .Fu basename()
meillo@121 2901 with minor differences.
meillo@121 2902 As all calls to
meillo@121 2903 .Fu r1bindex()
meillo@121 2904 had the slash (`/') as delimiter anyway,
meillo@121 2905 replacing
meillo@121 2906 .Fu r1bindex()
meillo@121 2907 with the more specific and better-named function
meillo@121 2908 .Fu basename()
meillo@121 2909 became desirable.
meillo@121 2910 Unfortunately, many of the 54 calls to
meillo@121 2911 .Fu r1bindex()
meillo@121 2912 depended on its special behavior,
meillo@121 2913 which differed from the POSIX specification for
meillo@121 2914 .Fu basename() .
meillo@121 2915 Hence,
meillo@121 2916 .Fu r1bindex()
meillo@121 2917 was kept but renamed to
meillo@121 2918 .Fu mhbasename()
meillo@121 2919 and its second argument, the delimiter, was fixed to the slash.
meillo@121 2920 .Ci 240013872c392fe644bd4f79382d9f5314b4ea60
meillo@121 2921 For possible uses of
meillo@121 2922 .Fu r1bindex()
meillo@121 2923 with a different delimiter,
meillo@121 2924 the ANSI C function
meillo@121 2925 .Fu strrchr()
meillo@121 2926 provides the core functionality.
meillo@121 2927 .P
meillo@121 2928 The
meillo@121 2929 .Fu ssequal()
meillo@121 2930 function \(en apparently for ``substring equal'' \(en
meillo@121 2931 was renamed to
meillo@121 2932 .Fu isprefix() ,
meillo@121 2933 because this is what it actually checks.
meillo@121 2934 .Ci c20b4fa14515c7ab388ce35411d89a7a92300711
meillo@121 2935 Its source file had included the following comments, no joke.
meillo@121 2936 .VS
meillo@121 2937 /*
meillo@121 2938 * THIS CODE DOES NOT WORK AS ADVERTISED.
meillo@121 2939 * It is actually checking if s1 is a PREFIX of s2.
meillo@121 2940 * All calls to this function need to be checked to see
meillo@121 2941 * if that needs to be changed. Prefix checking is cheaper, so
meillo@121 2942 * should be kept if it's sufficient.
meillo@121 2943 */
meillo@121 2944
meillo@121 2945 /*
meillo@121 2946 * Check if s1 is a substring of s2.
meillo@121 2947 * If yes, then return 1, else return 0.
meillo@121 2948 */
meillo@121 2949 VE
meillo@121 2950
meillo@102 2951
meillo@102 2952
meillo@102 2953
meillo@22 2954
meillo@118 2955 .H2 "Modularization
meillo@118 2956 .P
meillo@118 2957 The \fIMH library\fP
meillo@118 2958 .Fn libmh.a
meillo@118 2959 collects a bunch of standard functions that many of the MH tools need,
meillo@118 2960 like reading the profile or context files.
meillo@118 2961 This doesn't hurt the separation.
meillo@118 2962 .P
meillo@118 2963 whatnowproc
meillo@118 2964
meillo@118 2965
meillo@118 2966
meillo@58 2967 .H2 "Separation
meillo@14 2968
meillo@118 2969 .U3 "MH Directory Split
meillo@0 2970 .P
meillo@19 2971 In MH and nmh, a personal setup had consisted of two parts:
meillo@19 2972 The MH profile, named
meillo@19 2973 .Fn \&.mh_profile
meillo@19 2974 and being located directly in the user's home directory.
meillo@19 2975 And the MH directory, where all his mail messages and also his personal
meillo@104 2976 forms, scan formats, other configuration files are stored.
meillo@104 2977 The location
meillo@104 2978 of this directory could be user-chosen.
meillo@104 2979 The default was to name it
meillo@19 2980 .Fn Mail
meillo@19 2981 and have it directly in the home directory.
