#468 Add support for nmh 1.5

[Bill Wohler]

nmh 1.5 has been released. See http://download.savannah.gnu.org/releases/nmh/nmh-1.5.tar.gz. I've attached the release notes.

Since this release contains incompatibilities with MH-E, I'm raising the priority of this item.

[Bill Wohler]

Release notes for nmh

[Bill Wohler]

Ken points out the following item:

The first is that post(8) now requires a From: header in all drafts that
it processes. This was done to bring some sanity to the way nmh determines
the local mailbox name. The release notes have more details on this, but
a quick summary:

- If you use the default components files, the right thing will happen and
you won't need to change anything.
- If you have custom components files that have From: headers in them already
then you won't need to change anything.
- If you have custom components files in them that do NOT have From: headers
in them you will need to update them.

[Bill Wohler]

Ken points out the following item:

The second change is that I have included in the distribution a perl script
that I have been working on that does what I feel is reasonable handling
of MIME message handling as part of repl(1). This uses new functionality
in mhl and can be configured so it works fine with higher-level nmh
interfaces such as MH-E and exmh. See the release notes and "replyfilter"
in docs/contrib for more information.

[Bill Wohler]

Ken points out the following additional items:

- comp, forw, and dist now process all drafts through mh-format(5) and now suport new command line arguments -from, -to, -cc, -fcc, and -subject.
- Nmh's idea of the local mailbox is now configurable via a new profile entry, Local-Mailbox.
- The -attach option is now the default for send (using the header Nmh-Attachment) and -attachformat 1 is the default attachment type.
- Command editing and filename completion (via readline) is now available in whatnow
- Preliminary support for improved MIME handling when replying to messages. Yes, a long requested feature has a solution, and it can be used by higher-level interfaces such as exmh and MH-E. See the release notes and docs/contrib/replyfilter for more information.

[Bill Wohler]

Henrique, who was brave enough to try out nmh 1.5 with MH-E wrote the following:

Just installed 1.5.1 on xemacs 21.5, FC16 work system (will try at home later on FC17) and the Resent-From: requirement on dist doesn't play well with mh-e 8.3.

The lack of that header produces a mhmailXXXXXX file on ~/ and a postXXXXXX on either ~/ or mh's "Path:" (maybe on both). The mhmail file has the draft with an error message informing that Resent-From header is missing, but mh-e thinks it resent it and doesn't show it.

For now I just added a hardcoded insert "Resent-To" in mh-distribute (mh-comp.el), and will wait for Bill to take care of it :-)

And this bullet on the 1.5 announcement:
- comp, forw, and dist now process all drafts through mh-format(5) and now support new command line arguments -from, -to, -cc, -fcc, and -subject.
is also responsible to mh-comp not processing (just inserting?) the components file, resulting in an interesting draft folder.

[Bill Wohler]

Ticket moved from /p/mh-e/feature-requests/164/

[Mike Kupfer]

I looked into the issue with component files today. The problem is that in earlier versions of nmh, files like /etc/nmh/components are simple text files that #'mh-read-draft sucks into the drafts file. In nmh 1.5, these files are now formatting template files.

To make matters more complicated, I don't see a simple command that MH-E could invoke to convert the template file back into an old-style components file. It looks like we have to go through comp(1) and friends. So I suspect this won't be a quick fix.

[Mike Kupfer]

I did a little more research re: component files. Maybe this will be easier than I feared. MH-E already uses repl and forw for composing replies and for forwarding; some light testing indicates that the change to use template files is not a problem for them. It looks like it's just composing a new message from scratch that's a problem.

"comp -nowhatnowproc" does the template processing, deposits the draft in the right place, and exits. So I think #'mh-send-sub should do that, rather than trying to find the right components file and using it to form the draft. Also, this approach is compatible with earlier versions of nmh, at least back to nmh-1.3.

[Mike Kupfer]

The issue with comp(1) was fixed in MH-E 8.6 with this bzr changeset:

revno: 117455.1.67
revision-id: wohler@newt.com-20140930045210-s0tlhnkojoxbswdf
parent: eliz@gnu.org-20140929191028-lti2lybtzzrnjppc
committer: Bill Wohler <wohler@newt.com>
branch nick: emacs-24
timestamp: Mon 2014-09-29 21:52:10 -0700
message:
  Release MH-E version 8.6.


  * NEWS, MH-E-NEWS: Update for MH-E release 8.6.


  * mh-e.el (Version, mh-version): Update for release 8.6.


  * mh-comp.el (mh-insert-x-face): Ensure that mh-x-face-file is a
  string before trying to use it (closes SF #474).
  (mh-bare-components): New function to create a temporary initial
  components file; replaces mh-find-components. Improve the temp folder
  and file names as per a suggestion from Bill Wohler. Also address
  XEmacs compatibility issues: use mm-make-temp-file instead of
  make-temp-file, and only pass one argument to delete-directory.
  (mh-edit-again, mh-send-sub): Use mh-bare-components instead of
  mh-find-components (partially closes SF #468).
modified:
  etc/ChangeLog                  changelog-20091113204419-o5vbwnq5f7feedwu-1485
  etc/MH-E-NEWS                  mhenews-20091113204419-o5vbwnq5f7feedwu-1489
  etc/NEWS                       news-20100311060928-aoit31wvzf25yr1z-1
  lisp/mh-e/ChangeLog            changelog-20091113204419-o5vbwnq5f7feedwu-2547
  lisp/mh-e/mh-comp.el           mhcomp.el-20091113204419-o5vbwnq5f7feedwu-2532
  lisp/mh-e/mh-e.el              mhe.el-20091113204419-o5vbwnq5f7feedwu-2534

[Mike Kupfer]

The issue with comp(1) was fixed in MH-E 8.6. It'd be helpful to enumerate the remaining issues.

[Mike Kupfer]

At least one remaining issue is that redistribution doesn't seem to work. See the thread starting at http://sourceforge.net/p/mh-e/mailman/message/34494666/ for details.