.H0 "Preface" no

.P
I have discovered the mail client \fInmh\fP in Fall 2009.
At that time I used \fImutt\fP, as many advanced Unix users do.
When I read about nmh, its concepts convinced me at once.
The transition from mutt to nmh was similar to beginning with
file management in the Unix shell when being used to the
\fImidnight commander\fP,
or like starting with vi when being used to modeless editors.
Such a change is not trivial, but, in being convinced by the
concepts and by having done similar transitions for file management
and editing already, it was not too difficult.
In contrast, setting up nmh to a convenient state became a tedious task
that took several months.
Once having nmh arranged to a convenient state, I enjoyed using it
because of its conceptional elegance and its scripting capabilities.
Nevertheless, it was still inconvenient for handling attachments,
non-ASCII character encodings, and similar features of modern emailing.
My setup demanded more and more additional configuration and helper scripts
to have nmh behave the way I wanted; yet my
expectations were rather common for modern emailing.
As a computer scientist and programmer, I wanted to improve the situation.
.P
In Spring 2010, I sent a message to the \fInmh-workers\fP mailing list,
asking for the possibility to offer a Google Summer of Code project for me.
Participating in the development of nmh in this manner appeared attractive
to me, because I would have been able to work full time on nmh.
Although the nmh community had reacted generally positive to the suggestion,
the administrative work for a GSoC project would had been too much.
Nonetheless, my proposal had activated the nmh community.
In the following weeks, goals for nmh's future were discussed.
In these discussions, I became involved in the
question whether nmh should include mail transfer facilities.
.[
nmh-workers thread mta mua
.]
I argued for the MTA of nmh to be removed.
In this fundamental question,
my opinion differed from the opinion of most others.
Sadly, besides the discussions, hardly any real work was done.
Being unable to work on nmh in a way that would be accepted at university
as part of my studies, I needed to choose another project.
.P
Half a year later, starting in August 2010,
I took one semester off to travel through Latin America.
During my time in Argentina, I wanted to work on Free Software.
This brought me back to nmh.
Richard Sandelman, an active nmh user, cared for the official basis.
Juan Granda, an Argentine Free Software developer,
provided a computer with Internet connection.
Thanks to them, I was able to work on nmh during my three-month
stay in Santiago del Estero, Argentina.
Quickly it became obvious that I would not succeed with my main goal,
to improve the character encoding handling.
(One of its ramifications is the
missing transfer decoding of quoted text in replies.)
As this is one of the most intricate parts of the system, the goal
was simply set too high.
Instead, I improved the code base as I read through it.
I found minor bugs for which I proposed fixes.
In the same go, I improved the documentation in minor ways.
When I started with larger code changes,
I had to discover that the community was reluctant to change.
Its wish for compatibility was much stronger than its
wish for convenient out-of-the-box setups \(en in contrast to my opinion.
This, once again, led to long discussions.
I came to understand their point of view, but it was different to mine.
At the end of my three-month project, I had become familiar with
nmh's code base and community,
I had improved the project in minor ways,
and I still was convinced that I wanted to continue to do so.
.P
Another half year later, the end of my studies came within reach.
I needed a topic for my master's thesis.
Without question, I wanted to work on nmh.
But not exactly on nmh, because I had accepted that its
community has different goals than I have.
Working on nmh would result in much discussion and, in consequence,
little progress.
After careful thought, I decided to start an experimental version of nmh.
I wanted to implement my own ideas of how an MH-like system should look like.
I wanted to create a usable alternative version to be compared with
the present state of nmh.
Eventually, my work would be proven successful or not.
In any case, the nmh project would profit from my experiences.