meillo@19 2982 .P
meillo@19 2983 I've never liked the data storage and the configuration to be intermixed.
meillo@104 2984 They are different kinds of data.
meillo@104 2985 One part, are the messages,
meillo@104 2986 which are the data to operate on.
meillo@104 2987 The other part, are the personal
meillo@19 2988 configuration files, which are able to change the behavior of the operations.
meillo@19 2989 The actual operations are defined in the profile, however.
meillo@19 2990 .P
meillo@19 2991 When storing data, one should try to group data by its type.
meillo@19 2992 There's sense in the Unix file system hierarchy, where configuration
meillo@19 2993 file are stored separate (\c
meillo@19 2994 .Fn /etc )
meillo@19 2995 to the programs (\c
meillo@19 2996 .Fn /bin
meillo@19 2997 and
meillo@19 2998 .Fn /usr/bin )
meillo@19 2999 to their sources (\c
meillo@19 3000 .Fn /usr/src ).
meillo@19 3001 Such separation eases the backup management, for instance.
meillo@19 3002 .P
meillo@19 3003 In mmh, I've reorganized the file locations.
meillo@19 3004 Still there are two places:
meillo@19 3005 There's the mail storage directory, which, like in MH, contains all the
meillo@19 3006 messages, but, unlike in MH, nothing else.
meillo@19 3007 Its location still is user-chosen, with the default name
meillo@19 3008 .Fn Mail ,
meillo@104 3009 in the user's home directory.
meillo@104 3010 This is much similar to the case in nmh.
meillo@19 3011 The configuration files, however, are grouped together in the new directory
meillo@19 3012 .Fn \&.mmh
meillo@19 3013 in the user's home directory.
meillo@19 3014 The user's profile now is a file, named
meillo@19 3015 .Fn profile ,
meillo@19 3016 in this mmh directory.
meillo@19 3017 Consistently, the context file and all the personal forms, scan formats,
meillo@19 3018 and the like, are also there.
meillo@19 3019 .P
meillo@19 3020 The naming changed with the relocation.
meillo@19 3021 The directory where everything, except the profile, had been stored (\c
meillo@19 3022 .Fn $HOME/Mail ),
meillo@104 3023 used to be called \fIMH directory\fP.
meillo@104 3024 Now, this directory is called the
meillo@104 3025 user's \fImail storage\fP.
meillo@104 3026 The name \fImmh directory\fP is now given to
meillo@19 3027 the new directory
meillo@19 3028 (\c
meillo@19 3029 .Fn $HOME/.mmh ),
meillo@19 3030 containing all the personal configuration files.
meillo@19 3031 .P
meillo@19 3032 The separation of the files by type of content is logical and convenient.
meillo@19 3033 There are no functional differences as any possible setup known to me
meillo@19 3034 can be implemented with both approaches, although likely a bit easier
meillo@104 3035 with the new approach.
meillo@104 3036 The main goal of the change had been to provide
meillo@19 3037 sensible storage locations for any type of personal mmh file.
meillo@19 3038 .P
meillo@19 3039 In order for one user to have multiple MH setups, he can use the
meillo@19 3040 environment variable
meillo@19 3041 .Ev MH
meillo@19 3042 the point to a different profile file.
meillo@19 3043 The MH directory (mail storage plus personal configuration files) is
meillo@19 3044 defined by the
meillo@19 3045 .Pe Path
meillo@19 3046 profile entry.
meillo@19 3047 The context file could be defined by the
meillo@19 3048 .Pe context
meillo@19 3049 profile entry or by the
meillo@19 3050 .Ev MHCONTEXT
meillo@19 3051 environment variable.
meillo@19 3052 The latter is useful to have a distinct context (e.g. current folders)
meillo@19 3053 in each terminal window, for instance.
meillo@19 3054 In mmh, there are three environment variables now.
meillo@19 3055 .Ev MMH
meillo@19 3056 may be used to change the location of the mmh directory.
