Changes to the Online Edition of `MH & nmh'

[First, a brief request for your help on future updates. This book is a volunteer project, and my time is very limited now that I have a full-time job again. Want to help make this book better? See Jerry's To-Do List. Thanks!]

This page is a detailed list of content changes between this book's original Web version and the updated version. The book's updated version has new information in existing chapters and sections, as well as new sections (and, eventually, new chapters). There are three major sections below: the most recent update, 9 October 1999, and the previous updates, 13 April 1999, 28 September 1997 and 30 May 1997. Each has two subsections: Major and Minor changes. Links from these sections take you to (or close to) the changed text.

The text in the original Web version is almost identical to the printed book, the third edition of MH & xmh: Email for Users & Programmers, ISBN 1-56592-093-7, by Jerry Peek, published by O'Reilly & Associates, Inc. Changes to the original edition were minor ones needed to make the book work on the Web. You can get the original Web version from the file download/original.tar.gz or live from O'Reilly's server at http://www.oreilly.com/freebooks/mh/.

Latest Update, 9 October 1999

Major Changes

Unisys Corporation has a patent on the LZW algorithm used to encode GIF files. Only software licensed by Unisys creates legal GIFs using LZW. I'm not sure of the license status of the software I used (or even which software I used). So, in this update, I replaced all original GIF files with other files. (Brent Welch also put two new color screen shots, from the latest exmh version 2.1.0, into his section The exmh Display.) There are two kinds of files now:

• Where GIF figures were continuous-tone or looked okay after they'd been converted, I used JPEG files instead. I experimented with the JPEG quality to keep the image as clear and as small as possible. Some aren't quite as clear as the original GIFs, but I think they're good enough.
• Some GIFs -- especially the xmh and exmh screen shots -- look lousy as JPEGs. For those, I used GIFs made with the Tcl Img extension, version 1.2.1, from Jan Nijtmans. Here's a quote from that Web page: "Instead of LZW, the run-length encoding of Hutchison Avenue Software Corporation is used, also known as miGIF compression. The miGIF compression routines do not, strictly speaking, generate files conforming to the GIF spec, since the image data is not LZW-compressed (this is the point: in order to avoid transgression of the Unisys patent on the LZW algorithm.) However, miGIF generates data streams that any reasonably sane LZW decompresser will decompress to what we want."

Minor Changes

• Replaced each <LINK REV=MADE HREF=...> tag with a <META NAME="Author" CONTENT=...> tag.
• Edited the page footer at the bottom of all HTML files except the mh-e section: Changed "This file is freely-available" to "This file is freely available" Updated the URL for Jerry Peek from http://www.jpeek.com/~jpeek/ to http://www.jpeek.com/ and broke that long line onto two shorter lines.
• The files exmh/figs/thpidi.gif and exmh/figs/buined.gif are slightly larger (have a few more pixels).
• The file exmh/figs/mpoted.gif was renamed to mpotedbw.gif; now mpoted.gif is an updated full-color screen shot in JPEG format, mpoted.jpg. Also, exmh/figs/higkey.gif is now an updated full-color screen shot in JPEG format, higkey.jpg.
• The following files have been changed to JPEG format from GIF: mh/figs/afscfwto.jpg, mh/figs/aprottot.jpg, mh/figs/asubfold.jpg, mh/figs/cufoafos.jpg, mh/figs/meliithf.jpg, mh/figs/s2dmbape.jpg, mh/figs/s56afcot.jpg, mh/figs/sams1mdf.jpg, overall/figs/hammgfat.jpg, overall/figs/impoaunf.jpg, overall/figs/mhcover.jpg, overall/figs/mhfro-hi.jpg, overall/figs/mhfroend.jpg, overall/figs/twolinme.jpg, xmh/figs/xmfimawi.jpg, xmh/figs/pickwind.jpg, xmh/figs/fortwmes.jpg, xmh/figs/xmawiwpl.jpg, xmh/figs/woosedao.jpg, xmh/figs/radfasmw.jpg, xmh/figs/rarmwuac.jpg, xmh/figs/searpowi.jpg, xmh/figs/aviewwin.jpg, xmh/figs/asubfold.jpg, xmh/figs/maanpiwi.jpg, xmh/figs/ormarwsr.jpg, xmh/figs/swbogats.jpg, xmh/figs/wimwancw.jpg. All other GIF files have been remade without LZW compression, as explained above.

• mhn has been cloned, and its clone has been split into four pieces named mhbuild, mhlist, mhshow and mhstore. So, there are new profile entries, new reference guides, and lots of related changes all through the book.
• flist is quite different than it was in nmh-0.17.

