# # FAQ -- frequently asked questions # # $Id$ # 1) What is nmh? nmh (new MH) is an electronic mail handling system. It is based on version 6.8.3 of the MH message system originally developed by the RAND Corporation and the University of California. 2) Is it nmh, Nmh, nMH, NMH? It's nmh. Richard Coleman hates capital letters. 3) Who is developing nmh? Richard Coleman (coleman@math.gatech.edu) started the nmh project. After he grew too busy to continue maintaining it, it was handed off to the net at large. Doug Morris (doug@mhost.com) is hosting the mailing lists, web pages, and CVS repository for nmh now. 4) Why did Richard start the nmh project? He reponds: For several reasons. a) It's an interesting project. b) I like using MH/nmh. c) I wanted to increase the portability of MH. d) I wanted to make MH easier to install (convert to autoconf). e) I wanted to remove all the unnecessary junk from the MH distribution (pop daemon, bulletin board support, etc...). f) UCI seems to have abandoned MH, so someone needed to pick up the slack. 5) What is the copyright status of nmh? nmh is distributed under a variant of the classical BSD copyright. Check the COPYRIGHT file in the nmh distribution for the details. There are some specific files which were contributed to the original MH package that are copyrighted by their original author. We have retained the copyright notices of these authors in these files. Essentially, you can do anything you want with the nmh package as long as you don't blame us if it trashes all your mail. 6) What is the difference between nmh and MH? Check the file DIFFERENCES in the nmh distribution for the (ever growing) list of differences between nmh and MH. 7) Where do I get nmh? The latest version of nmh is available at ftp://ftp.mhost.com/pub/nmh/nmh.tar.gz 8) Where is the nmh web page? The nmh home page is located at http://www.mhost.com/nmh/ 9) Where is the nmh mailing list? There is a mailing list for nmh development at: nmh-workers@mhost.com To subscribe, send e-mail to the administrative address: nmh-workers-request@mhost.com with the subject "subscribe" (without the quotes). 10) Is there an archive of the nmh-workers mailing list? There are, but they are only available if you are subscribed to the mailing list as well. This is done to try to prevent harvesting of email addresses for spam lists. For information on how to use the archive, see the MAILING-LISTS file in the docs subdirectory of the distribution. 11) Where do I report bugs in nmh? Send bug reports and suggestions to nmh-bugs@mhost.com 12) Which mail transfer agents (MTA's) are supported? The default setup for nmh is to use SMTP, so nmh should work with most MTA's that provide a standard SMTP connection on port 25. Also you may configure nmh to use a sendmail interface (still uses SMTP) by editing the mts.conf file. There is also a configure option (--enable-pop) to include client-side support for POP. 13) Why does `folder' and `flist' overlook some of my subfolders? There was a bug in these commands which caused them to quit searching a folder for subfolders too early, if the folder contained subfolders which were symbolic links. This has been improved in nmh-0.25, but `folder' and `flist' will still not recurse into folders that contain only symbolic links. 14) Why doesn't the (X)Emacs package `mh-e' work with nmh? In nmh, the default location of things have changed. Also the MH lib directory has been split into a `etc' directory (containing configuration files and components), and a `lib' directory (containing support binaries). So sometimes mh-e has trouble finding the components skeleton for composing new mail or replies. Depending on the install location of nmh at your site, you will need to add something similar to the following to your .emacs file. The lines for `mh-comp-formfile' and `mh-repl-formfile' should point to your personal copies of these files (if you have them) or else point to the default nmh versions. ;; set a few mh-e variables for nmh (setq mh-progs "/usr/local/nmh/bin/") (setq mh-lib "/usr/local/nmh/lib/") (setq mh-comp-formfile "/usr/local/nmh/etc/components") (setq mh-repl-formfile "/usr/local/nmh/etc/replcomps")