> [2010-10-29 14:22] David Levine <[email protected]> > > meillo wrote: > > > > > just one question for better understanding: > > > > > > Who or what is ``JLR''? > > > > > > There are several #ifdefs for JLR in code which is related to scan(1). > > > There is also a comments which appears to be written by JLR and > > > docs/ChangeLog_MH-3_to_MH-6.6 lists changes done for JLR. > > > > John Romine, I expect. From docs/README.about: > > > > In 1982, the University of California, Irvine took up > > maintenance of the software, under the direction of Marshall > > T. Rose and John L. Romine. > > That seems to be reasonable. > > Does anyone know some more? Had he had his personal, modified, > version of MH, because this is how it appears? > > > meillo > > Stuff under #ifdef JLR means something experimental I was working on.
In this case (scan, formatsbr) it has to do with an extension to the mh-format syntax to allow for looping. The scan format is processed once for each message. Those #ifdef JLR changes allowed for the top part of the format file to be processed once, then a second, looping part to be processed once per message. As I recall, there were new mh-format escape sequences to delimit the loop. This would have allowed for things like per-format column headings in the scan output. Since existing format files didn't include the scan listing header (it was hard-coded in scan.c) it would not have been backward-compatible. All existing format files (including any local ones) would have needed to be changed to include the format codes for a header. The practice at the time was not to introduce incompatible changes in a minor release, and I never managed to put out a newer major release. John
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