diplodocus.org Git - nmh/blob - DIFFERENCES

   1 [NOTE: This file is out-of-date.  Updating it every time new features are added
   2        to nmh forevermore is a pain.  Perhaps we should limit it to
   3        documentation of _incompatibilities_ with MH (which should be rare).]
   4
   5 The following are the differences between nmh and MH-6.8.3.  UCI has
   6 since released MH-6.8.4.  Most of the new features it adds have
   7 also been added to nmh, but those differences are not listed here.
   8 There are a few new features in MH-6.8.4 that are missing from nmh,
   9 but they are primarily undocumented in MH-6.8.4 (and no one has
  10 ever asked me for them).
  11
  12 GENERAL
  13 -------
  14 *) nmh has been converted to autoconf (configure) and should be
  15    more portable and easier to install than MH.  In particular, nmh
  16    will now compile on Linux.
  17 *) All of MH's Makefiles have been rewritten for nmh.  You can now
  18    use GNU make without any problems.  Also, if your make supports
  19    the VPATH variable (such as GNU make), you can now compile in a
  20    different directory from the one containing the source code.
  21 *) The source code for nmh has been substantially cleaned up.
  22    It now requires an ANSI C compiler (gcc is fine) to compile.
  23 *) A new option `-version' has been added to all the commands.
  24 *) The POP server (popd) has been removed from the distribution.
  25    But the client-side support for POP and KPOP is still present.
  26    Also nmh doesn't currently support some of the alternate forms of
  27    POP such as APOP or RPOP that are contained in MH (although they
  28    could easily be resurrected, if necessary).
  29 *) The support for MH-style bulletin boards has been removed
  30    (NNTP makes this obsolete anyway).
  31 *) Currently nmh doesn't support using shared libraries for libmh.
  32    This may return in the future, but is not a high priority, since
  33    the nmh commands are not that large, and disk space gets cheaper
  34    every day.
  35 *) Almost all of the commands in nmh have been modified to accept
  36    an arbitrary number of command line arguments (most MH commands
  37    will not accept more than 1000 arguments on the command line).
  38 *) nmh should be more secure than MH.  Hundreds of buffer overflow
  39    problems have been fixed in the source code.  Of course, I still
  40    don't make any guarantees.
  41
  42 DOCUMENTATION
  43 -------------
  44 *) Many of the man pages have been cleaned up or clarified.
  45 *) The mhook man page has been split into separate man pages for
  46    rcvtty, rcvdist, and rcvpack.
  47 *) Added new man page `mh-draft' which discusses the nmh draft
  48    folder facility.
  49 *) The various `procs' (rmmproc, moreproc, showmimeproc, etc...)
  50    are now documented in the "mh-profile" man page.  Many of these
  51    were previously undocumented.
  52
  53 FORMATTING
  54 ----------
  55 *) Added a new formatting string escape %(decode) to decode and
  56    display RFC-2047 encoded header fields.
  57
  58 SEQUENCES
  59 ---------
  60 *) The is no longer a limitation on the length of lines in the file
  61    containing your public sequences (.mh_sequences).  That should be
  62    the end of the error message ".mh_sequences is poorly formatted".
  63
  64 ANNO
  65 ----
  66 *) The switch -inplace is now on by default.
  67
  68 CONFLICT
  69 --------
  70 *) Conflict now works on systems that define more
  71    than 100 groups.
  72
  73 DIST
  74 ----
  75 *) The switch -inplace is now on by default.
  76
  77 FLIST
  78 -----
  79 *) A new command `flist' has been added to nmh, that will list the
  80    folders that contain messages in a given sequence (such as the
  81    unseen sequence).  This was a much needed command in the MH suite
  82    of programs.
  83
  84 FOLDER
  85 ------
  86 *) `folder -all' now dynamically allocates space for folder names and can
  87    handle more than 300 folders.
  88 *) `folder' now uses the standard Unix trick of looking at the number of
  89    links to a directory entry, in order to avoid doing a stat(2) call
  90    on messages in folders with no subfolders.  This greatly increases
  91    the speed of `folder -all -recurse' on large mail setups.