Major Changes

• Read through server and index errors and reader comments, scanned whole book for changes needed.
• Fixed and added index entries.
• Made MH-specific section titles (mostly, titles that mention mhn) more generic:
  • 1.7 Obtaining MH, xmh, exmh, and mh-e became 1.7 Obtaining MH, nmh, xmh, exmh, and mh-e
  • 5.9.5 mhn Can Also Do... became 5.9.5 Other MIME Operations
  • 6.2.3 How mhn Shows a Message became 6.2.3 Showing MIME Messages
  • 6.2.11 Alternatives to mhn became 6.2.11 Other MIME Handlers
  • 7.5.8 Recovering Drafts Edited by mhn became 7.5.8 Recovering MIME Drafts
  • 7.6.2 mhn Directives became 7.6.2 MIME Draft Directives
  • 7.6.5 How mhn Chooses Encoding became 7.6.5 Choosing MIME Encodings
  • 9.4 Configuring mhn became 9.4 MIME Configuration
  • 9.4.1 Profiles that mhn Reads became 9.4.1 MIME Profiles
  • 9.4.2 Making an MHN Profile became 9.4.2 Making a MIME Profile
  • 9.4.4 Showing Contents: mhn-show- became 9.4.4 Showing MIME Contents
  • 9.4.5 Displaying Other Character Sets: mhn-charset- became 9.4.5 Displaying Other Character Sets
  • 9.4.6 Composing Content: mhn-compose- became 9.4.6 Composing MIME Content
  • 9.4.7 Storing Content: mhn-storage and mhn-store- became 9.4.7 Storing Content
  • 9.4.8 Caching External Body Parts: mhn-cache and mhn-private-cache became 9.4.8 Caching External Body Parts
  • 9.4.9 Getting External Body Parts by FTP: mhn-access-ftp became 9.4.9 Getting External Body Parts by FTP
  • E.5.2 Syntax of mhn Directives became E.5.2 Syntax of MIME Draft Directives
  and changed all cross-references in all files that used those section names.
• Made MH-specific table titles more generic:
  • 5-1 Examples of mhn directives became 5-1 Examples of MIME draft directives
  • 9-3 mhn Storage Formatting Strings became 9-3 MIME Storage Formatting Strings
  • 9-4 mhn Storage Escapes became 9-4 MIME Storage Escapes
• Added new reference guides:
  • E.1.12 mhbuild Reference Guide
  • E.1.14 mhlist Reference Guide
  • E.1.19 mhshow Reference Guide
  • E.1.20 mhstore Reference Guide
• Many, many small changes to update for new command names in nmh. (Sorry, I can't link to all of them from here! Most are in sections about MIME.) For instance, changed phrases like "use mhn -list" into something like "use mhn -list or mhlist". Edited descriptions of MIME profile entries like mhn-store-text: to mention that, for nmh-1.0+, you could use mhstore-store-text: instead.

Minor Changes

• On 5 May 1999, updated the nmh and exmh mailing list addresses and nmh distribution location.
• On 22 April 1999, cleaned up the description of the book's structure.
• Added a paragraph about procmail to the section Replacing All of Your .maildelivery File. (This deserves a whole section of its own.)
• In the section Reading MIME Mail, updated the sizes of the body parts in the sample MIME message and showed parts of the revised message. (I had revised the message a few years ago, when the online edition came out.)
• In the section Sending MIME Mail, deleted mention of a bug in nmh-0.17 where it could abort during "mime" processing at a "What now?" prompt.
• In the section Building MIME Drafts Automatically, made small change in sample message body.
• In the section Choosing MIME Encodings, added note about mhbuild -ebcdicsafe.
• Updated URLs and deleted mention of mail servers (not working anymore) in the section MH and nmh Source Code.
• Updated the section Send Files with MIME: viamail as well as the MH Reference Guide to mention nmh sendfiles command (which is basically just viamail with a different name).
• Added a cross-reference link from the section Add Files to Your Drafts: append.
• In the section What now? -- and the whatnow Program documented the new nmh "What now? delete" feature.
• In the section Changing Showproc for Viewing, Printing, and Editing, mentioned that mhl is the default showproc in nmh-0.21+.
• In the sections Changing Showproc for Viewing, Printing, and Editing and Using mhl, added details about the moreproc.
• Covered mhshow -nocheckmime in the section Without a showproc.
• In the section Decoding and Storing MIME Messages, added info about storage with the -type and -part switches.
• Added a new part Using Caches to the end of the section Decoding and Storing MIME Messages.
• Updated Brent Welch's email address and Web page URL in links at the ends of pages he wrote. (All those pages are in the exmh Part.)
• Updated exmh contact info in the sections More Information, Programming exmh and exmh.
• Updated the scan.xmhwide format file to handle four-digit years.
• Tweaked the Chapter Introduction of the Introduction to MIME to treat MIME as if it's not something new (as it was when this chapter was written...).
• Mentioned nmh in the Preface Introduction.
• Added a new subsection nmh, the New MH to the section Email User Agents.
• Added info about nmh manpages to the section Online Manual Pages.
• Changed the sample MIME message header in Example: Encoded MIME message, and the explanation after it, to show RFC 2047 encoding.
• Covered nmh -nocheckmime switch in the section MIME Header Fields.
• Updated the section What Computers Support MH? to mention nmh, plus other revisions.
• Small edit to sentence about Phil Karlton in the section History of xmh.
• Small tweaks to the section What is Email?.
• Added note about versions of fmt to the introduction of the Section about mhl.
• Ran weblint on the book files and fixed most of its complaints.

