Re: [Nmh-workers] Future directions for nmh

[norm]

Ken Hornstein <address@hidden> writes:
>>i don't know exactly how to match mime to the simplicity of show(1), and
>>i've been violently repulsed any time i tried to use mhshow(1), but i
>
>I can't really blame you on that one.  But really, mhshow(1) is really just
>the old mhn, slightly rewritten.  And mhn was a horrible hack, we all agree.
>We've made it suck less.  But my thinking has always been that mhshow goes
>away, and mhl be the "display message" command ... you know, like it used
>to be.
>
>>the command set i'd suggest for whatnowmime(1) would include things like:
>
>Alright, I see where you're going with this.  Fair enough; that's not
>how I personally work with MIME messages, but enough people have said
>that they want this (and Paul even wrote something that does it!) that
>clearly this UI fills a need.
>
>But ... let's take a step back.  I've heard that "whatnow" is a Horrible
>Corruption of the MH way, in that everything should be a distinct
>command rather than create a shell that does a bunch of commands.  I
>find that argument compelling; any shell we create will lack the full
>power of a command shell,

And it would not participate in the improvement, over the years, of the shell
and in the advent of new shells.


> and I'm assuming we don't want to cram all of
>/bin/sh into nmh.  So do you (and others) really want a "MIME shell",
>or do you just want a bunch of commands to operate on MIME parts?  I
>do recognize that there is the issue of command collision, so that's
>one concern.

If that were really a problem you could just make the new command names begin
with "mh" and let the user make his own aliases.

>Technically, I see no obvious challenge in doing it as
>individual commands; there would be some file in $(mhdir) that would
>hold current part you're working on, like context today.
>
>If the message parser is done right, mhl would just be a special case of
>your "view" command.  Or view would be mhl; details are still a bit
>hazy.
>
>--Ken
>
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    Norman Shapiro