ljp@trwrba.UUCP (Laura J. Pearlman) (02/11/85)
Last October I modified mhe (the original from Brian Reid at Stanford, dated
April, 1982) for use with the version of MH we're running here (I couldn't
find a version number in any of the MH directories, but the copyright
notices are all dated 1981). Here's a list of bugs fixed and features
added:
Bugs fixed:
1. The original "mh" function didn't accept arguments properly unless
called interactively.
2. The "bboard" facility assumed that news articles would be found in a
directory called <base-directory>/<newsgroup-name>. (In other words, it
would expect net.emacs articles to be in /usr/spool/news/net.emacs instead
of /usr/spool/news/net/emacs).
3. It was originally impossible (within mhe) to delete a message you had
replied to (in the same mhe session).
4. Mhe did not ignore the case of component names when searching the user's
.mh_profile file, although the MH programs themselves do. For example, the
find-path function would fail if "Path:" was spelled "path:" or "PATH:".
Other changes:
In my version of mh-exit, a list of the commands that will be executed if
you type "e" are displayed as soon as mh-exit is invoked (before you're
asked what you want to do). In the original version, that list of commands
is never displayed.
In the original version of mh-exit, typing "q" results in mhe's asking you
whether you really want to quit without processing; in my version, if
there's no processing to do, it doesn't ask.
In the original, mh-exit finishes up by simply erasing the MH buffer; my
version uses save-window-excursion.
I changed the prompts in mh-exit, mh-comp, mh-forw, and mh-repl to be
slightly more self-explanatory.
I added a variable called "mh-digits-in-message", and changed the functions
that rely on the number of digits in a message number to use that variable.
The original version of mhe assumed three digits, which corresponded to the
number of digits that the MH programs (scan(1) and inc(1), in particular)
expected; however, that number had to be changed to get the bboard facility
to work with newsgroups that contained articles with numbers greater
than 999.
I also wrote a shell script called "mhe" with more "MH-like" syntax than the
alias suggested in the original version.
If you'd like more information, please let me know; if anyone feels inspired
to fold these changes into the MH.5 version of mhe, please send me a copy of
the results.
Laura Pearlman
{decvax,hplabs,ihnp4,ucbvax}!trwrb!ljp