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Re: [Nmh-workers] Conflict between "mime" command and attach

2013-12-12 23:25:43
Ken Hornstein writes:
So, out of curiousity I went back and dug into these changes ... I see
they were committed on August 19th, 2002.  More than 11 years ago!  The
previous changes to that were all in July, and then a HUGE gap from
those to March of 2001.  That was also back during our transition from
mhost to savannah ... and from the mailing list archives, it doesn't
look like you sent out any email about the change either (correction:
looks like there was a brief announcement on 2002-11-29).  So ... I
expect the reason that it wasn't controversial was that no one noticed
(I actually didn't notice that support for years, I am sure).

Actually, I sent out a ton of email on it.  Starting on 8/13/00.  I still
have the emails if they were lost due to the change.  For example:

Date:    Thu, 05 Jul 2001 07:47:27 -0700
To:      nmh-workers(_at_)mhost(_dot_)com
From:    Jon Steinhart <jon(_at_)darkstar(_dot_)fourwinds(_dot_)com>
Subject: New code that simplifies user interface for MIME attachments to a 
draft

I posted some code that improved the user interface for adding MIME 
attachments
to messages some months ago.  While the code worked fine, I didn't really like
the way that I had implemented it and have subsequently done it over.  Since I
don't have write access to the CVS, please look it over and check it in if it
looks OK to you.  If it doesn't, let me know what you think should be changed.
Here's the contents of the README-ATTACHMENTS file that is included with the
patches:

Jon Steinhart's (jon(_at_)fourwinds(_dot_)com) Attachment Handling Patches
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Attached are a set of patches designed to improve the nmh user interface
for handling MIME attachments.

Why Did I Do This?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Although nmh contains the necessary functionality for MIME message handing,
the interface to this functionality is pretty obtuse.  There's no way that
I'm ever going to convince my partner to write mhbuild composition files!
And even though I know how to write them, I often screw up when sending a
message that contains a shell script because I forget that I have to double
any # at the start of a line, which shell scripts have galore.

These patches simplify the task of managing attachments on draft files.
They allow attachments to be added, listed, and deleted.  MIME messages are
automatically created when drafts with attachments are sent.

Did I Do This Correctly?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hard to say.  Despite lots of time looking at the nmh code, I can't say that
I get the philosophy behind its structure.

I am aware of two deviations from what I saw in the nmh code.
 1.  I commented my changes.
 2.  It's been years since I've used a VT-100, so I don't try to make code
     fit into 80 columns anymore.  Seems silly to me.

What Did I Do?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

...

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