~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A bunch of changes have been made to improve the nmh user interface for
-handling MIME attachments.
+handling MIME attachments. This document provides the background and
+implementation details of this so-called attach feature.
+
+The user documentation for the attach feature is in the nmh send(1)
+and whatnow(1) man pages.
Why Did I Do This?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Simple Setup
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-The gory details are all given below. Here's how to set things up simply. This
-only works if you're using the "standard" interface, i.e., whatnow. Life is more
-complicated if you run mh-e.
+Starting with nmh version 1.5, no setup is necessary.
+
+======================================================================
+Through nmh 1.4, and optionally with nmh 1.5 and beyond, here's how to
+set things up.
+
+This only works if you're using the "standard" interface, i.e.,
+whatnow. Life is more complicated if you run mh-e.
Add the following to your .mh_profile:
- send: -attach X-MH-Attachment
- whatnow: -attach X-MH-Attachment
+ send: -attach Nmh-Attachment
+ whatnow: -attach Nmh-Attachment
-You may already have send and whatnow lines in your .mh_profile; if you do, just add
-the new stuff to the end of the line. For example, mine looks like:
+You may already have send and whatnow lines in your .mh_profile; if
+you do, just add the new stuff to the end of the line. For example,
+mine looks like:
- send: -alias aliases -attach X-MH-Attachment
- whatnow: -attach X-MH-Attachment
+ send: -alias aliases -attach Nmh-Attachment
+ whatnow: -attach Nmh-Attachment
-That's it. Next time you want to send an attachment, say "attach filename" at the
-whatnow prompt and you're done. You can check your attachments by saying "alist".
+That's it. Next time you want to send an attachment, say "attach
+filename" at the whatnow prompt and you're done. You can check your
+attachments by saying "alist".
+======================================================================
Did I Do This Correctly?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
1. I commented my changes.
2. It's been years since I've used a VT-100, so I don't try to make code
- fit into 80 columns anymore. Seems silly to me.
+ fit into 80 columns anymore. Seems silly to me. (Some of us might
+ disagree. :-)
What Did I Do?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
To: jon
Subject: test of attachments
- X-MH-Attachment: /export/home/jon/foo
- X-MH-Attachment: /export/home/jon/bar
- X-MH-Attachment: /export/home/jon/test/foo
+ Nmh-Attachment: /export/home/jon/foo
+ Nmh-Attachment: /export/home/jon/bar
+ Nmh-Attachment: /export/home/jon/test/foo
--------
has the files "foo", "bar", and foo as attachments.
-Although I use the header field name "X-MH-Attachment" to indicate
+Although I use the header field name "Nmh-Attachment" to indicate
attachments, the implementation allows any header field name.
+(Originally, Jon used X-MH-Attachment. We have globally changed that
+to Nmh-Attachment to prevent contributing to the X- header field
+namespace.)
The advantage of using header fields is that the list of attachments
travels with the draft so it remains valid across editing sessions.
Using the modified anno, the example above could be created (assuming that the
draft exists) by
- prompt% anno -draft -comp X-MH-Attachment -text /export/home/jon/foo -nodate -append
- prompt% anno -draft -comp X-MH-Attachment -text /export/home/jon/bar -nodate -append
- prompt% anno -draft -comp X-MH-Attachment -text /export/home/jon/test/foo -nodate -append
+ prompt% anno -draft -comp Nmh-Attachment -text /export/home/jon/foo -nodate -append
+ prompt% anno -draft -comp Nmh-Attachment -text /export/home/jon/bar -nodate -append
+ prompt% anno -draft -comp Nmh-Attachment -text /export/home/jon/test/foo -nodate -append
-One can quite easily make an "attach" command using shell scripts, aliases or functions.
-For example, here's a bash function that does the job:
+One can quite easily make an "attach" command using shell scripts,
+aliases or functions. For example, here's a bash function that does
+the job:
- function attach() { for i in $*; do anno -append -nodate -draft -comp X-MH-Attachment -text "$i"; done; }
+ function attach() { for i in $*; do anno -append -nodate -draft -comp Nmh-Attachment -text "$i"; done; }
The following examples show the different ways in which attachments can be
listed.
