[comp.mail.elm] including messages while composing mail

peterm@hpdtl.HP.COM (Peter Maxwell) (04/07/90)

A feature I would REALLY like in ELM is the equivalent of the Berkeley mail
~f or ~m command (without having to use editor=none).  There have been many
times when I have been forced (or think I have) to save messages to a file
and then read them back in, if I want to reply to one message but have
another included also.

Am I missing something?  I'm not aware of any way of doing this cleanly.

	Peter

syd@DSI.COM (Syd Weinstein) (04/08/90)

peterm@hpdtl.HP.COM (Peter Maxwell) writes:
>A feature I would REALLY like in ELM is the equivalent of the Berkeley mail
>~f or ~m command (without having to use editor=none).  There have been many
>times when I have been forced (or think I have) to save messages to a file
>and then read them back in, if I want to reply to one message but have
>another included also.

>Am I missing something?  I'm not aware of any way of doing this cleanly.
I think I am missing something here....

If you are using some editor other than none, you are dependant
on that editor for insertion of lines.  That editor is not part of
Elm, so how can Elm add commands to it.

~f and ~m access the current message base and include a message into
the buffer.  Of course, readmsg can do this for you, but you need to
know the message number.  However, here's the rub, the message number
is relative to the current sorting order, and readmsg uses the ordinal
within the file, independent of sorting order.

So, no, there is no way of doing this, short of writing your own version
of readmsg that supports the sorting order.
-- 
=====================================================================
Sydney S. Weinstein, CDP, CCP                   Elm Coordinator
Datacomp Systems, Inc.                          Voice: (215) 947-9900
syd@DSI.COM or bpa!dsinc!syd                    FAX:   (215) 938-0235

nrc@cbnews.ATT.COM (N. Richard Caldwell) (04/09/90)

From article <1990Apr8.165409.29992@DSI.COM>, by syd@DSI.COM (Syd Weinstein):
> peterm@hpdtl.HP.COM (Peter Maxwell) writes:
>>A feature I would REALLY like in ELM is the equivalent of the Berkeley mail
>>~f or ~m command (without having to use editor=none).  There have been many
>>times when I have been forced (or think I have) to save messages to a file
>>and then read them back in, if I want to reply to one message but have
>>another included also.
> 
>>Am I missing something?  I'm not aware of any way of doing this cleanly.
> I think I am missing something here....
[stuff deleted]
> So, no, there is no way of doing this, short of writing your own version
> of readmsg that supports the sorting order.

Hmmm.  It's not so difficult to discover the mail file order.  When 
using vi, I just check the message number with...

:!frm -n

The -n option causes frm to give the message number that readmsg
requires.  Then it's just a matter of...

!!readmsg N

...where 'N' is the number of the message you want to read in.  The
current line is replaced with the contents of message N.  Works just
spiffy for me.  Of course, I'm still clear back on Elm 2.1 so this 
may have changed.

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"Don't drive too slowly."                 Richard Caldwell
                                          AT&T Network Systems
                                          nrc@cbnews
                                          att!cbnews!nrc
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"Don't drive too slowly."                 Richard Caldwell
                                          nrc@cbnews
                                          att!cbnews!nrc