David,
Thanks for your interest. You must have missed John Romine's
announcements--he's working on 6.8.4 and a beta has been released.
I think this version is to fix some long-standing obvious bugs.
Most of your suggestions are excellent. John Romine is still the
"head honcho." What I would suggest is that after 6.8.4 is out, he
post a list of "Things To Do" and delegate these things to do to
folks on this list (on an elective basis). Perhaps this effort
would comprise 7.0.
I second your proposals:
Remove FILE internal dependancies.
Make MH code POSIX compliant
Remove unneeded items from distribution:
Allow MH to handle 8-bit messages
Have MH lock all sensitive files (e.g. dot files in folders)
Better MIME handling (composition, display, maybe use .mailcap?)
I would add:
Implementation of recent Content-Disposition (RFC 1806) and
Notary RFCs (RFCs 1891-1894).
While we are removing external stuff, I would suggest making it easy
for folks to use PGP with MH. Whether this means integrating it
with MH proper, or providing a paper that shows where to get PGP,
how to install it, and how to use with MH, I don't care. Email
security is coming. An ambitious student will implement RIPEM in
MH.
mhe == Didn't this preceed mh-e, which has surpassed it?
This is Brian Reid's effort, which mh-e is based upon. These two
programs are now fairly independent. As far as I know, Brian is the
only one using mhe! He doesn't like mh-e ;-).
Bill Wohler <wohler(_at_)newt(_dot_)com> ph: +1-415-854-1857 fax:
+1-415-854-3195
Say it with MIME. Maintainer of comp.mail.mh and news.software.nn FAQs.
If you're passed on the right, you're in the wrong lane.