docs/master: intro.roff comparison

comparison intro.roff @ 212:9317d789cef9

Various improvements and rework.

author	markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de>
date	Thu, 12 Jul 2012 22:04:51 +0200
parents	1b38b1c3c01d
children	1fa5a74bf138

comparison

equal deleted inserted replaced

-:ff303d854771
+:9317d789cef9
 .H1 "MH \(en the Mail Handler
 .Id mh
 .P
 MH is a conceptual email system design and its concrete implementation.
-Notably, MH had started as a design proposal at RAND Corporation,
+MH had started as a design proposal at RAND Corporation,
 where the first implementation followed later.
 In spirit, MH is similar to Unix, which
 influenced the world more in being a set of system design concepts
 than in being a specific software product.
 The ideas behind Unix are summarized in the \fIUnix philosophy\fP.
 proposed the design of a new mail handling system,
 .[
 shapiro gaines mh proposal
 .]
 to superseed RAND's old monolithic \fIMail System\fP (MS).
-More than one year later, in late 1978, Bruce Borden returned to the
+One year later, in 1978, Bruce Borden picked up on the
 proposal and implemented a prototype, which he called
 \fIMail Handler\fP (MH).
 Before the prototype's existence, the concept was
 believed to be practically unusable.
 But the prototype \(en written in only three weeks \(en
-proved successful and replaced MS within six months.\&
+proved successful and replaced MS thereafter.\&
 .[ [
 rand note design of mh
 .], p. 4]
 .P
 In the early eighties,
 They took over the development and pushed MH forward.
 .[ [
 rand note design of mh
 .], p. 4]
 RAND had put the code into the public domain by then.
-MH was developed at UCI at the time when the Internet appeared,
+MH was developed at UCI at the same time when the Internet appeared,
-the BSD started to include TCP/IP networking,
+BSD started to support TCP/IP networking,
 and Eric Allman wrote Sendmail.
 MH was extended as emailing became more featured.
 The development of MH was closely related to the development of email RFCs.
 In the advent of the \fIMultipurpose Internet Mail Extensions\fP (MIME),
 MH was one of the first implementations of the new email standard.
-MH grew to provide anything necessary for emailing.
 .P
 In the nineties, the Internet became popular and in December 1996,
 Richard Coleman initiated the \fINew Mail Handler\fP (nmh) project.
-Nmh is a fork of MH 6.8.3 and bases strongly on the
+Nmh is a fork of MH 6.8.3 and bases heavily on the
 \fILBL changes\fP by Van Jacobson, Mike Karels and Craig Leres.
 .[
 lbl changes
 .]
 Colman intended to modernize MH and improve its portability and
 MIME handling capabilities.
-This should be done openly within the Internet community.
 The development of MH at UCI stopped after the 6.8.4 release in
 February 1996, soon after the development of nmh had started.
-Today, nmh has almost completely replaced the original MH.
+Today, nmh is developed openly in the Internet community.
-Some systems might still provide old MH, but mainly for historical reasons.
+It has almost completely replaced the original MH.
-.P
+Some systems might still provide the old MH, but hardly for good reasons.
-In the last years, the changes in nmh were mostly maintenance work.
+.P
-However, the development was revived in December 2011
+In the last years, the majority of changes in nmh was maintenance work.
+Nevertheless, the development was revived in December 2011
 and stayed busy since then.
 .U2 "Concepts
 .P
 tool is invoked.
 Additionally, a single command can be linked under different names
 with different default values.
 Form templates for new messages and replies, as well as format files
 to adjust the output of tools are easily exchanged in the profile.
-.P
-Switches consist of a single dash (`\fL-\fP') followed by a word.
-To ease typing, the word can be abbreviated, given the remaining
-prefix remains unambiguous.
-If no other switch starts with the letter `t', then any of
-.Cl "-truncate" ,
-.Cl "-trunc" ,
-.Cl "-tr" ,
-and
-.Cl "-t
-is equal.
-As a result, switches can neither be grouped (as in
-.Cl "ls -ltr" )
-nor can switch arguments be appended directly to the switch (as in
-.Cl "sendmail -q30m" ).
-Many switches have negating counter-parts, which start with `no'.
-For example
-.Cl "-notruncate
-inverts the
-.Cl "-truncate
-switch.
-They exist to override the effect of default switches in the profile.
-.P
-The system is well scriptable and extensible.
 Almost every part of the system can be adjusted to personal preference.
+.P
+The whole system is well scriptable and extensible.
 New MH tools are built out of or on top of existing ones quickly.
-Furthermore, MH encourages the user to tailor, extend, and automate
+MH encourages the user to tailor, extend, and automate the system.
-the system.
 As the MH tool chest was modeled after the Unix tool chest, the
 properties of the latter apply to the former as well.
 moss jackson user's guide for mh
 .]
 .[
 hegardt mh for beginners
 .]
-are old, but they still teach the basics.
