# # NEWS - Release notes for nmh 1.5 # Welcome to nmh, the new version of the classic MH mail handling system. Long-time MH and nmh users should read carefully the NOTABLE CHANGES section, as there are some subtle but significant changes to the way nmh now behaves. Otherwise, please see the README and INSTALL files for help on getting started with nmh. ------------ NEW FEATURES ------------ The following are new features for the 1.5 release of nmh. - Improved performance for TLS encryption of the SMTP protocol. - MH-E and POP support are now always compiled in. - The selection of a locking directory for dot-locking files is now controllable via configure. - fileproc and mhlproc mh-profile are now obeyed by send, rcvdist, and whatnow. - New mh-format instructions have been implemented: %(putlit), %(concataddr), %(myhost), %(myname), %(localmbox). See mh-format(5) for more details. - Nmh's idea of the local mailbox is now configurable via a new profile entry, Local-Mailbox. See mh-profile(5) for more details. - comp, forw, and dist now process all component templates through mh-format(5), and now all support new command line arguments -from, -to, -cc, -fcc, and -subject. - burst(1) now supports any valid message delimiter according to RFC 934. - post(8) now requires a From: header in all drafts that it processes; see NOTABLE CHANGES below for more details. - post(8) can now explicitly control the SMTP envelope address either via the Sender: header or the new Envelope-From: header. - The -attach option is now the default for send (using the header Nmh-Attachment) and -attachformat 1 is the default attachment type. - repl and dist now support new switches -atfile and -noatfile to control the creation of the ./@ link to the message being replied or redistributed. The current default is -atfile. - Support (if available) for readline editing and filename completion at the WhatNow? prompt. - Support for using an external command to filter the body of a message through in mhl. See mhl(1) for more details, specifically, the "format" keyword, the "formatproc" entry in mh-profile(5), and the -fmtproc switch for mhl and repl. - Preliminary support for improved MIME handling when replying to messages! Yes, a long requested feature has a solution. A perl script called replyfilter is available; it is designed to act as a mhl external filter to process MIME messages in a more logical way. It is available in $(srcdir)/docs/contrib/replyfilter or is typically installed as $(prefix)/share/doc/nmh/contrib/replyfilter. See the comments at the top of replyfilter for usage information; it will likely require some adjustment for your site. replyfilter requires the MIME-Tools and MailTools perl modules. ---------------------------- OBSOLETE/DEPRECATED FEATURES ---------------------------- The following features have either been removed completely or marked as officially deprecated for removal in a future release of nmh. - The creation of the ./@ link to the message being replied or redistributed is deprecated; -noatfile will be the default in the next release. If there are no requests to maintain -atfile it will be removed in a future release. - Old code enabled by the UCI preprocessor definition has been removed. - All configuration options that were formerly only adjustable by editing config.h have either been moved into configure or removed completely. - Support for the built-in ftp client (used when dealing with external-body message parts in MIME messages) has been removed. - The following environment variables are marked as obsolete/deprecated. Support for them will be removed from the next nmh release: MHPOPDEBUG (use -snoop command line switch instead) MM_NOASK (use -nolist and -nopause command line switches instead) NOMHNPROC (use -nocheckmime command line switch instead) FACEPROC (undocumented faceproc feature to be removed) - The hostable option of mts.conf is no longer needed and has been removed. --------------- NOTABLE CHANGES --------------- The largest change is that post(8) now requires a From: header in all drafts that it processes. The impetus for this change has been the evolution of email and client systems. When MH was first developed the norm was to have tightly managed clients that were part of the same domain as a user's email address. This is no longer a valid assumption, and the algorithm used by nmh to determine the user's local mailbox is no longer a reasonable default. Unfortunately, the way that nmh uses the user's local mailbox used to happen very late in the message process; it was handled by post during message submission. If no From: header exists in the current draft post would insert one based on it's idea of the local mailbox, which was frequently wrong. After a long discussion within the nmh development community, it was decided that the only reasonable way forward was to move the local mailbox handling up a level and place it under more direct control of the end user. post(8) no longer will try to determine the local mailbox name; it will take that information from the draft message. Thus a From: header is now required in all drafts. As part of these changes, all message composition utilities now process their component files using mh-format. All of the default component files have been modified to include a From: header in them; this will give the user a chance to see nmh's idea of the local mailbox and modify it if desired. The new mh-profile(5) entry Local-Mailbox can be used to adjust the local mailbox name if the system default is not appropriate. So how should end-users adapt to these changes? Here are some suggestions: 1) If you use the default component files, everything should basically work the same for you. You should see a From: header in the drafts of your messages. If the address you see in the From: header is incorrect you can change it via the Local-Mailbox profile entry. You can also use the -from switch to change it on a per-command basis. 2) If you have custom component files that include a From: header or you perform custom processing on drafts that end up placing a From: header in the draft message, everything should work as before. 3) If you have custom component files that do NOT include a From: header then you will have to adapt then to include a From: header. You can either simply hard-code the correct From: header or use the default component files as a guide (see mh-format(5) for more details, specifically the %(localmbox) function). The other significant change is the support for filters in mhl. Included in the distribution is replyfilter, a filter designed for sane processing of MIME messages during replies. Since this isn't as integrated into nmh as we would prefer, it's included in the contrib directory as an optional component. Please try it out and give us feedback. -- The nmh team nmh-workers@nongnu.org ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- # # NEWS - Release notes for nmh 1.4 # This releases contains numerous bugfixes and a number of new features. The new features include: - SASL security layers (encryption) are now supported for the SMTP MTA. - TLS is now supported for the SMTP MTA. - inc can now incorporate mail from Maildir drops. - You can now select the SMTP server and port from either "send" or a user's mh_profile (you could always select the server; that option is now documented). These are available via the -server and -port switches. - All networking code has been modified to use the new networking APIs (getaddrinfo and friends). All networking code (with the exception of the built-in ftp client) now supports IPv6. - New commands 'new', 'fnext', 'fprev', and 'unseen' for showing folders with unseen mail (or mail in any specified sequence), changing to next such folder, changing to previous such folder, and scanning all such folders, respectively. This is based on Luke Mewburn's 'new': http://www.mewburn.net/luke/src/new - nmh will no longer attempt to install a mhn.defaults file that causes mhshow to open its own xterms. A large chunk of old code has been garbage collected. Specifically, support for APOP, RPOP, NNTP (including bboards) and MPOP is now gone. Also gone is support for prefixing a \01 in the "servers" entry in mts.conf to iterate over all servers on a named network. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- # # NEWS - Release notes for nmh 1.3 # It's been over two years since the 1.2 release; but the changes here are mostly minor; largely bugfixes. You should note that we have changed the default configuration to allow all supported forms of address masquerading. For more details please see the --enable-masquerade option to configure, and the mh-tailor and post man pages.