Re: [Nmh-workers] Conflict between "mime" command and attach

[Jon Steinhart]

Ken Hornstein writes:
> So, out of curiousity I went back and dug into these changes ... I see
> they were committed on August 19th, 2002.  More than 11 years ago!  The
> previous changes to that were all in July, and then a HUGE gap from
> those to March of 2001.  That was also back during our transition from
> mhost to savannah ... and from the mailing list archives, it doesn't
> look like you sent out any email about the change either (correction:
> looks like there was a brief announcement on 2002-11-29).  So ... I
> expect the reason that it wasn't controversial was that no one noticed
> (I actually didn't notice that support for years, I am sure).

Actually, I sent out a ton of email on it.  Starting on 8/13/00.  I still
have the emails if they were lost due to the change.  For example:

> Date:    Thu, 05 Jul 2001 07:47:27 -0700
> To:      address@hidden
> From:    Jon Steinhart <address@hidden>
> Subject: New code that simplifies user interface for MIME attachments to a 
> draft
> 
> I posted some code that improved the user interface for adding MIME 
> attachments
> to messages some months ago.  While the code worked fine, I didn't really like
> the way that I had implemented it and have subsequently done it over.  Since I
> don't have write access to the CVS, please look it over and check it in if it
> looks OK to you.  If it doesn't, let me know what you think should be changed.
> Here's the contents of the README-ATTACHMENTS file that is included with the
> patches:
> 
> Jon Steinhart's (address@hidden) Attachment Handling Patches
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> 
> Attached are a set of patches designed to improve the nmh user interface
> for handling MIME attachments.
> 
> Why Did I Do This?
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> 
> Although nmh contains the necessary functionality for MIME message handing,
> the interface to this functionality is pretty obtuse.  There's no way that
> I'm ever going to convince my partner to write mhbuild composition files!
> And even though I know how to write them, I often screw up when sending a
> message that contains a shell script because I forget that I have to double
> any # at the start of a line, which shell scripts have galore.
> 
> These patches simplify the task of managing attachments on draft files.
> They allow attachments to be added, listed, and deleted.  MIME messages are
> automatically created when drafts with attachments are sent.
> 
> Did I Do This Correctly?
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> 
> Hard to say.  Despite lots of time looking at the nmh code, I can't say that
> I get the philosophy behind its structure.
> 
> I am aware of two deviations from what I saw in the nmh code.
>  1.  I commented my changes.
>  2.  It's been years since I've used a VT-100, so I don't try to make code
>      fit into 80 columns anymore.  Seems silly to me.
> 
> What Did I Do?
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> 
> ...