+are old, but still they teach the concepts and basics,
-Rose and Romine introduce MH deeper and more technical in two dozen pages.
+which remained unchanged.
+Rose and Romine have written an excellent introduction on a more
+technical level, with pointers to advanced usage.
 .[
 rose romine real work
 .]
-For a more recent introduction, it is strongly recommended to have
+For a more recent document, it is strongly recommended to have
-a look at the \fIMH Book\fP.
+a look at the \fIMH Book\fP,
 .[ [
 peek mh book
 .], Part II]
-The online version of the book was updated on in May 2006.
+especially at its online version.
 .P
-Following here is an example mail handling session.
+Following here is a sample mail handling session with mmh.
-Although it uses mmh, it is mostly compatible with nmh and the
+Details might vary to MH and nmh but the look and feel is the same.
-original MH.
-Details might vary but the look and feel is the same.
 .so input/mh-session
 .H1 "nmh
 .P
 In order to understand the condition, goals and dynamics of a project,
 one needs to know the reasons behind them.
-This section explains the background.
+This section gives background information.
 .P
 MH predates the Internet;
-it comes from times before networking was universal,
+it comes from times before networking was universal;
 it comes from times when emailing was small, short and simple.
-Then it grew, spread and adapted to the changes email went through.
+Then, MH grew, spread and adapted to the changes email went through.
-Its core-concepts, however, remained the same.
+Its core concepts, however, remained the same.
 During the eighties, students at UCI actively worked on MH.
 They added new features and optimized the code for the systems
 popular at that time.
-All this still was in times before POSIX and ANSI C.
+This was in times before POSIX and ANSI C.
 As large parts of the code stem from this time, today's nmh source code
 still contains many ancient parts.
 BSD-specific code and constructs tailored for hardware of that time
 are frequent.
 .P
-Nmh started about a decade after the POSIX and ANSI C standards were
+Nmh started about one decade after the POSIX and ANSI C standards were
-established. A more modern coding style entered the code base, but still
+released.
-a part of the developers came from ``the old days''. The developer
+A more modern coding style entered the code base but still
-base became more diverse, thus broadening the range of different
+a part of the developers were ``of the old type''.
-coding styles.
+The developer base became more diverse,
+thus broadening the range of different coding styles.
 Programming practices from different decades merged in the project.
 As several peers added code, the system became more a conglomeration
 of single tools rather than a homogeneous of-one-cast mail system.
-Still, the existing basic concepts held it together.
+For that, leadership would have been necessary.
+Nevertheless, MH's basic concepts held the project together.
 They were mostly untouched throughout the years.
 .P
-Despite the separation of the tool chest approach at the surface
+Though clearly separated on the surface
-\(en a collection of small, separate programs \(en
+\(en as a collection of small, separate programs \(en
-on the source code level, it is much more interwoven.
+the source code turns out to be fairly interwoven.
-Several separate components were compiled into one program
+Multiple separate components are compiled into a program
 for efficiency reasons.
-This led to intricate innards.
+This leads to intricate innards.
-While clearly separated on the outside,
+.P
-the programs turned out to be fairly interwoven inside.
+It is visible in nmh that
-.\" XXX FIXME rewrite...
+the advent of MIME raised the complexity of email by a magnitude.
-.\" nicht zweimal ``interwoven''
+The MIME-related parts are the most complex ones.
-.\" Unfortunately, the clear separation on the outside turned out to be
-.\" fairly interwoven inside.
-.P
-The advent of MIME raised the complexity of email by a magnitude.
-This is visible in nmh. The MIME-related parts are the most complex ones.
 It is also visible that MIME support was added on top of the old MH core.
 MH's tool chest style made this easily possible and encourages
 such approaches, but unfortunately, it led to duplicated functions
-and half-hearted implementation of the concepts.
+and half-hearted implementation of concepts.
 .P
-To provide backward-compatibility, it is a common understanding not to
+To provide backward-compatibility, it is a common understanding
-change the default settings.
+in the nmh community to not change the default settings.
-In consequence, the user needs to activate modern features explicitly
+In consequence, users need to activate modern features explicitly
 to be able to use them.
-This puts a burden on new users, because out-of-the-box nmh remains
+The ancient style in which fresh nmh setups remain to appear
-in the same ancient style.