- prompt% anno -list -draft -comp X-MH-Attachment
+ prompt% anno -list -draft -comp Nmh-Attachment
foo
bar
foo
- prompt% anno -list -draft -comp X-MH-Attachment -text /
+ prompt% anno -list -draft -comp Nmh-Attachment -text /
/export/home/jon/foo
- /export/home/jon/bar
+v /export/home/jon/bar
/export/home/jon/test/foo
- prompt% anno -list -draft -comp X-MH-Attachment -number
+ prompt% anno -list -draft -comp Nmh-Attachment -number
1 foo
2 bar
3 foo
- prompt% anno -list -draft -comp X-MH-Attachment -text / -number
+ prompt% anno -list -draft -comp Nmh-Attachment -text / -number
1 /export/home/jon/foo
2 /export/home/jon/bar
3 /export/home/jon/test/foo
Attachments are deleted using the -delete option.
- prompt% anno -delete -draft -comp X-MH-Attachment -text foo
+ prompt% anno -delete -draft -comp Nmh-Attachment -text foo
-deletes the first attachment since the foo matches the basename of the attachment
-name.
+deletes the first attachment since the foo matches the basename of the
+attachment name.
- prompt% anno -delete -draft -comp X-MH-Attachment -text /export/home/jon/test/foo
+ prompt% anno -delete -draft -comp Nmh-Attachment -text /export/home/jon/test/foo
deletes the third attachment since the text is a full path name and matches.
- prompt% anno -delete -draft -comp X-MH-Attachment -number 2
+ prompt% anno -delete -draft -comp Nmh-Attachment -number 2
deletes the second attachment.
running the file command on the attachment file. The filename is the
field body from the attachment header field.
-I added an -attach option to whatnow that specifies the header field name for
-attachments.
-
-I added to the commands available at the whatnow prompt to provide an interface
-to the attachment mechanism.
-
-I'm not completely happy with some of these additions because they duplicate
-shell functionality. I'm not sure that there's a good way around it other than
-to not use whatnow.
-
-The first three additions (the ones I'm not happy with) are cd, ls, and pwd.
-These do the same thing as their system counterparts. As a matter of fact,
-these are implemented by running the commands in a subshell. I did this because
-I wanted proper interpretation of shell-specific things like ~ and wildcard
-expansion.
-
-The next command is attach. This takes a list of files and adds them to the draft
-as attachments using the same code as the modified anno. The list of files is
-run through ls using the user's shell, so wildcard expansion and all that works.
-
-The alist command lists the attachments on the current draft using listing function
-that I added to anno. It takes two optional options, -l for a long listing meaning
-full path names, and -n for a numbered listing.
-
-The detach command removes attachments from the current draft, again using the
-modified anno. The arguments are interpreted as numbers if the -n option is used,
-otherwise they're interpreted as file names. File names are shoveled through ls
-using the user's shell in the directory containing the file for wildcard expansion
-and such. File names are matched against the last pathname component unless they
+I added an -attach option to whatnow that specifies the header field
+name for attachments.
+
+I added to the commands available at the whatnow prompt to provide an
+interface to the attachment mechanism.
+
+I'm not completely happy with some of these additions because they
+duplicate shell functionality. I'm not sure that there's a good way
+around it other than to not use whatnow.
+
+The first three additions (the ones I'm not happy with) are cd, ls,
+and pwd. These do the same thing as their system counterparts. As a
+matter of fact, these are implemented by running the commands in a
+subshell. I did this because I wanted proper interpretation of
+shell-specific things like ~ and wildcard expansion.
+
+The next command is attach. This takes a list of files and adds them
+to the draft as attachments using the same code as the modified anno.
+The list of files is run through ls using the user's shell, so
+wildcard expansion and all that works.
+
+The alist command lists the attachments on the current draft using
+listing function that I added to anno. It takes two optional options,
+-l for a long listing meaning full path names, and -n for a numbered
+listing.
+
+The detach command removes attachments from the current draft, again
+using the modified anno. The arguments are interpreted as numbers if
+the -n option is used, otherwise they're interpreted as file names.
+File names are shoveled through ls using the user's shell in the
+directory containing the file for wildcard expansion and such. File
+names are matched against the last pathname component unless they
begin with a / in which case they're matched against the entire name.
What's Left To Do?
projects / mmh / commitdiff