Re: [nmh-workers] Need help with sending mail

[Robert Elz]

    Date:        Fri, 26 Oct 2018 07:15:21 -0400
    From:        Ken Hornstein <address@hidden>
    Message-ID:  <address@hidden>

  | >Why?  This is so subtle that the more warning, the better.  Why not add
  | >the warning?
  |
  | It's absolutely true that this is a subtle point,

Actually, subtle it is not - it is quite blatant, and is explicit in the post 
man page.

To use options (to any nmh program) one really needs to either know them
well (which would mean having read the man page previously) or to read
the man page.  We should not need more than that, though the message
could be moved (or duplicated) earlier in the man page to make it even
harder to miss.

If we are to add warnings, why stop at post?   Why not warn about other
entries in the profile that aren't used?   But how does anything know?
I have a "spin" entry in my profile, used by some script that someone
posted (probably on this list) years ago (I no longer have the script in
my bin directory, though I could probably find it).

  | I think we need some way to suppress this warning, just in case (I
  | cannot imagine any reason why you would need to, but nmh users surprise
  | me all of the time :-) ).

I think we should not have a warning at all.

I have an entry for "post" in my profile (have done for a long time).
I don't expect it to be used, but it allows me to do
        mhparam post
to see what default options get used (the actual entries are also in
the profile entry for send).

I also think that MH users are (by and large) able to deal with issues
like this, and preventing the occasional question to the list isn't worth
the effort of extra code, of making the profile parser bigger and even
messier (and also forcing a full read every time, which one day might
be good to avoid - just reading enoughto get the entry needed) and
just generally being obnoxious.

kre