Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!gatech!mcnc!decvax!mandrill!hal!ncoast!allbery From: allbery@ncoast.UUCP (Brandon Allbery) Newsgroups: comp.mail.mh Subject: Re: MH drawbacks for computer-unexperienced users Message-ID: <7709@ncoast.UUCP> Date: 5 May 88 01:13:40 GMT References: <336@draken.nada.kth.se> <23864@bbn.COM> Reply-To: allbery@ncoast.UUCP (Brandon Allbery) Followup-To: comp.mail.mh Organization: Cleveland Public Access UN*X, Cleveland, Oh Lines: 54 As quoted from <23864@bbn.COM> by mesard@bbn.com (Wayne Mesard): +--------------- | From article <336@draken.nada.kth.se>, by psv@nada.kth.se (Peter Svanberg): | > * There is no way to include a file in a letter without the use of | > an editor. | | "forw -file" works for me. +--------------- "forw" in MH 6.5 #45[UCI] of Tue Jul 8 11:38:00 PDT 1986 doesn't grok a "-file" argument. Or at least, so it tells me in "forw -help".... A simple solution to this is to write a custom "whatnow" and add a new command: "incl [-prepend] {-file file|[+folder] message}" "Whatnow" is, of course, simply a "shell": while ${EDITOR} ${draftmsg}; do echo "What now? \c" read cmd case "$cmd" in # the various commands esac done (Of course, it's actually in C, and the default whatnow is built into many MH commands, but this is the basic idea.) A C program could be written to do this (at a slight speed penalty) and add an "incl" command rather easily; I may actually do this in the future. (Most often, when I want to include a file I'm really sending a form letter reply; in this case, the best way to handle it is to set up a reply template and send the reply with e.g. "repl -form arch-form-letter".) BTW, for those interested: Back when I first joined this group (it was still a mailing list then), someone asked how to "boxify" messages. I had it kluged then, now I have a "proper" technique. (~/Mail/mhl.reply) ----------------------------------- cut here ----------------------------------- :+--------------- body:component="| ",compwidth=0,formatfield="%<(null)| %|%(putstr)%>" :+--------------- : ----------------------------------- cut here ----------------------------------- The only problem is that it sometimes starts a "component" in a very strange place in the middle of a line, usually splitting a word squarely in half. I've no idea why it happens. -- Brandon S. Allbery, moderator of comp.sources.misc {well!hoptoad,uunet!marque,cbosgd,sun!mandrill}!ncoast!allbery Delphi: ALLBERY MCI Mail: BALLBERY