I'm the author of the "MH & xmh" Nutshell Handbook. The third edition
is about to come out, and I'm trying to straighten out my terminology.
The MH manpages seem to use "profile entry" and "profile component"
interchangeably. I'm trying to settle on just one term.
Which do you use? Or am I missing the difference?
I grepped a bunch of manpages, but I couldn't find a pattern.
For example, mh-profile(5) starts with (the emphasis is mine):
The possible *profile components* are exemplified below....
Path: Mail
...
Farther down I see:
Signature: RAND MH System (agent: Marshall Rose)
...
If ... this *profile entry* is not present,
The next paragraph tosses in another term I don't see many places:
The following *profile elements* are used...
fileproc: /usr/local/mh/refile
...
(I don't want to get started ;-) on what to call the stuff in a message
header. RFC 822 calls them "header fields," and the people on
comp.mail.headers agree. MH calls them "header components" -- and has
switches to commands, like `anno -component XXX', that can't be changed.
Still, I'm going to make the third edition use the term "header field.")
Votes on profile components vs. profile entries, please? If I get some
consensus, I'll volunteer to send in diffs for the manpages. Thanks.
--Jerry Peek, O'Reilly & Associates... jerry(_at_)ora(_dot_)com