Major Changes

Overall

• Fixed and added index entries.

28 September 1997

• Updated RFC numbers in all pages, especially the sections Reference List and RFCs and Internet Drafts.
• Changed book title to MH & nmh: Email for Users & Programmers.
• Released the updated version.

25 September 1997

• Added the new sections Delayed Removal: drmm and Explanation of drmm.

24 September 1997 - UPDATES FOR nmh-0.17

• Added info about the profile: line and the -version switch to the renamed section The -help and -version Switches.
• Documented flist in two places: explanation and examples in the new section Searching for Sequences with flist, and a summary of the command and options in the new flist Reference Guide (as well as a pointer to the new reference page from the overall MH Reference Guide).
• Mentioned that the mhook manual page has been split into three pieces -- did it with notes in the introduction to the chapter Processing New Mail Automatically and in the section Running Your .maildelivery File.
• In the section Working with Draft Messages, added note about the new mh-draft manual page.
• In the section Using Symbolic Links, added a warning about problems with folder -recurse and flist -recurse.

  Added a related note to the section Improve rmm: use rmmer about advantages of a central +DELETE folder with nmh.

• Covered the Delivery-Date: header field in the sections The .maildelivery File in Detail (for slocal) and a new subsection of Less-used inc Features.
• Covered mhn -build in Composing Content: mhn-compose- and the mhn Reference Guide.
• Retitled the section mhn Editing and automhnproc to become Building MIME Drafts, and changed the section The automhnproc to its new name Building MIME Drafts Automatically. Reworked each of those sections to explain the automimeproc: and buildmimeproc: MH profile entries. Mentioned the mh-draft(1) manual page.

  Also, in quite a few files, mentioned typing mime instead of edit mhn at the What now? prompt.

• Added note to say that nmh doesn't have the 998-message limit in mhpath.
• Retitled the sections on the MH packf and packmbox commands to just MMDF Format and UUCP Mailbox Format. Re-did those sections to explain nmh packf, which handles the job of both MH commands. Also fixed the sections packf Reference Guide and packmbox Reference Guide.
• Updated the sections Storing in Mailbox Files: rcvpack and rcvpack Reference Guide to cover the new -mbox and -mmdf options.
• Now the sections New Message Notification: rcvtty and rcvtty Reference Guide document the nmh -width option.
• Documented nmh folder, mbox and mmdf actions in the section Third .maildelivery Argument: Action.
• Covered the new slocal -suppressdup switch.
• Mentioned improved slocal debugging in the section slocal Debugging Tips.
• In the section scan Format Files, showed scan.unseen.
• Mentioned show -checkmime and -nocheckmime in the sections Alternatives to mhn and show Reference Guide.
• Changed title of the section The mhnproc to The mhnproc or showmimeproc and mentioned showmimeproc.
• Retitled the section MH Library Directory to Library and Etcetera Directories. Explained the nmh etc directory, and showed the almost-undocumented mhparam etcdir command. Changed sections that point to it and would need nmh etcetera directory.
• Re-titled the section MH to MH and nmh Source Code. Added pointer to nmh source.

22 September 1997

• Renamed the section Sending Files; Using mhmail and viamail to just Sending Files. Split section into three subsections for mhmail, viamail, and append. Also added a hint on making append create MIME messages.

20 September 1997

• Added a sample Perl script named automhn to the section The automhnproc. It's explained in the new file mh/e-automh.htm, Explanation of automhn.
• Added short sections about PGP support in MH 6.8.4 in the two new sections Reading PGP Messages and Sending PGP Messages.