+causes difficulties for new users, as modern email features require
-If nmh is seen to be a back-end,
+additional configuration.
-then this compatibility surely is important.
+The small but mature community around nmh, however, needs little change
-However, at the same time, new users have difficulties using nmh for
-modern emailing.
-The small but mature community around nmh needs little change
 as they have had their convenient setups for decades.
-.\" XXX Explain more
 .H1 "mmh
 .P
 I started to work on my experimental version in October 2011,
 basing my work on nmh version \fInmh-1.3-dev\fP.
 At that time no more than three commits were made to nmh
-since the beginning of the year, the latest one being
+since the beginning of 2011, the latest one being
-.Ci a01a41d031c796b526329a4170eb23f0ac93b949
+.Ci a01a41d031c796b526329a4170eb23f0ac93b949 ,
-on 2011-04-13.
+commited on 2011-04-13.
 In December, when I announced my work in progress on the
 nmh-workers mailing list,
 .[
 nmh-workers mmh announce December
 .]
 .[
 nmh-workers vixie edginess
 .]
 After long years of stagnation, nmh became actively developed again.
 Hence, while I was working on mmh, the community was working on nmh,
-in parallel.
+in parallel but unrelated.
 .P
 The name \fImmh\fP may stand for \fImodern mail handler\fP,
 because the project tries to modernize nmh.
 Personally however, I prefer to call mmh \fImeillo's mail handler\fP,
 emphasizing that the project is my version of nmh,
 .[
 dwm website
 .]
 which is Anselm Garbe's personal window manager \(en
 targeted to satisfy Garbe's personal needs whenever conflicts appear.
-Dwm had retained its lean elegance and its focused character, whereas
+Dwm has retained its lean elegance and its focused character, whereas
 its community-driven predecessor \fIwmii\fP
 .[
 wmii website
 .]
 had grown fat over time.
 .U2 "Motivation
 .P
 MH is the most important of very few email systems in a tool chest style.
 Tool chests are powerful because they can be perfectly automated and
-extended. They allow arbitrary kinds of front-ends to be
+extended.
-implemented on top of them quickly and without internal knowledge.
+They allow the implementation of arbitrary kinds of front-ends
+on top of the tool chest quickly and without internal knowledge.
 Additionally, tool chests are easier to maintain than monolithic
 programs.
-As there are few tool chests for emailing and as MH-like ones are the most
+MH-like email tool chests should be kept alive as they fill a market
-popular among them, they should be developed further.
+niche by providing conceptional elegance and unique scripting qualities.
-This keeps their
+Mmh tries to create a modern and convenient entry point to MH-like
-conceptional elegance and unique scripting qualities available to users.
+systems for new and interested users.
-Mmh creates a modern and convenient entry point to MH-like systems
-for new and interested users.
 .P
 The mmh project is motivated by deficits of nmh and
-my wish for general changes, combined
+by my wish for general changes.
-with the nmh community's reluctancy to change.
+At the time the mmh project started, nmh had not yet adjusted to
-.P
+modern emailing needs well enough.
-At that time, nmh had not adjusted to modern emailing needs well enough.
 The default setup was completely unusable for modern emailing.
 Too much setup work was required.
-Several modern features were already available but the community
+Several modern features were already available,
-did not want to have them as default.
+but the community did not want to have them active by default.
-Mmh is a way to change this.
+Mmh is my way to change this.
 .P
-In my eyes, MH's concepts could be exploited even better and
+In my eyes, MH's concepts could be exploited better and
-the style of the tools could be improved. Both would simplify
+the style of the tools could be improved.
-and generalize the system, providing cleaner interfaces and more
+Both would simplify and generalize the system, providing cleaner
-software leverage at the same time.
+interfaces and greater software leverage at the same time.
-Mmh is a way to demonstrate this.
+Mmh is my way to demonstrate this.
 .P
-In providing several parts of an email system, nmh can hardly
+In providing multiple parts of the email system, nmh can hardly
 compete with the large specialized projects that focus
-on only one of the components.
+on one of the components only.
-The situation can be improved by concentrating the development power
+The situation could be improved by concentrating the development power
 on the most unique part of MH and letting the user pick his preferred
 set of other mail components.
 Today's pre-packaged software components encourage this model.
-Mmh is a way to go for this approach.
+Mmh is my way to provide this.
 .P
 It is worthwhile to fork nmh for the development of mmh,
 because the two projects focus on different goals and differ in
 fundamental questions.
 The nmh community's reluctance regarding change conflicts