  92 *) The switches `-header' and `-total' are more orthogonal.  The command
  93    `folder -all -noheader -nototal' now does the right thing.
  94
  95 FORW
  96 ----
  97 *) The switch -inplace is now on by default.
  98 *) Added switches `-dashstuffing' and `-nodashstuffing', to determine
  99    whether forwarded messages are RFC934 quotes (dashstuffed).
 100    (This corresponds to the undocumented switch "nodashmunging"
 101    in MH).
 102
 103 INC
 104 ---
 105 *) If compiled with RPATHS, a Delivery-Date header is now added to all
 106    messages incorporated with `inc'.
 107 *) Using the new format string escape %(decode), the scan lines for `inc'
 108    will correctly decode RFC-2047 encoded headers.
 109
 110 MARK
 111 ----
 112 *) If neither of the switches -public/-nopublic are specified, then
 113    existing sequences will retain their current public/private status,
 114    instead of being changed to public.
 115 *) The command "mark -list -sequence foo" will now indicate if the
 116    sequence "foo" is a private sequence.
 117
 118 MHBUILD
 119 -------
 120 *) The functionality in `mhn' to create MIME messages, has been cleaned
 121    up substantially, and moved to separate command `mhbuild'.
 122 *) If given a file argument of "-", mhbuild will now accept the MIME
 123    composition file on the standard input, and output the new MIME
 124    message to the standard output.  This makes it much easier to use
 125    this functionality in shell scripts.
 126 *) The switch -norfc934mode is now the default.
 127
 128 MHL
 129 ---
 130 *) There is a new variable "decode" which instructs `mhl' to decode
 131    a component as a RFC-2047 encoded header field.
 132
 133 MHLIST
 134 ------
 135 *) The functionality of `mhn -list' has been moved to the new
 136    command `mhlist'.
 137
 138 MHN
 139 ---
 140 *) mhn is now obsolete.  It has been split into the commands mhbuild,
 141    mhlist, mhshow, mhstore, and viamail.  mhn still exists for
 142    backward compatibility, but the new commands should be preferred.
 143 *) Changed the profile entry automhnproc to automimeproc
 144    (which has slightly different semantics).
 145
 146 MHPATH
 147 ------
 148 *) `mhpath all' will no longer abort if the folder has more than
 149    998 messages.
 150
 151 MHSHOW
 152 ------
 153 *) The functionality of `mhn -show' has been moved to the new
 154    command `mhshow'.
 155 *) mhshow now correctly treats unknown subtypes of text as
 156    text/plain, as specified by RFC-2046.
 157 *) mhshow now correctly treats unknown subtypes of multipart as
 158    multipart/mixed, as specified by RFC-2046.
 159 *) You can now override the default method by which mhshow handles
 160    subtypes of multipart that are known internally (mixed, alternate,
 161    etc...).  Previously the behavior on these types could not be
 162    changed.
 163
 164 MHSTORE
 165 -------
 166 *) The functionality of `mhn -store' has been moved to the new
 167    command `mhstore'.
 168 *) mhstore will now correctly identify a formatting string of "-"
 169    and send the content to stdout.
 170
 171 PACKF
 172 -----
 173 *) When packing a folder, the default format is now `mbox' format, rather
 174    than `mmdf' format.  The options -mbox and -mmdf have been added to
 175    `packf' so you can choose the desired format.
 176
 177 PACKMBOX
 178 --------
 179 *) The script packmbox has been removed from the nmh distribution, since
 180    its functionality has been added to the command packf.
 181
 182 PICK
 183 ----
 184 *) If neither of the switches -public/-nopublic are specified, then
 185    existing sequences will retain their current public/private status,
 186    instead of being changed to public.
 187
 188 RCVPACK
 189 -------
 190 *) The default format for `rcvpack' is now `mbox' format, rather than
 191    `mmdf' format.  The options -mbox and -mmdf have been added to
 192    `rcvpack' so you can choose the desired format.
