And that means it needs to become a very efficient and flexible
dispatcher (and inhaler) of MIME content.
I kind of thought that's what we're all talking about?
So, I read the plumb paper; very interesting! But ... I don't think we
were talking about something that COULDN'T do that? Right? I mean,
it seems like plumber is most useful because it's a system service, but
that specific piece doesn't apply to us. But the concepts are interesting.
Building in anything more than text display and input breaks the
fundamental contract upon which MH was built: Text comes in, text goes
out.
You DID get the memo about MIME, right? That unwritten contract (boy,
there sure were a lot of unwritten contracts that were created when MH
was first developed way back then! Who knew? Too bad no one thought to
write them down ... or even mention them) was busted a long time ago.
What modern MH is missing is a powerful enough interface to allow MH
users to devour that MIME content in a useful manner. That means a much
more powerful API between MH's internal MIME processing and the outside
world.
I had proposed a scheme back when I posted about my "modules" plan; it
did not get any comments (other than Norm saying later that he liked it).
As this week's conversation shows, static dispatch for things like ical
objects just doesn't – always – work. Sometimes it can, sometimes
not. The failing the current nmh-vs-ical debate points out is that nmh
can't dispatch based on dynamic MIME content. The lmh branch of the
code is trying to play with this ...
I think you lost me ... could you define "static" and "dynamic" MIME
content?
In my view, the core issue we've been grappling with (at least with the
whole iCal thing) is that there needs to be a human in the loop to make
the decision on whether or not to send an accept or reply back. So
a lot of this is trying to figure out the right UI.
That's not to say that having a scriptable language available as part of
MIME processing wouldn't be useful; it sure would be!
--Ken
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