docs/master: ch03.roff comparison

comparison ch03.roff @ 22:99409e4546d2

Wrote about the removal of tools.

author	markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de>
date	Mon, 07 May 2012 17:27:57 +0200
parents	bb8a8be49024
children	1e4afeb34da7

comparison

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 short intervals, in case of previous failure.
 In mmh, the program aborts at once if the fork failed.
 The user can reexecute the command then. This is expected to be a
 very rare case on modern systems, especially personal ones, which are
 common today.
+.H1 "Removal of Tools
+.P
+MH had been considered an all-in-one system for mail handling.
+The community around nmh has a similar understanding.
+In fundamental difference, I believe that mmh should be a MUA but
+nothing more. I believe that all-in-one mail systems are not the way
+to go. There are excellent specialized MTAs, like Postfix;
+there are specialized MDAs, like Procmail; there are specialized
+MRAs, like Fetchmail. I believe it's best to use them instead of
+providing the same function ourself. Doing something well requires to
+focus on this particular aspect or a small set of aspects. The more
+it is possible to focus, the better the result in this particular
+area will be. The limiting resource in Free Software community development
+usually is human power. If the low development power is even parted
+into multiple development areas, it will hardly be possible to
+compete with the specialists in the various fields. This is even
+increased, given the small community \(en developers and users \(en
+that MH-based mail systems have. In consequence, I believe that the
+available resources should be concentrated at the point where MH is
+most unique. This is clearly the MUA part.
+.P
+Several of nmh's tools were removed from mmh because they didn't
+match the main focus of adding to the MUA's task.
+.P
+.Pn conflict
+was removed because it is a mail system maintenance tool.
+Besides, it also checks the
+.Fn /etc/passwd
+and
+.Fn /etc/group
+files.
+The tool might be useful, but it should not be shipped with mmh.
+.P
+.Pn rcvtty
+was removed because its usecase of writing to the user's terminal
+on receival of mail is hardly wanted today. If users like to be
+informed of new mail, then using the shell's
+.Ev MAILPATH
+variable or different (graphical) notifications are likely more
+appealing. Writing directly to other terminals is hardly ever wanted
+today. If though one wants to have it this way, the standard tool
+.Pn write
+can be used in a way similar to:
+.DS
+scan -file - | write `id -un`
+.DE
+.P
+When the new attachment system was introduced,
+.Pn viamail
+was removed because then
+.Pn forw
+could cover the task itself.
+The wrapper program
+.Pn sendfiles
+was rewritten as a shell script to use
+.Pn forw .
+.P
+.Pn msgchk
+was removed as it became hardly useful when POP support was removed.
+It is questionable if
+.Pn msgchk
+provides more information than:
+.DS
+ls -l /var/mail/meillo
+.DE
+It does separate between old and new mail, but that's not very
+useful and can be found out with
+.Pn stat (1)
+too. A very small shell script could care for the form of output.
+As mmh's inc only incorporates mail from the user's local maildrop
+and thus no long data transfers are involved,
+there's no need to check for new mail before incorporating it.
+.P
+.Pn msh
+was removed because the tool was in conflict with the original
+philosophy of MH. It provided an interactive shell to access the
+features of MH. One major feature of MH is being a toolchest.
+.Pn msh
+wouldn't be just another shell, taylored to the needs of mail
+handling, but one large program to have the MH tools built in.
+It's main use was for accessing Bulletin Boards, which have seized to
+be popular. Removing
+.Pn msh ,
+together with the truly obsolete programs
+.Pn vmh
+and
+.Pn wmh ,
+saved more than 7\|000 lines of C code \(en a major achievement.
 .H1 "Draft and Trash Folders
 .U2 "Draft Folder
 .P

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comparison ch03.roff @ 22:99409e4546d2