Re: rmail and mime encoded patches annoyance

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: "Alfred M. Szmidt" <ams@gnu.org>
> Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org
> Date: Fri, 19 May 2023 03:17:27 -0400
> 
>    FWIW, I almost never use rmail-edit, and don't really understand why
>    it's useful, let alone when a MIME patch is attached to it.  If what
>    you need is to edit the patch before applying it, 
> 
> It is more for commenting about the patch, in this case.  One could
> start a new reply, but those aren't presitent, and sometimes patches
> take a week or two to go over.

I don't understand: if you reply with the attachment displayed (i.e.,
after you pres the "Show" button on the MIME attachment header line),
"C-c C-y" will yank the decoded attachment's text as well, and you can
then comment on it like you do with any other text of the original
message.

> Similar, I use this for longer responses, where I edit the message and
> add my reply/comments/... and then save the RMAIL buffer.  And when
> you're done, you just reply with the notes you did.

I still don't understand why you need to use rmail-edit for that.
What's wrong with adding your reply/comments in the response message
after rmail-reply?  If you want to save the response for editing or
replying later, there's FCC, or you can use BCC to send a copy to
yourself.

>    then (a) that is not really recommended, since you will be applying
>    code attributed to someone else with your own changes; and (b) you
>    could always copy the patch to another buffer, edit it there, and
>    then apply.
> 
> Doing that multiple times a day gets old quick; was hoping to find a
> better way.

Like I say above: I don't understand why you'd need to do that even
once a day.  I don't, and you can believe me that I review a lot of
patches sent as attachments, and not only for Emacs.