ProfitPress Mega CDROM2 …eeware (MSDOS)(1992)(Eng)/ProfitPress-MegaCDROM2.B6I/MISC/NETWORK/MUSH7DOC.ZIP/README-7.1

Text File | 1990-10-02 | 11.1 KB | 209 lines

This is release 7.1.0 of the SunView implementation of mush.

Version 7.1.0 differs from 7.0.4 mostly in the appearance of the screen
and the additional functionality that is allowed to show through to the
tool from the underlying interpreter.  This is a significant enough change
in "look and feel" that the revision number was increased from 0 to 1.

Thanks to Bill Randle <[e-mail]> for extensive SunOS 3.5
testing, and to Bill and also Don Lewis <[e-mail]> for
their contributions to the new toolmode composition features and function
key handling.

Tool mode changes include:
    * Compilation now keys on definitions of SUN_4_1, SUN_4_0 or SUN_3_5
      in makefile.sun, rather than assuming SunOS4.0 when SIGRET=void.
      You still have to define SUNTOOL to get the tool mode capability.
      If you define SUNTOOL but not the others, SUN_4_0 is assumed.
    * The header summary display window has a scrollbar; the <Prev> and
      <Next> buttons for scrolling are gone.
    * The placement of buttons and items has changed a lot.  Buttons and
      items dealing with folders and general setup have moved to the top
      of the frame, and items dealing with individual messages and with
      composition have been placed in a single row between the headers
      and messsage display subwindows.
    * The <Folders> and <Save> buttons each have a text entry item.
      Furthermore, file completion with the ESC key works in those items.
    * The <Sort> menu has been unscrambled, so you actually get the sort
      criteria that you select.  (Don't ask.)
    * The <Aliases> and <Headers> buttons have moved into a menu under
      the <Options> button.  This clears up some confusion about exactly
      what it was that <Headers> meant, and provides a hook for future
      addition of a window for defining your own outgoing message headers.
    * The <Display> button is gone; its operations are now handled by
      opening the <Options> frame and toggling show_deleted or no_reverse.
    * The small one-line print window is gone; messages previously shown
      there now go to the scrollable status window.  There may be some
      remaining bugs with missing newlines here.  This frees up some more
      file descriptors in SunOS 3.5, to keep other things working longer.
    * Function keys are recognized in most parts of the main frame.  In
      anticipation of the day when window manager function keys can be
      redefined, the messages about "L7 not defined" etc. are still shown
      unless suppressed through $quiet (see below).
    * The composition frame has more control buttons, providing more of
      the functions of line and curses mode message composition.  Some
      of the "chattiness" of message composition has gone away.  In fact,
      the whole chatty subwindow in the compose frame has gone away,
      possibly to return in a later patch when a better way to decide
      what frame a message should go to has been worked out.  In the
      meantime, all messages go to the main frame.
    * Tilde escapes are supported in the tool mode composition textsw,
      with a few minor exceptions accessible from the control buttons.
    * Typing a <return> while entering header field text in tool mode
      will move automatically to the next header when this is sensible.
      The cursor becomes a bent arrow to indicate that this will happen.
    * User-definable icons can be installed through the $mail_icon and
      $newmail_icon variables, and $quiet has a field to suppress the
      message-number label so your pretty pictures won't be trashed.
    * Files that are not readable as folders are left out of the menus
      for the <Folder> and <Save> items.

General changes include:

    * There is a new defined constant, DIRECTORY, which indicates whether
      your system has BSD-compatible directory-access routines.  It turns
      out to be much too hard to figure this out on an OS-by-OS basis.
      DIRECTORY is automatically defined when BSD is defined, and is in
      the default CFLAGS in makefile.hpux; you others are on your own.
    * Some compilers were confused by "/*" appearing in the META string
      defined in glob.h.  The characters in META have been rearranged.
    * Using "exit" in a nested "if" in a source/init file no longer
      causes error messages about "missing endif".
    * Redefining "folder" via a "cmd" in .mushrc no longer causes the
      initial folder load to bomb.  Similarly with "sort".
    * Date parsing and sorting now understand timezones.  There may
      still be some rough edges in date parsing on some of the less
      common date formats, but RFC-822 and ctime (From_ line) dates
      are handled correctly.  If the dates mush displays are really
      off the wall, the order of the sscanf's in parse_date() may need
      to be changed, or we may need to add some cases rather than
      using partial matches to skip missing timezone fields.  There
      are also some strange nonstandard abbreviations out there (what,
      for example, is ECT?) which will all be treated as GMT unless
      you hack them into the tables in dates.c.  Missing timezones are
      treated as the local zone to get the date-received right (the
      From_ line ctime-date almost never has a timezone).
    * Mush now warns you if a file you attempt to load does not "look
      like" a folder (i.e. no messages can be read).  If you are already
      in the shell, this leaves you in an empty folder as it did before.
      If you are just starting up (e.g. with "mush -f"), mush will exit.
    * Additional checking is now done when collecting new mail and when
      updating folders to detect corruptions, warn the user, and allow
      a chance to recover.  Mush still reinitializes the spool folder if
      it shrinks, but if this is detected at update time (as opposed to
      new-mail-check time), the user is allowed to abort the update and
      salvage the current folder contents.
    * Curses mode now respects the user's presetting of $crt, unless the
      user's value is larger than the actual screen size.  This allows
      "set crt=2" to be used to force use of $pager.

