gregbo@hou2e.UUCP (Greg Skinner) (08/16/84)
Is there any interest in Unix Mailers which support user-editable headers
like tops20 MM supports them? The new exptools version of Mail doesn't
seem to support them and I don't know of any other Unix Mailers offhand
that do.
Note that I am not talking about editing just the to, from, cc, bcc and
subject fields ... I am talking about putting anything in your header which
RFC822 will parse.
--
Hug me till you drug me, honey!
Greg Skinner (gregbo)
{allegra,cbosgd,ihnp4}!hou2e!gregbobamford@ihuxl.UUCP (bamford) (08/16/84)
Y E S ! ! ! I am very interested in a well supported mailer program that allows editing of the headers. I very much liked what the TOPS20 machine at Stanford had.
smb@ulysses.UUCP (Steven Bellovin) (08/17/84)
Please note that the Rand MH system -- distributed with 4.2bsd -- has had that ability for years. When you want to send a letter, it pops you into the editor of your choice; when you're done, it parses the header to see who it's addressed to.
fair@dual.UUCP (Erik E. Fair) (08/19/84)
The recmail program from the netnews distribution does similar things.
Standard procedure is to make a prototype header for the user, fire
up an editor, and when it exits, hand the text to recmail. It picks out
the To: and Cc: fields and mails off the letter with /bin/mail, which
will accept *anything* as input. Voila! Editable headers.
Erik E. Fair ucbvax!fair fair@ucb-arpa.ARPA
dual!fair@BERKELEY.ARPA
{ihnp4,ucbvax,hplabs,decwrl,cbosgd,sun,nsc,apple,pyramid}!dual!fair
Dual Systems Corporation, Berkeley, Californiahenry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer) (08/19/84)
> Please note that the Rand MH system -- distributed with 4.2bsd -- has had > that ability for years. When you want to send a letter, it pops you into > the editor of your choice; when you're done, it parses the header to see > who it's addressed to. I have no direct experience with MH, but this is *clearly* the right way to do letter composition. A mail system is a mail system: it should not try to be a text editor as well. Partly because it complicates the mail system unnecessarily, partly because it means the poor user has to learn two different editors, but mostly because mail-system editors are lousy editors! Text editing is a complex task; writing a good text editor is not easy. Mail-system authors should leave this job to specialists. -- Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology {allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!henry