 193 *) Rcvpack no longer adds the field "Delivery-Date", as that is added
 194    by `slocal'.
 195
 196 RCVSTORE
 197 --------
 198 *) Added new switches -unseen/-nounseen to control whether new messages
 199    are added to the Unseen-Sequence.
 200
 201 RCVTTY
 202 ------
 203 *) The option `-width' has been added.
 204
 205 REFILE
 206 ------
 207 *) If an conflict occurs when using the `-preserve' switch,
 208    then refile will search for and use the next available
 209    message number above the one you wish to preserve, rather
 210    than aborting with an error.
 211 *) Added new options `-unlink' and `-nounlink' which specify
 212    that that messages "removed" from the source folder should
 213    just be unlinked, rather than moved to name with prefix.
 214
 215 REPL
 216 ----
 217 *) Added new options `-format' and `-noformat'.  The switch `-format'
 218    will filter the message to which you are replying with a standard
 219    message filter "mhl.reply" which is included in the distribution.
 220    The switch `-noformat' will negate `-format' and `-filter', so that
 221    the message to which you are replying is not included in the draft.
 222 *) Added new options `-group' and `-nogroup'.  These switches direct
 223    repl as to whether or not this is a group reply.  A group reply uses
 224    a different forms (components) file (default is replgroupcomps).
 225 *) The standard forms files "replcomps" and "replgroupcomps" now have
 226    support for the "Mail-Reply-To:" and "Mail-Followup-To:" header fields.
 227 *) The switch -inplace is now on by default.
 228
 229 RMM
 230 ---
 231 *) Added new options `-unlink' and `-nounlink' which specify
 232    that that "removed" messages should just be unlinked, rather
 233    than moved to name with prefix.
 234
 235 SCAN
 236 ----
 237 *) Using the new format string escape %(decode), the scan lines created
 238    by `scan' will correctly decode RFC-2047 encoded headers.
 239
 240 SHOW/NEXT/PREV
 241 --------------
 242 *) Added new options `-checkmime' and `-nocheckmime' which allow you
 243    to enable and disable the test for MIME messages.
 244 *) The "mhnproc" profile entry has been changed to "showmimeproc".
 245 *) Added `-showmimeproc' switch to specify the showmimeproc at the
 246    command line.
 247 *) The default "showproc" has been changed to `mhl'.
 248 *) The default "showmimeproc" is now `mhshow'.
 249 *) `show' is better at handling alternate character sets.  It knows that
 250    US-ASCII is a subset of any ISO-8859-X character set.
 251
 252 SLOCAL
 253 ------
 254 *) Added new action `folder' or `+' to slocal, which adds new message
 255    to a nmh folder.  Currently, this is handled by piping the new
 256    message to rcvstore, although this may change in the future.
 257 *) The action `mbox' now delivers to a file in mbox format.  Previously
 258    it delivered to a file in mmdf format.
 259 *) Added new action `mmdf' to deliver to a file in mmdf format.
 260 *) Added new options -[no]suppressdup to slocal to check for duplicate
 261    messages.  The code for suppression of duplicate messages (MH config
 262    was MSGID) is now always built into slocal.
 263 *) Improved the debugging of slocal ".maildelivery" files.  It will now
 264    warn when an entry in this file is skipped because there are not
 265    enough fields.  Also the debugging output of slocal has been cleaned up,
 266    so that it is much easier to read.
 267 *) Slocal now adds the Delivery-Date header to all delivered messages.
 268    Previously it only added them to messages delivered to a file.
 269
 270 VIAMAIL
 271 -------
 272 *) The functionality of this new command, was formerly part of
 273    `mhn' as the (undocumented) option `mhn -viamail'.
 274
 275 WHATNOW
 276 -------
 277 *) Added new action "mime" to whatnow, which causes whatnow to call
 278    program specified by "buildmimeproc" profile entry, to process
 279    MIME composition files (default is mhbuild).
 280 *) Added new action "delete" to whatnow, which deletes draft file
 281    and exits.