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From: tr@samadams.princeton.edu (Tom Reingold)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.mh
Subject: Re: Silly MH questions
Message-ID: <4389@rossignol.Princeton.EDU>
Date: 13 Nov 90 02:46:57 GMT
References: <3211@ucsfcca.ucsf.edu>
Sender: news@cs.Princeton.EDU
Organization: Noo Joizy -- The Cultural Mecca
Lines: 34

In article <3211@ucsfcca.ucsf.edu> dick@cca.ucsf.edu (Dick Karpinski)
writes:

$ Why would I want to use MH vs Elm or Mail or Mush?
$ 
$ Do novices find it easy to use?
$ 
$ Would MH support a single "host" for thousands of users on 
$ hundreds or thousands of different machines?
$ 
$ Does MH make mail to Macs and IBM PCs any easier?
$ 
$ Are there archives where I could get MH or related material?

The small number of responses has surprised me.  Anyway, the reason I
think MH is great is that it is at the shell level rather than being a
monolithic program.  I like to do things like "show | lpr" which will
print the current mail message.  In monolithic programs, you have to
save to a file, exit the program, print the file, and then maybe
re-enter the program.  Or with Elm you do lots of setup to bind the
print key to do exactly what you want.  Which is fine if you like to
configure before you can use the program as well as you use everything
else you can already pipe into lpr.  But it's not when your favorite
printer is down.  Then you have to reconfigure your program.  Whatever
happened to the Unix philosphy??

I think MH is as easy to learn as all other mail user agents.  It also
seems to be the most configurable once you choose to delve into it.
But using it raw gives you a plenty-powerful set of tools.
--
        Tom Reingold
        tr@samadams.princeton.edu  OR  ...!princeton!samadams!tr
        "Warning: Do not drive with Auto-Shade in place.  Remove
	from windshield before starting ignition."