Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!ncrlnk!ncrcae!hubcap!gatech!ncar!ames!pacbell!pbhyf!rob
From: rob@pbhyf.PacBell.COM (Rob Bernardo)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.elm
Subject: Re: Feature addition idea
Message-ID: <4421@pbhyf.PacBell.COM>
Date: 21 Dec 88 00:19:32 GMT
References: <1094@raspail.UUCP> <51900010@mcdurb> <2454@ficc.uu.net> <4417@pbhyf.PacBell.COM> <2510@ficc.uu.net>
Reply-To: rob@pbhyf.PacBell.COM (Rob Bernardo)
Organization: Pacific * Bell, San Ramon, CA
Lines: 44

In article <2510@ficc.uu.net> peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva) writes:
+Let the user select headers with the cursor keys, the same way they select
+messages in the main elm menu.

This is a good idea. It's slower than the current method, i.e. more than
one keystroke to get to the third through last headers, but more flexible
(doesn't depend on unique first letters for each header label).

+In fact, this could be combined with my earlier suggestion for passing the
+header info to the message editor. Just give the novices a message editor
+that strips out the headers, edits the message using their editor, and
+then goies into the elm header editor. Experts would just take this whole
+unit out of the loop.

One hitch with this is that some  of the header lines would need to be
stripped out by ELM, altered  and added back in. This would be the case
for 'to' and 'cc' lines where aliases would have to be replaced with
the associated real addresses. Also the 'bcc' line would have to be
stripped out altogether.

+What's more, it'd make the main program smaller.

Since the older way would still be in there for the novices, this isn't
so. Since we would have to add code to strip out and rewrite the headers
mentioned above, it would be that the code would grow, not shrink. But
let's not treat size as more important that functionality. (Then again,
if the program is too large to run, that *is* a matter of functionality. :-)

+ The downside is that you
+would have to replace huge sections of the header editor. And no, I'm not
+ready to do this myself. I'm still trying to get elm to work on Xenix 286.

The work involved in making this change (putting the header lines in 
with the message body for editing together) is large enough that 
probably none of the ELM developers have time for it. I myself have 
been making roughly 70% of the bug fixes and changes provided by the 
ELM development group and I've been spending about 20 hours per week 
*of my own time* on ELM. And this is more to just get rid of bugs and 
inconsistencies, rather than make bona fide enhancements.
-- 
Rob Bernardo, Pacific Bell UNIX/C Reusable Code Library
Email:     ...![backbone]!pacbell!pbhyf!rob   OR  rob@pbhyf.PacBell.COM
Office:    (415) 823-2417  Room 4E750A, San Ramon Valley Administrative Center
Residence: (415) 827-4301  R Bar JB, Concord, California