Re: [nmh-workers] Unnecessary dependency on vi???

[Steffen Nurpmeso]

Ralph Corderoy  wrote:
 |> Ok, i do not have Spinellis repo locally (yet), it is too big.
 |> (How large is it in the end, Ralph?)
 |
 |1.5 GiB.  Too large to pull home with ADSL.  I've a VM out on the
 |Internet that has fast connectivity and I copied it there.

Interesting idea... but is has to wait.  I remember a message of
a github staff member who was sympathetic to the community because
the average member used far less space than github would have
offered.  Must have been 2011 or something.  I.e., different to
some other formerly large player i expect Spinellis repo to be
available until i finally upgrade my little one...

 |But don't worry about replying after a delay.  I've nmh emails that are
 |months old that I still intend to process.  :-)

Inbox first, yes.  Of course!

--steffen
|
|Der Kragenbaer,The moon bear,
|der holt sich munter   he cheerfully and one by one
|einen nach dem anderen runter  wa.ks himself off
|(By Robert Gernhardt)

-- 
nmh-workers
https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/nmh-workers

Re: [nmh-workers] Unnecessary dependency on vi???

[Ralph Corderoy]

Hi Valdis,

> > What is Fedora Core 27?  :-)  Fedora 26 is the latest version
>
> Fedora 26 is ancient history.. :)
>
> [~] cat /etc/redhat-release
> Fedora release 29 (Rawhide)

Yes, Jon Steinhart also pointed out I was wrong privately, to share the
credit.  I took it from
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fedora_version_history that shows 27 is
the latest version in the detail, but the section headings at the start
stopped at 26.  :-)

-- 
Cheers, Ralph.
https://plus.google.com/+RalphCorderoy

-- 
nmh-workers
https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/nmh-workers

Re: [nmh-workers] Unnecessary dependency on vi???

[Ralph Corderoy]

Hi Steffen,

> Ok, i do not have Spinellis repo locally (yet), it is too big.
> (How large is it in the end, Ralph?)

1.5 GiB.  Too large to pull home with ADSL.  I've a VM out on the
Internet that has fast connectivity and I copied it there.

But don't worry about replying after a delay.  I've nmh emails that are
months old that I still intend to process.  :-)

-- 
Cheers, Ralph.
https://plus.google.com/+RalphCorderoy

-- 
nmh-workers
https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/nmh-workers

Re: [nmh-workers] Unnecessary dependency on vi???

[valdis . kletnieks]

On Sun, 11 Mar 2018 18:15:08 -, Ralph Corderoy said:
> Hi Jon,
>
> > Things always get weird as one's installed distribution gets crusty.
> > My Fedora Core 27 installation
>
> What is Fedora Core 27?  :-)  Fedora 26 is the latest version, so 27
> might be Fedora Devel, but then you said it's crusty as if the 27 is a
> typo for something older, but they stopped calling it Core with Core 6,
> which is very crusty;  2006.

Fedora 26 is ancient history.. :)

[~] cat /etc/redhat-release
Fedora release 29 (Rawhide)

(Finally catching up after 2 busy weeks..)


pgpKKA5Rcdxop.pgp
Description: PGP signature
-- 
nmh-workers
https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/nmh-workers

Re: [nmh-workers] Unnecessary dependency on vi???

[Steffen Nurpmeso]

Bakul Shah  wrote:
 |On Mar 20, 2018, at 5:04 PM, Ralph Corderoy  wrote:
 |>>> mail(1) had the `~e' escape and then added a `~v' one, with VISUAL
 |>>> and EDITOR environment variables echoing the cpp(1) macro names of
 |>>> the default values.  Kurt Shoens, k...@ucbvax.berkeley.edu, is down
 |>>> as the author in BSD-1-253-gc145e9e0ab5 of
 |>>> https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo.
 |>> 
 |>> BSD Mail had both of ~v and ~e from the very start.  I know of no
 |>> known released file which acted otherwise.
 |> 
 |> But peering at doc/Mail/mail3.nr in BSD-1-3-gfc8c50acc08, so just after
 |> BSD 1 was cut, I see it documents all the tilde escapes and has `~e' but
 |> no `~v'.
 |> https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo/blob/fc8c50acc0870bf28753d\
 |> 3508770428682e915bb/doc/Mail/mail3.nr
 |
 |
 |This is a doc. bug! ~v is mentioned in mail7.nr in the
 |same fc8c50acc0 "commit". This has April 19, 1979 date.
 |The same as the 2bsd date on TUHS unix-archives. See my
 |previous message. ~v was already in!

