[2010-10-29 14:22] David Levine
<levin(_dot_)(_dot_)(_dot_)(_at_)acm(_dot_)org>
meillo wrote:
just one question for better understanding:
Who or what is ``JLR''?
There are several #ifdefs for JLR in code which is related to scan(1).
There is also a comments which appears to be written by JLR and
docs/ChangeLog_MH-3_to_MH-6.6 lists changes done for JLR.
John Romine, I expect. From docs/README.about:
In 1982, the University of California, Irvine took up
maintenance of the software, under the direction of Marshall
T. Rose and John L. Romine.
That seems to be reasonable.
Does anyone know some more? Had he had his personal, modified,
version of MH, because this is how it appears?
meillo
Stuff under #ifdef JLR means something experimental I was working on.
In this case (scan, formatsbr) it has to do with an extension to the
mh-format
syntax to allow for looping.
The scan format is processed once for each message. Those #ifdef JLR
changes
allowed for the top part of the format file to be processed once, then a
second,
looping part to be processed once per message. As I recall, there were new
mh-format escape sequences to delimit the loop. This would have allowed for
things like per-format column headings in the scan output.
Since existing format files didn't include the scan listing header (it was
hard-coded
in scan.c) it would not have been backward-compatible. All existing format
files
(including any local ones) would have needed to be changed to include the
format
codes for a header. The practice at the time was not to introduce
incompatible
changes in a minor release, and I never managed to put out a newer major
release.
John
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