meillo@19 3057 .Ev MMHP
meillo@19 3058 and
meillo@19 3059 .Ev MMHC
meillo@19 3060 change the profile and context files, respectively.
meillo@19 3061 Besides providing a more consistent feel (which simply is the result
meillo@19 3062 of being designed anew), the set of personal configuration files can
meillo@19 3063 be chosen independently from the profile (including mail storage location)
meillo@104 3064 and context, now.
meillo@104 3065 Being it relevant for practical use or not, it
meillo@104 3066 de-facto is an improvement.
meillo@104 3067 However, the main achievement is the
meillo@19 3068 split between mail storage and personal configuration files.
meillo@17 3069
meillo@0 3070
meillo@49 3071
meillo@58 3072
meillo@58 3073
meillo@58 3074
meillo@58 3075
meillo@89 3076 .H1 "Concept Exploitation/Homogeneity
meillo@58 3077
meillo@58 3078
meillo@58 3079 .H2 "Draft Folder
meillo@58 3080 .P
meillo@58 3081 Historically, MH provided exactly one draft message, named
meillo@58 3082 .Fn draft
meillo@58 3083 and
meillo@104 3084 being located in the MH directory.
meillo@104 3085 When starting to compose another message
meillo@58 3086 before the former one was sent, the user had been questioned whether to use,
meillo@104 3087 refile or replace the old draft.
meillo@104 3088 Working on multiple drafts at the same time
meillo@104 3089 was impossible.
meillo@104 3090 One could only work on them in alteration by refiling the
meillo@104 3091 previous one to some directory and fetching some other one for reediting.
meillo@58 3092 This manual draft management needed to be done each time the user wanted
meillo@58 3093 to switch between editing one draft to editing another.
meillo@58 3094 .P
meillo@58 3095 To allow true parallel editing of drafts, in a straight forward way, the
meillo@104 3096 draft folder facility exists.
meillo@104 3097 It had been introduced already in July 1984
meillo@104 3098 by Marshall T. Rose.
meillo@110 3099 The facility was inactive by default.
meillo@110 3100 Even in nmh, the draft folder facility remained inactive by default.
meillo@58 3101 At least, Richard Coleman added the man page
meillo@58 3102 .Mp mh-draft(5)
meillo@58 3103 to document
meillo@58 3104 the feature well.
meillo@58 3105 .P
meillo@58 3106 The only advantage of not using the draft folder facility is the static
meillo@104 3107 name of the draft file.
meillo@104 3108 This could be an issue for MH front-ends like mh-e.
meillo@58 3109 But as they likely want to provide working on multiple drafts in parallel,
meillo@104 3110 the issue is only concerning compatibility.
meillo@104 3111 The aim of nmh to stay compatible
meillo@58 3112 prevented the default activation of the draft folder facility.
meillo@58 3113 .P
meillo@58 3114 On the other hand, a draft folder is the much more natural concept than
meillo@104 3115 a draft message.
meillo@104 3116 MH's mail storage consists of folders and messages,
meillo@104 3117 the messages named with ascending numbers.
meillo@104 3118 A draft message breaks with this
meillo@58 3119 concept by introducing a message in a file named
meillo@58 3120 .Fn draft .
meillo@58 3121 This draft
meillo@104 3122 message is special.
meillo@104 3123 It can not be simply listed with the available tools,
meillo@104 3124 but instead requires special switches.
meillo@104 3125 I.e. corner-cases were
meillo@104 3126 introduced.
meillo@104 3127 A draft folder, in contrast, does not introduce such
meillo@104 3128 corner-cases.
meillo@104 3129 The available tools can operate on the messages within that
meillo@104 3130 folder like on any messages within any mail folders.
meillo@104 3131 The only difference
meillo@58 3132 is the fact that the default folder for
meillo@58 3133 .Pn send
meillo@58 3134 is the draft folder,
meillo@58 3135 instead of the current folder, like for all other tools.
