[comp.soft-sys.andrew] Messages and MH & Andrew undex X11/NeWS

salzman%gaucho@RAND.ORG (Isaac Salzman) (11/16/89)

Reading MH trees with Messages:

I've tried this out. seems to work ok. you can read an MH tree so long
as you reconstruct the folder. what i've done is create a .MESSAGES
directory and sym-linked the folders from my .Mail (MH) directory into
.MESSAGES. some of my MH folders have "." in the name, which I just
assume won't work with AMS (since it treats folders with "." as a
subfolder). then I create an empty .MS_MsgDir, add the folder to
.SubscriptionMap and do a reconstruct from cui. works like a charm (for
the most part). now, it will either sort by time created or the time
stamp of the message (the date field). that's great, but in MH messages
are sorted numerically by the file name (i.e.  the message number).
would it be difficult to add that as an option to cui reconstruct if
.amsalien exists? (i suppose i could just look at the source code to
find out, eh?). also, trying to modify anything in a MH tree with
messages will probably break something. i haven't tried this (don't want
to trash my mail), but what happens if you "check new mail" into an MH
tree? i think the thing to do there would be to run MH's "inc" and then
cui reconstruct. i'll experiment with this and post a shell script or
something (if anyone's interested).... 

Andrew under X11/NeWS (aka xnews):

i've tried this and it kindof works. it's a matter of getting the fonts
installed under xnews, which is a bit of a hassle. by "kindof" i mean
that andrew app's will run, but the font's are wrong. it gets italic
fonts where they should be normal fonts, and tiny ones where it should
get larger bold fonts. not and andrew problem - i don't think. what i'm
curious about is, how to explicitly set the fonts for a program, or for
all atk app's in general. there's a "FontFamily" setting in preferences,
but that's it. a lot of the Andrew fonts are already part of the X11R3
distribution (and R4 i assume). mostly the adobe fonts. is there need to
install redudant fonts? how about using what's already there and just
installing stuff that isn't already there. i think the problem with
xnews is some name conflict of sorts with fonts that already exist under
xnews (and MIT X11 for that matter).... anyone else experimented with
Andrew under xnews?


* Isaac J. Salzman                                            ----     
* The RAND Corporation - Information Sciences Dept.          /o o/  /  
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nsb@THUMPER.BELLCORE.COM (Nathaniel Borenstein) (11/16/89)

I've also been talking with Bill Cattey, of MIT, about MH/AMS interoperability.
We've concluded that the .amsalien stuff is 90% of the way to a solution,
and that a small amount of code should bring it to 100%.  In particular,
the only places where AMS still acts destructively on the MH naming scheme
is in MS_CloneMessage and in the routines that read things out of mailboxes.
I think Bill is thinking about trying to make these changes, so you might
want to coordinate with him.

By the way, after the first time, you shouldn't need to use "reconstruct" --
the new CUI "scavenge" command was designed specifically for this purpose. 
It basically updates an existing .MS_MsgDir file rather than rewriting it
completely.  It should be a lot faster than a reconstruction, in general.
Bill Cattey seems to be having some problems with it, but it should basically 
work.

You should also note that the .amsalien feature should also allow AMS
to read standard netnews databases.  Bill and I both have plans to test
that out in the not-too-distant future.  -- Nathaniel

ghoti+@ANDREW.CMU.EDU (Adam Stoller) (11/16/89)

Excerpts from internet.info-andrew: 15-Nov-89 Messages and MH & Andrew
un.. Isaac Salzman@rand.org (2688+0)

> what i'm curious about is, how to explicitly set the fonts for a
> program, or for all atk app's in general. there's a "FontFamily" setting
> in preferences, but that's it. 

Actually ATK applications (I believe *all* ATK applications) should
respond to a preference of the form:

<application-name>.bodyfont: <fontname>

i.e.:

typescript.bodyfont: andytype10f

If you find that most, or all of the bodyfonts you want are the same -
you can simplify it with:

*.bodyfont: <fontname>

(where '*' is litterally an asterisk)

This sets a "default" bodyfont, and you can override it on whatever
applications you want to by using the first method.

--fish

salzman%gaucho@RAND.ORG (Isaac Salzman) (11/18/89)

> Excerpts from info-andrew: 16-Nov-89 Re: Messages and MH & Andre.. (1066)

> I've also been talking with Bill Cattey, of MIT, about MH/AMS interoperability.
	.....

> I think Bill is thinking about trying to make these changes, so you
> might want to coordinate with him.

sounds good!  (hey Bill, drop me a message!).

> By the way, after the first time, you shouldn't need to use
> "reconstruct" -- the new CUI "scavenge" command was designed
> specifically for this purpose. 
> It basically updates an existing .MS_MsgDir file rather than rewriting
> it completely.  It should be a lot faster than a reconstruction, in
> general. Bill Cattey seems to be having some problems with it, but it
> should basically  work.

yeah, i've messed with this a little. the doc said to use scavenge, but
that didn't cut it (since i was running it for the first time).
reconstruct didn't work right off either w/o .MS_MsgDir existing in the
first place. i did try scavenge on an already built folder but it still
had problems. i had to do a reconstruct again to get it to work right.
could be pilot error, don't know. it seemed to work ok for some folders,
not others. wierd. 

but hey, bugs and all - i'm happy this works at all!!! thanks!

		-Isaac (salzman@rand.org)

nsb@THUMPER.BELLCORE.COM (Nathaniel Borenstein) (11/18/89)

Hmm...  Bill also had trouble with "scavenge", but neither of you have
provided any details.  If you could tell exactly what happens when you
try scavenge, we might be able to fix the bug.  Scavenge should be MUCH
cheaper than reconstruction.  -- NB