Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!decwrl!shelby!bloom-beacon!Xylogics.COM!loverso
From: loverso@Xylogics.COM (John Robert LoVerso)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.mush
Subject: **WARNING** Mush 7.0.0 scrambles mailbox
Message-ID: <8912151519.AA05853@xenna.Xylogics.COM>
Date: 15 Dec 89 15:19:16 GMT
Sender: root@athena.mit.edu (Wizard A. Root)
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 101

I waited until 7.0 was released before using it.  I put it up the
day after it was released, and put up 7.0.1 yesterday.  Anyway, I
have about 450 peices (1.1MB) of mail (some unanswered) in my
maildrop.  This morning I was doing to do my monthly cleaning and
see if I can get that number down a bit.  When I went back to
message 1, I found that chunks of recent mail (from last week) had
been overlayed onto the beginning of my maildrop - leaving me with
bits and pieces of those messages.  This is not good!

Luckily, I had made a copy of my maildrop before using 7.0.0, and
so I know it must have be 7.0.0 who did the scrambling.  For now,
I've backed off (for reading) to 6.5.

The host machine here is an Encore Multimax running (mostly) their mutant
4.2BSD.

While I'm at it, here is a list of comments on 7.0.0.  Some of these
are problems and some are suggestions (request-for-features).

1. File completion is too verbose

   In particular, it expands "+" into the pathname of my folder directory,
   "/u6/loverso/Mail.  When you've got over 50 folders in there, this tends
   to output a lot of useless information.

   Actually, to be more specific, typing +^D just says "/u6/loverso/Mail/" -
   I need to type +/^D to get it to list out the individual folders.  This
   is misleading, because +foo^D lists folders that start with +foo - no "/"
   is required.

   Additionally, I have many subfolders (over 250 in several levels of
   subdirectories).  At the minimum, it would be useful to have directories
   listed with a trailing "/" on them.  This way, +^D would list me all my
   folders with info on which are subdirs, and it should fit in 7 lines,
   not take up the whole screen.

   Actually, for subfolders, my shell script "listfolder" handles things
   nicer, in that it has umpteen different listing formats, of which
   my favorite is a recursive listing given full folder names, as in:
	foo/blah  foo/goo  foo/lost/first  foo/lost/second

   I've looked at the completion code and its very simple (and clean!).
   If I get a chance sometime soon, I'll hack in some of the above and
   send along the diffs.

   Lastly, completion doesn't work for "~w" et al in compose mode.

2. Including headers in forwarded mail
   I usually need to do two different things: send an extract of a message
   to someone, or (under Mr.Postmaster hat) forward a bounced message
   or somesuch to some other Mr.Postermaster.  In the former case, I
   just want minimal headers included with ~I; I can do this by settin
   alwaysignore.  However, to get all the headers, I need to unset
   this variable.  This is a little clumsy.

   I tried to make a map! to handle it, but found map!'s can match
   initial newlines (I only want the `command' recognized at BOL).
   I.e., something like:
	map! \nI\n <blah>
   it doesn't work, because the match for the initial newline fails.
   Taking out the initial newline makes it work.  Actually, I was
   hoping for something like:
	map! \n~II\n <blah>

3. From: line handling
   I need to change my `From:' at my discretion at certain times.  I know
   who I am - why do I need to prove it to Mush?  If I fill in a From:
   line that has my address in a different domain, it tosses it out
   (silently).  I don't want Mush changing this at all.

   The current method I use to get around this is a vi macro that does
   the following:
	1G!G/usr/lib/sendmail -t

   For that matter, Mush needn't supply a default From: line nor a default
   Date: at all.  My MTA does it for me.  Perhaps a SMART_MTA define might
   be in order?

   BTW, in the BUGS section of the manaul page, comment about "edit_hdrs"
   and changing the From: line is out of date.

4. Forwarding vs. resending
   I'm butting up against the "resent" mail restriction again.  I.e.,
   if you "mail -f" and never take the message into an editor, the
   message goes out as "resent" mail, in which "resent-" headers are
   generated.  This loses if you have auto_edit set.  Besides, usually
   I like to add an editorial comment at the top of such mail, which
   of course, also loses.

   Actually, it would be nice to have a different switch trigger
   resent- mail and forwarded mail; the later would be marked by:
	----- Forwarded mail from ...

   Note that the "mail" command now has a "-U" switch, it would be nice
   if "mail -f" didn't assume this; i.e., the current "mail -f" behavior
   would be replaced by "mail -fU".

John
-- 
John Robert LoVerso			Xylogics, Inc.  617/272-8140
loverso@Xylogics.COM			Annex Terminal Server Development Group