meillo@58 3136 .P
meillo@58 3137 The trivial part of the change was activating the draft folder facility
meillo@104 3138 by default and setting a default name for this folder.
meillo@104 3139 Obviously, I chose
meillo@58 3140 the name
meillo@58 3141 .Fn +drafts .
meillo@58 3142 This made the
meillo@82 3143 .Sw -draftfolder
meillo@58 3144 and
meillo@82 3145 .Sw -draftmessage
meillo@58 3146 switches useless, and I could remove them.
meillo@58 3147 The more difficult but also the part that showed the real improvement,
meillo@58 3148 was updating the tools to the new concept.
meillo@82 3149 .Sw -draft
meillo@58 3150 switches could
meillo@58 3151 be dropped, as operating on a draft message became indistinguishable to
meillo@58 3152 operating on any other message for the tools.
meillo@58 3153 .Pn comp
meillo@58 3154 still has its
meillo@82 3155 .Sw -use
meillo@58 3156 switch for switching between its two modes: (1) Compose a new
meillo@104 3157 draft, possibly by taking some existing message as a form.
meillo@104 3158 (2) Modify
meillo@104 3159 an existing draft.
meillo@104 3160 In either case, the behavior of
meillo@58 3161 .Pn comp is
meillo@104 3162 deterministic.
meillo@104 3163 There is no more need to query the user.
meillo@104 3164 I consider this
meillo@104 3165 a major improvement.
meillo@104 3166 By making
meillo@58 3167 .Pn send
meillo@58 3168 simply operate on the current
meillo@58 3169 message in the draft folder by default, with message and folder both
meillo@58 3170 overridable by specifying them on the command line, it is now possible
meillo@58 3171 to send a draft anywhere within the storage by simply specifying its folder
meillo@58 3172 and name.
meillo@58 3173 .P
meillo@58 3174 All theses changes converted special cases to regular cases, thus
meillo@58 3175 simplifying the tools and increasing the flexibility.
meillo@58 3176
meillo@58 3177
meillo@58 3178 .H2 "Trash Folder
meillo@58 3179 .P
meillo@58 3180 Similar to the situation for drafts is the situation for removed messages.
meillo@104 3181 Historically, a message was deleted by renaming.
meillo@104 3182 A specific
meillo@58 3183 \fIbackup prefix\fP, often comma (\c
meillo@58 3184 .Fn , )
meillo@58 3185 or hash (\c
meillo@58 3186 .Fn # ),
meillo@104 3187 being prepended to the file name.
meillo@104 3188 Thus, MH wouldn't recognize the file
meillo@58 3189 as a message anymore, as only files whose name consists of digits only
meillo@104 3190 are treated as messages.
meillo@104 3191 The removed messages remained as files in the
meillo@58 3192 same directory and needed some maintenance job to truly delete them after
meillo@104 3193 some grace time.
meillo@104 3194 Usually, by running a command similar to
meillo@82 3195 .VS
meillo@82 3196 find /home/user/Mail -ctime +7 -name ',*' | xargs rm
meillo@82 3197 VE
meillo@104 3198 in a cron job.
meillo@104 3199 Within the grace time interval
meillo@58 3200 the original message could be restored by stripping the
meillo@104 3201 the backup prefix from the file name.
meillo@104 3202 If however, the last message of
meillo@58 3203 a folder is been removed \(en say message
meillo@58 3204 .Fn 6
meillo@58 3205 becomes file
meillo@58 3206 .Fn ,6
meillo@58 3207 \(en and a new message enters the same folder, thus the same
meillo@58 3208 numbered being given again \(en in our case
meillo@58 3209 .Fn 6
meillo@58 3210 \(en, if that one
meillo@58 3211 is removed too, then the backup of the former message gets overwritten.