It was in in 2BSD, yes.

 |> By the time of BSD-1-54-ge684660a6a2, src/Mail/Mail.help.~ lists both.
 |> https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo/blob/e684660a6a291c1e46729\
 |> 12bc1b80ffb00934623/src/Mail/Mail.help.%7E
 |> 
 |> So although the released code had both, I think it's likely that `~e'
 |> was there on its own, and then `~v' added as ex's vi mode came along.
 |> I also noticed that Mail's string option was at one point `EDITOR' for one
 |> and `VISEDITOR' for the other;  also suggestive that one came first
 |> rather than both together.
 |
 |This is in mail7.nr but looking at the sources, it is 'VISUAL'
 |so I suspect this is another doc. bug (both bugs are also in
 |doc/Mail/mail{3,7}.nr in the 2bsd dist. on TUHS).
 |

Only EDITOR and VISUAL in 2BSD, yes.

--steffen
|
|Der Kragenbaer,The moon bear,
|der holt sich munter   he cheerfully and one by one
|einen nach dem anderen runter  wa.ks himself off
|(By Robert Gernhardt)

-- 
nmh-workers
https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/nmh-workers

Re: [nmh-workers] Unnecessary dependency on vi???

[Steffen Nurpmeso]

Hello Ralph.

Ralph Corderoy  wrote:
 |>> mail(1) had the `~e' escape and then added a `~v' one, with VISUAL
 |>> and EDITOR environment variables echoing the cpp(1) macro names of
 |>> the default values.  Kurt Shoens, k...@ucbvax.berkeley.edu, is down
 |>> as the author in BSD-1-253-gc145e9e0ab5 of
 |>> https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo.
 |>
 |> BSD Mail had both of ~v and ~e from the very start.  I know of no
 |> known released file which acted otherwise.
 |
 |But peering at doc/Mail/mail3.nr in BSD-1-3-gfc8c50acc08, so just after
 |BSD 1 was cut, I see it documents all the tilde escapes and has `~e' but
 |no `~v'.
 |https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo/blob/fc8c50acc0870bf28753d35\
 |08770428682e915bb/doc/Mail/mail3.nr
 |
 |By the time of BSD-1-54-ge684660a6a2, src/Mail/Mail.help.~ lists both.
 |https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo/blob/e684660a6a291c1e4672912\
 |bc1b80ffb00934623/src/Mail/Mail.help.%7E
 |
 |So although the released code had both, I think it's likely that `~e'
 |was there on its own, and then `~v' added as ex's vi mode came along.
 |I also noticed that Mail's string option was at one point `EDITOR' for one
 |and `VISEDITOR' for the other;  also suggestive that one came first
 |rather than both together.

Ok, i do not have Spinellis repo locally (yet), it is too big.
(How large is it in the end, Ralph?)

Looking at github i see at the same commit [1], and just in case
i do that right, that both of the `edit' and `visual' commands are
already available, so maybe ~v had only been forgotten by that
time?

  It is often useful to be able to invoke one of two editors,
  based on the type of terminal one is using.  To invoke
  a display oriented editor, you can use the
  .b visual
  command.  The operation of the
  .b visual
  command is otherwise identical to that of the
  .b edit
  command.

  [1] 
https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo/blob/fc8c50acc0870bf28753d3508770428682e915bb/doc/Mail/mail6.nr

Really a shame i do not have Spinellis repo yet.  In the repo
i only have history back to 2BSD...
Ciao,

--steffen
|
|Der Kragenbaer,The moon bear,
|der holt sich munter   he cheerfully and one by one
|einen nach dem anderen runter  wa.ks himself off
|(By Robert Gernhardt)

-- 
nmh-workers
https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/nmh-workers

Re: [nmh-workers] Unnecessary dependency on vi???

[Steffen Nurpmeso]

Bakul Shah  wrote:
 |On Tue, 20 Mar 2018 23:57:28 +0700 Robert Elz  wrote:
 |Robert Elz writes:
 |> Date:Tue, 20 Mar 2018 15:43:37 +0100
 |> From:Steffen Nurpmeso 
 |> Message-ID:  <20180320144337.zm2ro%stef...@sdaoden.eu>
 |> 
 |>| BSD Mail had both of ~v and ~e from the very start.  I know of no
 |>| known released file which acted otherwise.
 |> 
 |> Including in the first BSD distribution tape (1BSD) before vi existed \
 |> (also 
 |> before csh existed, but that's unrelated...) ??
 |
 |I looked at 1bsd and 2bsd distributions. I don't see Mail in
 |1bsd but it is included in 2bsd and uses VISUAL for ~v and
 |EDITOR for ~e.

No, it cannot be in 1BSD if we trust

  /*
   * Mail -- a mail program
   *
   * Author: Kurt Shoens (UCB) March 25, 1978
   */

--steffen
|
|Der Kragenbaer,The moon bear,
|der holt sich munter   he cheerfully and one by one
|einen nach dem anderen runter  wa.ks himself off
|(By Robert Gernhardt)

-- 
nmh-workers
https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/nmh-workers

Re: [nmh-workers] Unnecessary dependency on vi???

