Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!mica.berkeley.edu!wisner From: wisner@mica.Berkeley.EDU (Bill Wisner) Newsgroups: comp.mail.misc Subject: Re: MH verses the "all in one file" MUAs Message-ID: Date: 3 Jul 89 18:48:47 GMT References: <113461@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> <1518@cbnewsc.ATT.COM> <113567@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> Sender: usenet@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Followup-To: comp.mail.misc Organization: Verrifast Plaine Co Ltd Lines: 70 In-reply-to: argv%eureka@Sun.COM's message of 3 Jul 89 04:27:48 GMT Clarification: In article <113567@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> argv%eureka@Sun.COM (Dan Heller) writes: >Greg points out that MH saves this info as well, but not in a header >which is visible to the user -- MH apparently filters this information >out when the message is displayed. Well, no. MH can be instructed to record when messages are replied to, forwarded, or redistributed, but it does not do so by default. Generally, it is the more advanced MH users that configure MH this way. The "normal" way for MH to display a message is just to print the whole thing out, including all headers. This includes the MH-inserted Replied: or Forwarded: headers. I, advanced MH user that I am, have set up a filter that removes these. I rather think that MH's method is more elegant than sticking the letter r in a Status: header. MH, big stud mailer, records the date and time of the reply and to whom the reply was sent. You get two lines of information for every reply you send. >But what really took the cake for me was the fact that if your mail is >configured for MH, there's no other UA you can use-- you are stuck with MH. Piffle. MH's packf command will take a bunch of messages and stick them together into an MMDF mail file. You can use any other UA that understands MMDF's file format. And speaking of religious wars, MMDF's format is superior to the standard UNIX mail format. >Upon further investigation, I learned that MH wasn't portable to any other >unix besides BSD systems. This may have changed lately -- I don't keep up >with MH that much (my loss, I guess). Is it true that MH still only talks >to sendmail as its sole MTA? I have built MH on System V machines, and on machines running MMDF and Smail3.1. It works quite well on each. >MH isn't a "library" as you described, but rather a set of commands. You >build a "tool" in front of MH by doing a bunch of popen() calls, or system() >calls, or whatever... Don't you think that's rather inefficient/expensive? Look at an MH source tree sometime. There most certainly is a library of basic MH functions, which is used to build the MH user commands (and can be used in your own MH tools). >> using MH at universities are not going to have high speed CPUs. MH's >> MH's >> executables average about 200-300K here, and I imagine they are similar >> in size elsewhere. Eh wot? 90-100K here for inc, scan and show (the three most oft-used MH commands). >I'd love to look at it again... But where does one get it? Don't tell me >I have to buy it :-). Actually, there's nothing wrong with selling MH >(or software, for that matter -- sorry, rms :-), it just means that I >won't buy it due to my limited personal financial resources. An "official" distribution can be found on louie.udel.edu in the portal/ directory. (No affiliation with the California USENET site.) >As you said, MUAs are as religious as using different editors -- you're >never going to convince an emacs user to use vi, and chances are unlikely >that you're going to convert an MH user to use Mush (altho there are some >cases where this has happened :-). Well, I was a mush user until I came across MH.. Bill Wisner wisner@mica.berkeley.edu ucbvax!mica!wisner I'm not the NRA either.