meillo@58 3212 Thus, the ability to restore removed messages does not only depend on
meillo@58 3213 the ``sweeping cron job'' but also on the removing of further messages.
meillo@58 3214 This is undesirable, because the real mechanism is hidden from the user
meillo@58 3215 and the consequences of further removals are not always obvious.
meillo@58 3216 Further more, the backup files are scattered within the whole mail
meillo@58 3217 storage, instead of being collected at one place.
meillo@58 3218 .P
meillo@58 3219 To improve the situation, the profile entry
meillo@58 3220 .Pe rmmproc
meillo@58 3221 (previously named
meillo@58 3222 .Pe Delete-Prog )
meillo@58 3223 was introduced, very early.
meillo@58 3224 It could be set to any command, which would care for the mail removal
meillo@58 3225 instead of taking the default action, described above.
meillo@58 3226 Refiling the to-be-removed files to some garbage folder was a common
meillo@104 3227 example.
meillo@104 3228 Nmh's man page
meillo@58 3229 .Mp rmm(1)
meillo@58 3230 proposes
meillo@58 3231 .Cl "refile +d
meillo@58 3232 to move messages to the garbage folder and
meillo@58 3233 .Cl "rm `mhpath +d all`
meillo@58 3234 the empty the garbage folder.
meillo@104 3235 Managing the message removal this way is a sane approach.
meillo@104 3236 It keeps
meillo@58 3237 the removed messages in one place, makes it easy to remove the backup
meillo@58 3238 files, and, most important, enables the user to use the tools of MH
meillo@104 3239 itself to operate on the removed messages.
meillo@104 3240 One can
meillo@58 3241 .Pn scan
meillo@58 3242 them,
meillo@58 3243 .Pn show
meillo@58 3244 them, and restore them with
meillo@58 3245 .Pn refile .
meillo@58 3246 There's no more
meillo@58 3247 need to use
meillo@58 3248 .Pn mhpath
meillo@58 3249 to switch over from MH tools to Unix tools \(en MH can do it all itself.
meillo@58 3250 .P
meillo@58 3251 This approach matches perfect with the concepts of MH, thus making
meillo@104 3252 it powerful.
meillo@104 3253 Hence, I made it the default.
meillo@104 3254 And even more, I also
meillo@58 3255 removed the old backup prefix approach, as it is clearly less powerful.
meillo@58 3256 Keeping unused alternative in the code is a bad choice as they likely
meillo@104 3257 gather bugs, by not being constantly tested.
meillo@104 3258 Also, the increased code
meillo@104 3259 size and more conditions crease the maintenance costs.
meillo@104 3260 By strictly
meillo@58 3261 converting to the trash folder approach, I simplified the code base.
meillo@58 3262 .Pn rmm
meillo@58 3263 calls
meillo@58 3264 .Pn refile
meillo@58 3265 internally to move the to-be-removed
meillo@58 3266 message to the trash folder (\c
meillo@58 3267 .Fn +trash
meillo@104 3268 by default).
meillo@104 3269 Messages
meillo@58 3270 there can be operated on like on any other message in the storage.
meillo@58 3271 The sweep clean, one can use
meillo@82 3272 .Cl "rmm -unlink +trash a" ,
meillo@58 3273 where the
meillo@82 3274 .Sw -unlink
meillo@58 3275 switch causes the files to be truly unliked instead
meillo@58 3276 of moved to the trash folder.
meillo@58 3277
meillo@58 3278
meillo@58 3279 .H2 "Path Notations
meillo@58 3280 .P
meillo@58 3281 foo
meillo@58 3282
meillo@58 3283
meillo@58 3284 .H2 "MIME Integration
meillo@58 3285 .P
meillo@58 3286 user-visible access to whole messages and MIME parts are inherently
meillo@58 3287 different
meillo@58 3288
meillo@58 3289
meillo@58 3290 .H2 "Of One Cast
meillo@58 3291 .P