dick@cca.ucsf.edu (Dick Karpinski) (10/30/90)
Why would I want to use MH vs Elm or Mail or Mush? Do novices find it easy to use? Would MH support a single "host" for thousands of users on hundreds or thousands of different machines? Does MH make mail to Macs and IBM PCs any easier? Are there archives where I could get MH or related material? Dick Dick Karpinski Minicomputer Manager, UCSF Information Technology Services Domain: dick@cca.ucsf.edu FAX: (415) 476-9537 (415) 476-4529 (11-7) BITNET: dick@ucsfcca or dick@ucsfvm (415) 658-6803 (Home) USPS: U-76 UCSF, San Francisco, CA 94143-0704 (415) 658-3797 (ans)
wjwhite@well.sf.ca.us (William J. White) (11/01/90)
We have MH available (so I've discovered) on the Unix system I subscribe to. This system even has a local newsgroup devoted to 'mh'. But its articles presume a working knowledge of 'mh'. I'm interested in 'mh' since it appears to enable me to batch messages, ad- dresses, etc. unlike the UNIX mail facility. Can someone provide/suggest an 'mh' bibliography for the complete novice? -Bill White wjwhite@well.sf.ca.us
tr@samadams.princeton.edu (Tom Reingold) (11/13/90)
In article <3211@ucsfcca.ucsf.edu> dick@cca.ucsf.edu (Dick Karpinski) writes: $ Why would I want to use MH vs Elm or Mail or Mush? $ $ Do novices find it easy to use? $ $ Would MH support a single "host" for thousands of users on $ hundreds or thousands of different machines? $ $ Does MH make mail to Macs and IBM PCs any easier? $ $ Are there archives where I could get MH or related material? The small number of responses has surprised me. Anyway, the reason I think MH is great is that it is at the shell level rather than being a monolithic program. I like to do things like "show | lpr" which will print the current mail message. In monolithic programs, you have to save to a file, exit the program, print the file, and then maybe re-enter the program. Or with Elm you do lots of setup to bind the print key to do exactly what you want. Which is fine if you like to configure before you can use the program as well as you use everything else you can already pipe into lpr. But it's not when your favorite printer is down. Then you have to reconfigure your program. Whatever happened to the Unix philosphy?? I think MH is as easy to learn as all other mail user agents. It also seems to be the most configurable once you choose to delve into it. But using it raw gives you a plenty-powerful set of tools. -- Tom Reingold tr@samadams.princeton.edu OR ...!princeton!samadams!tr "Warning: Do not drive with Auto-Shade in place. Remove from windshield before starting ignition."
mmorse@NSF.GOV (Michael Morse) (11/14/90)
> Whatever > happened to the Unix philosphy?? It got lost. It should have been clear from the start that it had limited usefulness, in that only a small subset of the general population had the conceptual and technical expertise to appreciate it and use it. Now that *everybody* (from my 5-year-old daughter to my 72-year-old mother) can not only use a computer, but probably owns one, a philosophy with wider applicability was required. Just as troff gave way to WordPerfect, mh will give way to GUI-based mail systems, despite the fact that the replacements offer less features, less power, less configurability, less "elegance". The difference is that they can be used by normal people. Sigh. --Mike