Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!rutgers!clyde!cbosgd!mandrill!hal!ncoast!allbery From: allbery@ncoast.UUCP (Brandon Allbery) Newsgroups: comp.mail.misc,comp.sources.d Subject: Re: Mush vs. Elm vs. MH vs. ... Message-ID: <4781@ncoast.UUCP> Date: Wed, 30-Sep-87 21:56:19 EDT Article-I.D.: ncoast.4781 Posted: Wed Sep 30 21:56:19 1987 Date-Received: Mon, 5-Oct-87 08:29:28 EDT References: <905@bdmrrr.bdm.com> <926@trotter.usma.edu> Reply-To: allbery@ncoast.UUCP (Brandon Allbery) Followup-To: comp.mail.misc Organization: Cleveland Public Access UN*X, Cleveland, Oh Lines: 65 Xref: mnetor comp.mail.misc:581 comp.sources.d:1316 As quoted from <926@trotter.usma.edu> by bill@trotter.usma.edu (Bill Gunshannon): +--------------- | In article <905@bdmrrr.bdm.com>, shprentz@bdmrrr.bdm.com (Joel Shprentz) writes: | > Can anyone comment on how Mush, the mail user's shell just posted to | > comp.sources.unix, compares with Elm or MH? | > | | I can't comment on MUSH yet because I am missing parts 7-12 but I can tell | you that although ELM works fine on the 3B2 that I am writting this on it | does have some problems. I have been trying for some months now to get it | run on an INTEL 310 without success. Don't get me wrong, it isn't ELM's | fault, the compiler on the INTEL is a disaster. It is also inconsistent. | It has some of the system calls for SYSV and some for V7. Makes for some | interesting programming. | | MH is a new one to me but if someone can send me the sources I would be | willing to give it a try too. Almost anything is better than vanilla mail. +--------------- If you thought Mush was big, wait until you see MH! BTW, you'll have even worse problems with MH: it wants either sendmail or MMDF, and is workable but extremely unsatisfying if you have neither. Also, if you have neither you have to kiss BellMail goodbye: MH-MTS (the delivery scheme used if you don't have sendmail or MMDF) wants to write mailboxes in MMDF maildrop format rather thsn Bell-compatible format. As for differences: I can't speak about Mush (didn't even look at it; heck, I've got MH and my own IMS is in the queue for a rewrite), but MH and Elm I have used, and they have radically different philosophies. I suspect from the name that Mush is closer to MH than Elm, but... Elm is a mail user agent contained in a single program plus a few auxiliary programs; the intent is that all mail sending/reading/manipulating is done with the Elm program itself. It attempts to provide a wide range of capa- bilities, but because it is a single program its capabilities are ultimately "fixed" -- difficult to augment. On the plus side, it's relatively small (see below; I'm not talking mailx/ucbmail or BellMail) and has a pleasant, easy-to-use full screen interface. MH, on the other hand, is a collection of utilities for generating and manipulating RFC822-compatible messages. Note that it is not limited to mail; MH 6.5 has support for "bboards", which are a cross between news and mail: submissions are mailed to an alias which saves them into a special mailbox, and standard MH utilities can be used to manipulate these mailboxes even though they are read-only to the majority of readers. The utilities implement _parts_ of a mail user agent; the "utility" connecting them is your favorite shell, supported by Unix files and pipes. This means that if you want to implement a new command, you can write a shell script to do it; there are low-level utilities which can essentially turn _any_ command or program into an MH command. I, personally, swear by it. However, if you're interested in stuff that doesn't require (or at least want) the user to be a shell guru, Elm is the better choice. (MH is definitely the mailer for "power users".) [My own IMS is somewhere in between; it's a single program which can be used as a regular mailer or as building blocks, depending on how it is invoked. The current version isn't as intelligent as it could be and has a few known bugs, but there are still users who swear by it.] -- Brandon S. Allbery, moderator of comp.sources.misc {{harvard,mit-eddie}!necntc,well!hoptoad,sun!mandrill!hal}!ncoast!allbery ARPA: necntc!ncoast!allbery@harvard.harvard.edu Fido: 157/502 MCI: BALLBERY <> "`You left off the thunderclap and the lightning flash.', I told him. `Should I try again?' `Never mind.'" --Steven Brust, JHEREG