11 September 1997

• By default, slocal only matches fixed strings in your .maildelivery file. I added a section that introduces the rcvsearch script and a new file Explanation of rcvsearch that shows and explains the script. rcvsearch allows full regular expression matching of message headers and bodies.
• Explained how to run the vacation mail handler from the .maildelivery file.

Minor Changes

28 January 1999

• mh-e machinery put in place to replace former black magic used to produce mh-e distributions from Texinfo source. No user visible changes other than removing "Under development" from the mh-e section home page.

28 September 1997

• Added new section, World Wide Web Pages, with pointers to Web pages about MH, nmh, exmh and mh-e.

26 September 1997

• Documented repl -mime in the section Replying to Messages with MIME and in the repl Reference Guide. Also documented the bug where the #forw directive ignores the description field that's added by repl -mime (or by hand).
• Split the Acknowledgements section into two parts. The second part is for the Online Edition.

25 September 1997

• Added more info to the introduction of the section Composing and Sending MIME Messages.

24 September 1997

• Mentioned flist in the section Messages You Haven't Read.

22 September 1997

• Added information about transferring messages between hosts.

20 September 1997

• Explained where to get MH 6.8.4 (it's a patch release, and not in the usual places).
• Updated the section about fpick, and fpick script itself, to version 1.5.
• Put the latest addresses, and information on nmh-workers, in the appendix section Mailing Lists.

19 September 1997

• Made two changes in the subsection edit editor (or e editor): (part of the section What now? -- and the whatnow Program): mentioned automhnprocs; added an example of edit spell and edit grep to find and search for misspellings.

14 September 1997

• Fixed two typos, and added one more example profile entry, to the section Displaying Other Character Sets: mhn-charset-.

13 September 1997

• In the Summary of MH Format Strings, explained how to put a literal % or \ in a format string.

12 September 1997

• Added a new number, and more information, to the numbered list at the start of the section An MH Profile, in General -- about multiple MH profiles and MH profile conflicts. Also added note, to second paragraph of section, that only the first profile entry for a command is recognized.
• In the section Redistributing Messages: rcvdist, showed how to use MH aliases with rcvdist.
• Added an example of changing the xmh font to the end of the section Toolkit Options.
• Documented the 998-message (MAXARGS) limit in the section The mhpath Command and gave workarounds.
• In the section Moving and Linking Messages: refile, showed how to use shells' curly brace operators ({ }) to make multiple folder names.

11 September 1997

• Moved one sentence in the section Moving and Linking Messages: refile.
• Added example MH sequences file lines to the NOTE about Previous-Sequence: causing long lines.
• The section Annotating Headers with anno said, incorrectly, that pick will find only the first annotation in a message. Fixed.
• In the section If New Messages Arrive, noted that inc's locking might not work.
• Added new short section to explain that xmh has a limit of 9999 messages per folder.
• Updated the explanation of the MH command version forwr. Now it shows how to use both the sender's name and subject in the subject of the forwarded message.
• Added a reminder to the introduction for xmh's Pick command not to press RETURN after a search string.
• Added info to the programming section Getting Message Numbers about handling empty or undefined sequences.

10 September 1997

• In the section Explanation of distprompter, changed 0<&- to 0<&5.
• Removed a comma in the section Showing and Printing Messages.

Previous Update, 30 May 1997

Major Changes

30 May 1997

Changed the book title from MH & xmh: Email for Users & Programmers to just MH & nmh: Email for Users & Programmers. The emphasis on xmh in the original book really wasn't right because it has also covered exmh and mh-e since the third edition.

29 May 1997

Updated copying.htm, the terms for using and redistribting the book, to explain the terms for new pages that weren't in the original print edition.

27 May 1997

The book's example scripts used to be stored in HTML files named s-*.htm. I moved them to a new subdirectory, download/split/, and changed all the pages that pointed to the old locations. This will let people download individual scripts instead of needing to get the whole archive. Doing this meant changes (mostly minor) to a lot of pages. Made related changes, and updates for online version of book, to Obtaining Example Files From This Book and Programs in This Book's Archive.

26 May 1997

Added new section about rfl, a script for merging messages into a storage digest. Also added an rfl manual page and installation instructions.

25 May 1997

• Added new section Versions of pick: Repeatable Custom Searches. It explains how to save pick commands that you run often -- as MH command versions or shell aliases/functions.
• At the end of the section Searching More Than One Folder, added a new section on the fpick script. It searches for a message in many folders.

