Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!know!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!swrinde!ucsd!ucbvax!ENG.UMD.EDU!ziegast
From: ziegast@ENG.UMD.EDU (Eric Ziegast)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.mh
Subject: Re: MH Blues
Message-ID: <9010250519.AA10460@moria.eng.umd.edu>
Date: 25 Oct 90 05:19:06 GMT
References: <4R4%S-_@rpi.edu>
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 106

"G. Bowden Wise" writes:
>I have just recently started using slocal to do a few things like
>incorporate incoming mail from certain sources automatically.  I have
>no problem getting my mail incorporated into some folders be selecting
>the mail by the From field in the .maildelivery file.  But, what I
>would also like to be able to do one of the following additionail
>actions: 
>
>(1) Have mail that is not delivered to a folder remain in my system
>    mail drop until, I 'inc' it into my inbox.  This is what I am
>    trying to do currently.  But, what happens is suppose that I have 
>    two new mail messages, when I do the 'inc' only the first message
>    appears in the inbox; the other message has been appended to the 
>    end of the first message!  What is making 'inc' not put each
>    message in a separate file in the inbox??

Sucks, don't it? The problem is that the "file" (aka ">") action
thakes the message and "appends" it to the file.  If it were to
correctly do this so that both inc and /usr/ucb/Mail could read
them as seperate messages, it would have to append a blank line and
then the message to the file.  The blank line must come before
the first "From " in the message in order for it to be considered as
a seperate message.  This isn't RFC822, but we live with it anyway.
So all that has to be done is change the source so that it does
fprintf(mailfile,"\n") before it appends the message to the mail
file. I might try this fix, but I've got more important things to do.

>    I thought that the problem was related to the fact that by
>    default, mail that is not delivered gets incorporated into one
>    mail file.  So, I tried overriding the default process, but this 
>    did not solve the problem.  See my .maildelivery file below for
>    my default set up.

The following line is closest to the default for slocal:

	default - > ? /var/spool/mail/user

but I'd prefer:

	default - ^ ? "/usr/local/lib/mh/rcvstore +inbox"

So that it will be at least seperated from the rest of the messages.

>(2) The other scenario I would like to be able to do is have all my
>    incoming mail automatically incorporated into my 'inbox'.  I 
>    believe I have the same problem as I mentioned in number 1, but 
>    I cannot remember for sure.  But, one thing I dont like when I do 
>    this is that I no longer get notificatin that I have recieved
>    mail.  I have tried using 'rcvtty' but to no avail.  Also, is
>    there a way to let the X Windows client xbiff know that mail has
>    been received?

Maybe you should try:

	default - ^ ? "/usr/local/lib/mh/rcvstore +newbox"

and have your MAIL variable point to ~/Mail/newbox/1.

If you have any "new" mail, there will be a (exactly one) message in
~/Mail/newbox/1 and your xbiff icon will beep and light up.  You must
use "setenv MAIL ~/Mail/newbox/1" before you start xbiff.  Otherwise, 
it'll probably point to /var/spool/mail/$user where you will never get 
new mail.

To "incorperate" your new mail in +newbox to your folder +inbox,
use:

	alias inc 'refile -src +newbox all +inbox'

So when you use "inc", all of your new messages will move to your inbox
and your xbiff will turn off since there is no message 1 in +newbox.

With no messages in +msgbox, slocal will once again fill it starting
with message 1 (xbiif goes beep again :-) until you once again "inc"

This is one solution of many. If worse comes to worse, you could always
write shell scripts to make MH do what you want.


Also, another pet peeve with slocal:
Why is it that there is no search filed which looks for an address in
both "To:" and "cc:"?  Here's what my .maildelivery looks like:

# Maildelivery file used by slocal
To      staff              ^ ? "/usr/local/mh/lib/rcvstore +staff"
Cc      staff              ^ ? "/usr/local/mh/lib/rcvstore +staff"
To      dumpers            ^ ? "/usr/local/mh/lib/rcvstore +ecs"
Cc      dumpers            ^ ? "/usr/local/mh/lib/rcvstore +ecs"
To      xwindows           ^ ? "/usr/local/mh/lib/rcvstore +ecs"
Cc      xwindows           ^ ? "/usr/local/mh/lib/rcvstore +ecs"
To      serpent-           ^ ? "/usr/local/mh/lib/rcvstore +serpent"
Cc      serpent-           ^ ? "/usr/local/mh/lib/rcvstore +serpent"
To      mh-                ^ ? "/usr/local/mh/lib/rcvstore +mh"
Cc      mh-                ^ ? "/usr/local/mh/lib/rcvstore +mh"
To      info-matrix        ^ ? "/usr/local/mh/lib/rcvstore +matrix"
Cc	info-matrix        ^ ? "/usr/local/mh/lib/rcvstore +matrix"
  ... etc ...
default -                  ^ ? "/usr/local/mh/lib/rcvstore +other"

It's a pain in the neck when you you get a message from a mailing list
that people send to ("To:") or reply to ("Cc:") and need to sort it.

P.S. This message bounced so my last massage refers to this one.
________________________________________________________________________
Eric W. Ziegast, University of Merryland, Engineering Computing Services
ziegast@eng.umd.edu - Eric@[301.405.3689]