 with my strong desire for it.
 .[
 nmh-workers schnalke understanding nmh
 .]
-In developing a separate experimental version new approaches can
+In developing a separate experimental version, new approaches can
 easily be tried out without the need to discuss changes beforehand.
 In fact, revolutionary changes are hardly possible otherwise.
 .P
 The mmh project provides the basis on which the aforementioned
 ideas can be implemented and demonstrated,
 .U2 "Target Field
 .P
 Any effort needs to be targeted towards a specific goal
 in order to be successful.
 Therefore, a description of an imagined typical mmh user follows.
-Mmh should satisfy his needs.
+Actually, as mmh is my personal version of MH,
-Actually, as mmh is my personal version of MH, this is a description
+this is sort of a description of myself.
-of myself.
+Developing software for one's own is a reliable way to produce software
-Writing software for oneself is a reliable way to produce software
 that matches the user's desires.
 .P
 The target user of mmh likes Unix and its philosophy.
 He appreciates to use programs that are conceptionally appealing.
 He is familiar with the command line and enjoys its power.
 He is capable of shell scripting and wants to improve his
 productivity by scripting the mail system.
 He uses modern email features, such as attachments,
 non-ASCII text, digital signatures and message encryption in a natural way.
-He is able to set up mail system components,
+He is able to set up mail system components
-and like to have the choice to pick the ones he prefers.
+and likes to pick the ones he prefers.
 He has a reasonably modern operating system that complies to the
 POSIX and ANSI C standards.
 .P
 The typical user invokes mmh commands directly in an interactive
-shell session, but he uses them to automate mail handling tasks as well.
+shell session, even on workstations where graphical front-ends could
+be added.
 Likely, he runs his mail setup on a server machine,
 to which he connects via ssh.
-He might also have a local mmh installation on his workstation.
+He might automate mail processing with mmh tools
-Still, he tend to use mmh directly in the shell instead
+but definitely he uses the tools to build better tools.
-of using graphical front-ends.
+In any case, he wants to have the flexibility to change
-He definitely wants to be flexible and thus be able to change
 his setup to suit his needs.
 .P
 The typical mmh user is a programmer.
-He likes to, occasionally, take the opportunity of free software to put
+He likes to, occasionally, make use of the opportunity of free software
-hands on and get involved in the software he uses.
+by putting hands on and getting involved in software he uses.
 In consequence, he likes small and clean code bases and cares for
 code quality.
 In general, he believes that:
 .BU
 The elegance of source code is most important.
 .BU
 Concepts are more important than concrete implementations.
 .BU
 Code optimizations for anything but readability should be avoided.
 .BU
+Removed code is debugged code.
+.BU
 Having a lot of choice is bad.
-.BU
-Removed code is debugged code.
+.U2 "Goals of the mmh Project
-.U2 "Goals
-.P
-The general goals for the mmh project are the following:
 .IP "Streamlining
 Mmh should be stripped down to its core, which is the user agent (MUA).
 The feature set should be distilled to the indispensable ones,
 effectively removing corner cases.
 Parts that do not add to the main task of being a conceptionally
 appealing user agent should be removed.
-This includes the mail submission and mail retrieval facilities.
+This includes the mail transfer and mail retrieval facilities.
 Choice should be reduced to the main options.
 All tools should be tightly shaped.
 .IP "Modernizing
 Mmh's feature set needs to become more modern.
-Better support for attachments, digital signatures and message encryption
+Better support for attachments, digital signatures, and message
-should be added.
+encryption should be added.
 MIME support should be integrated deeper and more naturally.
 The modern email features need to be readily available, out-of-the-box.
-On the other hand,
+On the other hand, obsolete facilities can be dropped out and
-bulletin board support and similar obsolete facilities can be dropped out.
+ancient technologies need not be further supported.
-Likewise, ancient technologies should not be supported any further.
+The available concepts should be expanded as far as possible.
-The available concepts need to be expanded as far as possible.
 A small set of concepts should recur consistently.
 .IP "Styling
-Mmh's source code needs to be updated to modern standards.
+Mmh's source code should be updated to modern standards.
 Standardized library functions should replace non-standard versions
 whenever possible.
 Code should be separated into distinct modules when feasible.
 Time and space optimizations should to be replaced by
 clear and readable code.

Mercurial > docs > master

comparison intro.roff @ 212:9317d789cef9