Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!amdahl!pacbell!pbhyf!rob
From: rob@PacBell.COM (Rob Bernardo)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.elm
Subject: Re: Request For Elm Feature
Message-ID: <4941@pbhyf.PacBell.COM>
Date: 4 Apr 89 18:59:47 GMT
References: <919@itivax.iti.org>
Reply-To: rob@PacBell.COM (Rob Bernardo)
Organization: Pacific * Bell, San Ramon, CA
Lines: 43

In article <919@itivax.iti.org> scs@vax3.iti.org (Steve Simmons) writes:
+I know, I know -- it's already there in 2.2, right?  :-)

Sorry to say "'fraid not".

+But just in case it isn't:  I use elm a lot from home.  Even
+at 2400 baud, waiting for the main menu screen to redraw itself
+so I can quit is a pain.  It'd really be nice if the 'c' and 'a'
+commands (among others) would work when you're in the "little"
+command mode that comes up after/while reading a message.

At first glance adding 'a' as a "post-pager" mode command looks
like it shouldn't be a problem.

Elm being a MUA that babysits you, I wonder if allowing 'c'
in "post-pager" mode would be good. If you have ask=ON in your
elmrc, you really won't know whether the messages you have marked
for deletion are the ones you really want deleted, since you
can't see the index screen with those D's. Perhaps the availability
of the 'c' command in "post-pager" mode could be tied to
	1. user level
	2. whether or not ask=ON
	3. whether or not there are any messages to be deleted.

or some combination thereof.

+On another note, we ran out of /tmp space today and users lost
+their messages (Elm 2.1 with some patches, BSD4.3 OS).  Has
+errorchecking been added to handle this?

Not yet. This may be a complex task: all fwrites, fprintfs,
fcloses, etc. will need to be checked, and error information passed
up a chain of functions to the proper level where the error can be
appropriately dealt with. If any of those intermediate functions
already have a meaningful return code, we will need to redesign
things a bit. The ELM development team has ranked this as at a fairly
high priority, but there was just so much we could get done for the
elm 2.2 release.
-- 
Rob Bernardo, Pacific Bell UNIX/C Reusable Code Library
Email:     ...![backbone]!pacbell!pbhyf!rob   OR  rob@pbhyf.PacBell.COM
Office:    (415) 823-2417  Room 4E850O San Ramon Valley Administrative Center
Residence: (415) 827-4301  R Bar JB, Concord, California