ambar@ora.ora.com (Jean Marie Diaz) (01/15/91)
MH and xmh: E-Mail for Users and Programmers, explains how to use,
customize and program with the MH electronic mail commands; it also
covers xmh, an X Window System client that runs MH programs.
MH is a popular public-domain mailer originally developed by the Rand
Corporation. For many years, MH was used chiefly on larger systems,
because of its size, but as computers have become more powerful, it is
now possible to use it on virtually any UNIX system. The popularity
of MH has been further extended by the window-based version, xmh, that
is provided as part of the MIT X Window System distribution.
The basics are easy. But, MH lets you do much more than what most
people expect an e-mail system to be able to do. This handbook is
packed with explanations and useful examples of MH features.
This handbook also explains many things that other MH documentation
doesn't show, or only hints at: MH formatting, new versions of MH
commands, and shell programming with MH. For example, MH & xmh covers
the unique way that MH takes advantage of the UNIX filesystem. One
chapter, designed for people with no UNIX shell programming
experience, introduces Bourne Shell programming and gives tips for
programming with MH. For people who have done shell programming, the
handbook offers useful tips and techniques.
By Jerry Peek
ISBN 0-937175-63-3, $27.95, approximately 550 pages
Available 1/91, will be shown at Uniforum in Dallas
Why Choose MH? (by the author)
The MH Message Handling System is a set of electronic mail programs in
the public domain. If your computer runs UNIX, it can probably run
MH.
The big difference between MH and most other "mail user agents" is
that you can use MH from a UNIX shell prompt. In MH, each command is
a separate program, and the shell is used as an interpreter. So, all
the power of UNIX shells (pipes, redirection, history, aliases, and so
on) works with MH--you don't have to learn a new interface. Other
mail agents have their own command interpreter for their individual
mail commands (although the mush mail agent simulates a UNIX shell).
Because MH commands aren't part of a monolithic mail system, you can
use them at any time; you don't have to start or quit the mail agent.
Because you use them from a shell prompt, you can use all the power of
the shell. For example, you can use a pipe to send the output of the
show command to the printer directly and then remove the messages
after printing.
If your shell has time-saving aliases or functions (and most do),
you'll be able to use them with MH, of course. And because MH isn't a
monolithic mail agent, you can use MH commands in UNIX shell scripts,
or call them from programs in high-level languages like C.
Unlike most mail agents, MH keeps each message in a separate file.
The filename is the message number. To rearrange the messages, MH
just changes the filenames. MH can use standard UNIX filesystem
operations such as removing, copying and linking on it messages. The
message files are grouped into one or more folders, which are actually
UNIX directories.
MH is free, powerful, flexible--and the basics are easy to learn.
MH & xmh: E-mail for Programmers and Users summarizes what I've
learned in eight years of using MH--as a user, an instructor, a
programmer and a system administrator. I've explained the basics,
advanced features, configuring MH, and tricks that I've learned for
doing things faster and better.
About the Author
Jerry Peek has used UNIX and MH since the early 1980s. He has a B.S.
in Electronic Engineering Technology from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo.
At Tektronix, Inc., Jerry was a UNIX course developer and trainer for
four years; a System Administrator of VAX 11/780 running BSD UNIX; and
a Bourne Shell and C language job-shop programmer. More recently,
Jerry was a user consultant for UNIX and VMS at Syracuse University.
In January, Jerry will be joining the staff of O'Reilly & Associates,
as a user advocate and consultant for system administration, among
other roles.
O'Reilly & Associates, Inc. Publishers of Nutshell Handbooks
90 Sherman Street, Cambridge, MA 02140; 617-354-5800
Book Orders => 632 Petaluma Ave, Sebastopol, CA 95472
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