24 May 1997

Added information about formatting the headers of forw messages. The section now called Formatting the Header used to be called No Need for forwcomps; I added a description of the forwedit script and a paragraph about the forwr MH command version. Made new sections for those two changes: Explanation of forwedit and forwr: Format forw Headers using repl.

21 May 1997

• Updated the section The replcomps File (and its special subsection for replcomps lines 1-2 before MH 6.8). Explained adding a References: field. Did other small cleanup all through the section.
• Added a new section, References: Message Threading, about the References: header field.

19 May 1997

• Added Joining Messages with rfl, about a Perl script for making message-storage digests. rfl is an alternative to making new folders or adding sequences. Renamed the section holding it (and packf and packmbox) from Pack Messages into a File to Files with Multiple Messages; changed its title in links from the previous and next files. Made a link to the new rfl section from the section Storing Messages.
• Added new section Using Environment Variables with MH. Shortened an existing part of the section A Test Mail Setup and made it point to the new section.

18 May 1997

• Added an aligrep script for searching alias file in the section Showing MH Aliases with ali. Changed the section title to just Showing MH Aliases. Added another section explaining how to set up aligrep.
• Added a new section called Finding Messages to Yourself with pick2me about the pick2me script.

16 May 1997

• In the section Making MH Aliases, added these tips: backwards recursion of aliases, using UNIX secondary groups in alias files, using RFC822 groups in alias files, and editing the aliases file.
• Added a new section, Check for Folder Changes, that helps you notice when folders have changed.
• Added a new section, Quick Folder Access, that shows ways to access folders quickly: folder name completion and abbreviations. Also fixed links from the next and previous sections.

15 May 1997

Added a new section, Message Transfer; Sighted and Blind Recipients, about message envelopes vs. header addresses and how MH handles groups (distribution lists) and blind copies (bcc:).

21 December 1996

Revised index entries. Added lots of index entries, especially in the sections:

• mhl
• MH format

Made small changes in the text of some files so index entries would work better.

Minor Changes

25 May 1997

• Renamed the section Storing Sequence Name in Your MH Profile to Saving Time with Your MH Profile. Added a link from it to the new Versions of pick section.
• Fixed very small typo (deleted a single space) in Sending MIME Mail.
• Mentioned using send -mime when sending MIME messages in Bcc: Blind Carbon Copies.
• Added missing % and \ characters to a vi command that runs scan.
• Changed last sentence in the section Renumbering Messages in a Folder to say folder -pack instead of folder.
• Added a cross-reference about shell loops to the section Working in an MH Directory.

22 May 1997

• Added a paragraph about standard signature syntax (starting them with two dashes and a space).
• In the sections Selective Replies with -query and Table: MH-format Function Escapes (3 of 3), mentioned that the repl -query switch works with the (formataddr) MH-format function escape.

21 May 1997

Added an example to the section picking Miscellaneous Fields to show how to follow message threads.

20 May 1997

• Added a few paragraphs to the description of the scan.more format file. They clarify what happens in a control escape that has multiple function escapes after a single condition.
• Fixed two bugs in the replcomps.addrfix format file: the %(void(width)) escape was in the wrong place, and the address in the In-reply-to: field needed to be commented (with parentheses) so it wouldn't cause an illegal/confusing format in that field.
• Fixed two places in Changing MH Directory Name that talked about a shell's "folder stack"; they should have said "directory stack".

19 May 1997

• Added an mscan shell function, for running scan and then mhn -list, to the section Listing MIME Message Parts.
• Fixed bug in a find command for setting directory permissions.
• Added index entries and cross-references to info about shell loops for the sections Finding Messages with pick, Folders, Reading MIME Messages, and Using Links.

16 May 1997

• Added a few cross-references pointing to other sections from Fields You Add to a Header. Also added a paragraph about creating folders from an fcc: header field.
• A few tweaks to the section Creating Digests.
• Fixed error in "Previous" page links in the chapter introduction to New Versions of MH Commands (and then changed the link again -- to point to the new "Quick Folder Access" section).

15 May 1997

• Expanded the chapter introduction, Reading Your Mail with MH.
• Added a note about mhn drafts to the end of the section Recovering a Removed Message.

21 December 1996

Added links, and removed comments to the author (oops!), in Reference Guide home page (overall/ap-rg.htm).

[return-to: This Book's Home Page] [Table of Contents]

This file first appeared in the updated online edition of the book MH & nmh: Email for Users & Programmers, by Jerry Peek. Copyright © 1997 by the author. This file is freely available; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation. For more information, see the file copying.htm.