.U2 "Focus of this Document
.P
This document explains the design goals and implementation decisions
for mmh.
It discusses technical, historical, social and philosophical considerations.
On the technical side, this document
explains how an existing project was stream-lined by removing rough edges
and better exploitation of the central concepts.
On the historical side, changes through time are discussed,
regarding the use cases and the email features,
as well as the reactions to them.
Socially, this document describes the effects
and experiences of a newcomer with revolutionary aims entering an old
and matured software project.
Philosophical thoughts on style, mainly based on the Unix
philosophy, are present throughout the discussions.
The document describes the changes to nmh,
but as well, it clarifies my personal perception of the
concepts of MH and Unix, and explain my therefrom resulting point of view.
.P
This document is written for the community around MH-like mail systems,
including developers and users.
Despite the focus on MH-like systems, this document may be valuable
to anyone interested in the Unix philosophy and anyone in contact with
old software projects, be it code- or community-related.
.P
The reader is expected to be familiar with Unix, C and emailing.
Good Unix shell knowledge is required, because MH relies fundamentally
on the shell. Without the power of the shell, MH becomes a motorbike
without winding roads: boring.
Introductions to Unix and its shell can be found in ``The UNIX Programming
Environment'' by Kernighan and Pike
.[
kernighan pike unix prog env
.]
or ``The UNIX System'' by Bourne.
.[
bourne unix system
.]
The reader is assumed to be a C programmer,
but the document should be understandable otherwise, too.
The definitive guide to C is Kernighan and Ritchie's
``The C Programming Language''.
.[
kernighan ritchie c prog lang
.]
A book about system-level C programming can be helpful
additional literature, such as those written by Rochkind and Curry.
.[
rochkind advanced unix prog
.]
.[
curry system prog
.]
Old books are likely more helpful for understanding,
because large parts of the source code are old.
The reader is expected to know the format of email messages and
the structure of email transfer systems, at least on a basic level.
It's advisable to have cross-read the RFCs 821 and 822.
Further more, basic understanding of MIME is good to have.
The Wikipedia provides good introduction-level information about email.
.P
Frequent references to the Unix philosophy will be made.
Gancarz has tried to sum it up in his book
``The UNIX Philosophy''.
.[
gancarz unix phil
.]
Even better, though less concrete, are ``The UNIX Programming Environment''
.[
kernighan pike unix prog env
.]
and ``The Practice of Programming''
.[
kernighan pike practice of prog
.]
by Kernighan and Pike.
The term paper ``Why the Unix Philosophy still matters''
.[
why unix phil still matters schnalke
.]
by myself
provides an overview on the philosophy, including a case study of MH.
.P
Although a brief introduction to MH is provided in Chapter 1, the reader
is encouraged to have a look at the \fIMH Book\fP
``MH & nmh: Email for Users & Programmers'' by Jerry Peek.
.[
peek mh
.]
The current version is available freely on the Internet.
It is the definitive guide to MH and nmh.
.P
This document is neither a user's tutorial to mmh nor an introduction
to any of the topics covered.
The technical discussions are on an advanced level.
Nevertheless, as knowledge of the fundamental concepts is the most valuable
information a user can acquire about some program or software system,
this document may be worth a read for non-developers as well.


.U2 "Organization
.P
Which font for what use.
Meaning of `foo(1)'.
RFCs.
.P
References to source code repository commits are printed as
.Ci 1a2b3c4 .
They can be looked up with
.Cl "git show XXX
on the command line or
online at
.CW "http://git.marmaro.de/?p=mmh;a=commitdiff;h=XXX" ,
replacing `\f(CWXXX\fP' with the hash value.
In this example:
.Cl "git show 1a2b3c4
or
.CW "http://git.marmaro.de/?p=mmh;a=commitdiff;h=1a2b3cd" .
Whereas the code repository will probably be available on the Internet
forever, a website URL is always at risk to change.
.P
This thesis is divided into XXX chapters, ...
.P
.I Chapter 1
introduces ...
.P
.I Chapter 2
describes ...
.P
.I Chapter 3
covers ...


.U2 "Acknowledgments
.P
To be written at the very end.