--- a/ch01.roff	Wed Mar 07 11:45:38 2012 +0100
+++ b/ch01.roff	Wed Mar 07 11:46:18 2012 +0100
@@ -1,13 +1,107 @@
 .H0 "Introduction
 .P
-foo
-.P
-bar
+This chapter describes the background of the topics in this thesis.
+General knowledge of electronic mail is assumed.
 
 .H1 "What is MH?
 .P
-foo
+MH is an electronic mail system, originating in the RAND Corporation.
+Historically, it had been a all-in-one mail system, with Mail Transfer
+Agent (MTA) and Mail User Agent (MUA).
+Later, when electronic mail systems changed, Mail Submission Agent (MSA)
+and Mail Retrieval Agent (MRA) facilities were added.
+The MTA became less important, whereas the MUA became even more the
+central part.
+.P
+First of all, MH is a style of a mail handling system.
+It had started as a design proposal, not as an implementation, and 
+had in spirit remained so. This is similar to Unix, which much less
+is a specific software product, as it is a style of system design.
+MH is a toolchest of programs, modelled after the Unix toolchest,
+and it is a specific mail storage format, like Unix has its file system
+formats.
+
+.H1 "History of MH
+.P
+MH is an electronic mail system, originating in the RAND Corporation.
+In 1977, Norman Shapiro and Stockton Gaines had proposed the design
+of a new mail handling system, called ``Mail Handler'' (MH) for RAND,
+to superseed their ``Mail System'' (MS).
+Two years later, in 1979, XXX took the proposal and implemented a
+prototype of MH. It proved successful and replaced MS thereafter.
+.P
+A decade later, the University of California had started to use MH.
+They also took over its development and pushed MH forward.
+This had been the time when the Internet appeared, Berkeley implemented
+the TCP stack, and Sendmail was born. MH had often contained the first
+implementation of new RFCs.
+.P
+In the nineties, MH had been moved into the public domain, making it
+attractive to Free Software developers. The Internet had started to become
+mainstream and in 1997, Richard Coleman initiated the ``New Mail Handler''
+(nmh), a fork of MH. He intended to modernize MH, improve its MIME
+capabilities, and this should be done openly within the Internet
+community. Today, nmh almost completely replaced the original MH.
 
 .H1 "How the Fun Began
 .P
-foo
+I have discovered nmh in XXX. I used to use mutt, like many
+command-line-attracted Unix users. Nmh had convinced me conceptually
+at once. Unfortunately, setting it up to a convenient state became a
+tendious task. Learning its different model of email handling had,
+in contrast, been relatively easy. Learning to use MH if you are used
+to monolithic mail clients is like learning vi if you are used to
+modeless editors.
+Once having nmh set up, using it was joy because of its conceptional
+elegance and scripting capabilities, but on the other hand it was
+inconvenient in handling attachments, non-ASCII character encodings,
+and similar stuff. I found it wrong to require more and more scripts
+and configuration to have it act the expected way. In being a
+software developer, I wanted to improve the situation.
+.P
+In Spring 2010, I asked on the nmh-workers mailing list for the
+possibility to have a Google Summer of Code project on nmh. Being a
+student, this appeared attractive to me. Eventually, it had not been
+possible, but the nmh community started to move. In these months
+nmh's future was discussed and I became part of a ``Does nmh need an
+MTA'' discussion. There, my opinion differed from the opinion of
+most others.
+.P
+As it hadn't been possible to work on nmh in a way that would be
+accepted as part of my official studies, I needed to get my credit
+points in some other way. But half a year later I was back. Starting
+in Summer 2010, I took one semester off to travel through Latin America.
+Within this time, I needed to do practical computer work for three
+months. Richard Sandelman, an active nmh user, made it possible for
+me to work on nmh during this time. Juan Granda, from Santiago del
+Estero in Argentina, provided a computer and Internet connection.
+Within these three month, I became familiar with nmh's code base and
+its community. I learned how things work. Quickly it was obvious that
+I wouldn't succeed to improve on the non-ASCII character encoding
+problems, as this is one of the most intricate parts of the system.
+Instead I improved code as I read through it. I found minor bugs in
+the code and could improve the documentation. When I started with
+larger code changes, I had to discover that the community's wish for
+compatibility was stronger than its wish for convenient
+out-of-the-box setups. This lead to long discussions, again. Finally,
+I understand their point of view, but it's not mine.
+At the end of my three-month project, I had became familiar with
+nmh's code base and community, I had improved both a bit, and I still
+was convinced that I wanted to go on with it.
+.P
+Another half a year later, I needed a topic for my master's thesis.
+Now it was clear: I wanted to work on nmh. No, not exactly nmh,
+because I had accepted that the nmh community has different goals
+than I have. The won't be much progress if generally different opinions
+lead to long discussions. After careful thought, I had decided to
+start an experimental version of nmh. I wanted to go my way and see
+where it would lead to. Time would tell if it would prove successful.
+Nmh would hardly be hurt by my work, but could profit from my
+experiences later.
+.P
+When I started to work on mmh, my experimental version, in Fall 2011,
+activity in nmh rose suddenly. While I was working on mmh, XXX were
+working on nmh. After long years of idleing, nmh was actively
+developed again. That was a good sign. My own work went in parallel
+and unrelated. Today, my experimental version became de facto a fork.
+The mail storage, however, is still compatible.