Path: utzoo!dptcdc!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!pacbell!pbhyf!rob
From: rob@PacBell.COM (Rob Bernardo)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.elm
Subject: Re: Bugs in elm 2.2?
Keywords: already?
Message-ID: <5030@pbhyf.PacBell.COM>
Date: 16 Apr 89 16:32:33 GMT
References: <846@hadron.UUCP>
Reply-To: rob@PacBell.COM (Rob Bernardo)
Distribution: na
Organization: Pacific * Bell, San Ramon, CA
Lines: 60

In article <846@hadron.UUCP> klr@hadron.UUCP (Kurt L. Reisler) writes:
+Well, just spun up elm 2.2, and there are a few "bugs" right off the
+bat.
+
+On a VT102, when viewing mail with the "builtin" viewer, the subject
+line winds up being redrawn on top of the fist line of the screen, which
+obliterates the address of the sender.

ELM uses its own internal homebrew curses rather than the standard curses.
(We inherited ELM that way and are planning on converting to standard curses
- a big job .) We rewrote large parts of the homebrew curses routines to
correctly handle automargin and the so-called "eat newline glitch" terminal
capabilities. After weeks of debugging this one part of the code, we are
pretty well assured there are no bugs in this part of the homebrew curses.

Why this problem should occur only on the first line is a mystery. 
Hm.  The first line is always exactly the width of the screen. Does it 
happen on other lines when they have extend *exactly* to the last 
column of the screen? If so, my first suspicion is that there is a 
mismatch between your terminal set-up (and it's unalterable features, 
as well) and the terminfo/ termcap entry you have for your terminal. 
If you want suggestions on what exactly to investigate send me e-mail. 
If anyone else is having this problem or if you use a VT102 and are 
*not* having this problem, also let us know. 

+There is a distinct problem with aliases.  While "checkalias" is aware
+of the files in $HOME/.elm, both "listalias" and the alias process in
+elm itself seem to be using the alises defined in .mailrc.

It sounds like you've gotten something screwed up in your 
installation, or that you've misperceived the problem (if there is 
one).  ELM doesn't access ".mailrc" at all except for the awk script 
that can be *manually* used to convert .mailrc aliases to ELM aliases. 

+IF these turn out to be legit (I have not looked at the sources yet),
+can we PLEASE have official patches, rather than the tradition barrage
+of individual fixes, which made earlier releases pretty much
+unmaintainable?

The ELM development group will be posting official patches to 
comp.sources.bugs, with a possible cross-posting or mention in this 
group.  They will be clearly marked as official patches. Obviously, 
this not being a moderated group, the development group cannot control 
the posting nor application of unofficial patches (nor is it clear 
that we would even want to discourage them). Just be aware that a 
version of "elm" that has unofficial patches, is not an official 
version of ELM and is certainly not supported by the ELM development 
group.  We strongly recommend that no one distribute such versions of 
ELM and still call them "elm", because that will bring about lots of 
confusion.  

+Otherwise, looks good, so far.

Believe me, it is always nice to hear the sighs of satisfaction and
not just the reports of bugs.
-- 
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