Changes in commands:

mush -h -
    The -h (-draft) option will now accept "-" as a filename indicating
    standard input.  Note that this causes the input message to be sent
    immediately; interactive use cannot be combined with redirected input.
    The internal "mail -h" command will NOT interpret "-" as standard in.

alts *user
    This syntax, analogous to the $autosign2 syntax, allows you to specify
    any user name anywhere as "you" for purposes of $metoo, etc.

folder -n
    This command changes folders without updating; it replaces the old
    "folder !" notation, though the old form is still supported.  See
    also the general notes above for behavior on attempts to load files
    that are not folders.

from pattern
    Given an argument that is not parseable as a message list, "from" will
    automatically invoke "pick -f pattern".  Mixing message lists and
    patterns is slightly counter-intuitive; if the message list precedes
    the pattern, it will restrict the pattern search to that list, e.g.
    "from 3-7 johnsmith" will show those messages in the range 3-7 that
    are from johnsmith.  If the message list follows the pattern, it will
    not be detected at all, but will be considered part of the pattern.
    Also, "from jim bob sally" will treat the entire "jim bob sally" list
    as a single pattern, as "pick" would; this may change in the future.

pipe -p /pat1/,/pat2/
    The pattern supplied may now have the form /pat1/,/pat2/ to indicate
    that extraction should begin at pat1 and end at pat2, inclusive.
    Patterns are still matched literally at beginning-of-line (no regex
    matching), and there is not currently any way to imbed a slash in
    patterns of this form.  To allow searching for file paths, slashes
    are significant only if the second slash is followed by a comma.

save/copy
    Unless told to clobber the file (-f), these commands now check that
    the file to which they are appending "looks like" a folder.  If the
    file seems to be something else, the user is prompted to confirm the
    save or copy.

set
    Several minor fixes.  Piping to "set" now clears the variable if the
    input message list is empty, rather than leaving the old value.  For
    backwards compatibility, however, an unset variable does not become
    set when an empty message list is piped to it.  Also, some of the
    more esoteric abuses of the variable=value syntax have either been
    made legal (`set var=' is the same as `set var') or made illegal
    (`set var=value = value' won't create a variable named "var=value").

sort
    Sorting by multiple criteria at once is now supported.  The flags to
    sort have changed; "-" to reverse sorting is now obsolete, replaced
    by "-r", and all the sort criteria should now be prefixed with a "-"
    (-a,-d,-l,-R,-s,-S) like options to any other command.  A significant
    subset of the old syntax is still recognized as a special case.

New/changed variables:

    $cmd_help
      (Also $tool_help)  The path given for this variable may contain
      the usual filename metacharacters (~+).

    $hangup
      When set, mush updates the folder on SIGHUP instead of saving
      the tempfile.  This is a bit dangerous -- in rare circumstances
      (mainly when two or more MUAs are modifying the same folder)
      some new mail could be lost.  Old mail should never be lost.

    $hdr_format
      The format spec %Z returns the time zone part of the date.

    $mail_icon
      Names an icon file to be used in the normal case, when no new
      mail is present.  This icon will replace the mailbox with the
      flag down.

    $newmail_icon
      Names an icon file to be used when new mail is present, replacing
      the mailbox with the flag up.

    $output
      The message-list output of the last successful command is stored
      in this variable.  This allows easy recovery from broken pipes
      etc.  Note that any successful command that does not produce a
      message list will clear $output (e.g. "echo").

    $quiet
      If the field "newmail" is present in the multi-value, the usual
      "New mail (#X): ..." messages are not displayed.  The new mail
      is still automatically incorporated into the mailbox.  In tool
      mode, this shuts off the new mail bell (the "tool" field still
      silences ALL tool mode bells).

      If the field "fkey" is present in tool mode, warning messages
      about unbound keys are not printed.

      If the field "iconlabel" is present in tool mode, the current
      number of messages is not displayed in the mush icon.

    $status
      This is set to the success (0) or failure (-1) status of the
      previously executed command.  Note that some curses-mode commands
      return a failure status to indicate that the display has been
      corrupted even if the command itself succeeded, so this variable
      is mostly useful in scripts.