[Bakul Shah]

On Mar 20, 2018, at 5:04 PM, Ralph Corderoy  wrote:
> 
> Hi Steffen,
> 
>>> mail(1) had the `~e' escape and then added a `~v' one, with VISUAL
>>> and EDITOR environment variables echoing the cpp(1) macro names of
>>> the default values.  Kurt Shoens, k...@ucbvax.berkeley.edu, is down
>>> as the author in BSD-1-253-gc145e9e0ab5 of
>>> https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo.
>> 
>> BSD Mail had both of ~v and ~e from the very start.  I know of no
>> known released file which acted otherwise.
> 
> But peering at doc/Mail/mail3.nr in BSD-1-3-gfc8c50acc08, so just after
> BSD 1 was cut, I see it documents all the tilde escapes and has `~e' but
> no `~v'.
> https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo/blob/fc8c50acc0870bf28753d3508770428682e915bb/doc/Mail/mail3.nr


This is a doc. bug! ~v is mentioned in mail7.nr in the
same fc8c50acc0 "commit". This has April 19, 1979 date.
The same as the 2bsd date on TUHS unix-archives. See my
previous message. ~v was already in!

> By the time of BSD-1-54-ge684660a6a2, src/Mail/Mail.help.~ lists both.
> https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo/blob/e684660a6a291c1e4672912bc1b80ffb00934623/src/Mail/Mail.help.%7E
> 
> So although the released code had both, I think it's likely that `~e'
> was there on its own, and then `~v' added as ex's vi mode came along.
> I also noticed that Mail's string option was at one point `EDITOR' for one
> and `VISEDITOR' for the other;  also suggestive that one came first
> rather than both together.

This is in mail7.nr but looking at the sources, it is 'VISUAL'
so I suspect this is another doc. bug (both bugs are also in
doc/Mail/mail{3,7}.nr in the 2bsd dist. on TUHS).


:-)



-- 
nmh-workers
https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/nmh-workers

Re: [nmh-workers] Unnecessary dependency on vi???

[Paul Vixie]

Paul Fox wrote:

...

i love this mailing list.


i keep trying to leave, but, i can't!

--
P Vixie


--
nmh-workers
https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/nmh-workers

Re: [nmh-workers] Unnecessary dependency on vi???

[Paul Fox]

ralph wrote:
 > Hi Steffen,
 > 
 > > > mail(1) had the `~e' escape and then added a `~v' one, with VISUAL
 > > > and EDITOR environment variables echoing the cpp(1) macro names of
 > > > the default values.  Kurt Shoens, k...@ucbvax.berkeley.edu, is down
 > > > as the author in BSD-1-253-gc145e9e0ab5 of
 > > > https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo.
 > >
 > > BSD Mail had both of ~v and ~e from the very start.  I know of no
 > > known released file which acted otherwise.
 > 
 > But peering at doc/Mail/mail3.nr in BSD-1-3-gfc8c50acc08, so just after
 > BSD 1 was cut, I see it documents all the tilde escapes and has `~e' but
 > no `~v'.
 > https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo/blob/fc8c50acc0870bf28753d3508770428682e915bb/doc/Mail/mail3.nr
 > 
 > By the time of BSD-1-54-ge684660a6a2, src/Mail/Mail.help.~ lists both.
 > https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo/blob/e684660a6a291c1e4672912bc1b80ffb00934623/src/Mail/Mail.help.%7E
 > 
 > So although the released code had both, I think it's likely that `~e'
 > was there on its own, and then `~v' added as ex's vi mode came along.
 > I also noticed that Mail's string option was at one point `EDITOR' for one
 > and `VISEDITOR' for the other;  also suggestive that one came first
 > rather than both together.
 > 

i love this mailing list.

=--
paul fox, p...@foxharp.boston.ma.us (arlington, ma, where it's 31.3 degrees)


-- 
nmh-workers
https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/nmh-workers

Re: [nmh-workers] Unnecessary dependency on vi???

[Ralph Corderoy]

Hi Steffen,

> > mail(1) had the `~e' escape and then added a `~v' one, with VISUAL
> > and EDITOR environment variables echoing the cpp(1) macro names of
> > the default values.  Kurt Shoens, k...@ucbvax.berkeley.edu, is down
> > as the author in BSD-1-253-gc145e9e0ab5 of
> > https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo.
>
> BSD Mail had both of ~v and ~e from the very start.  I know of no
> known released file which acted otherwise.

But peering at doc/Mail/mail3.nr in BSD-1-3-gfc8c50acc08, so just after
BSD 1 was cut, I see it documents all the tilde escapes and has `~e' but
no `~v'.
https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo/blob/fc8c50acc0870bf28753d3508770428682e915bb/doc/Mail/mail3.nr

By the time of BSD-1-54-ge684660a6a2, src/Mail/Mail.help.~ lists both.
https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo/blob/e684660a6a291c1e4672912bc1b80ffb00934623/src/Mail/Mail.help.%7E

So although the released code had both, I think it's likely that `~e'
was there on its own, and then `~v' added as ex's vi mode came along.
I also noticed that Mail's string option was at one point `EDITOR' for one
and `VISEDITOR' for the other;  also suggestive that one came first
rather than both together.

-- 
Cheers, Ralph.
https://plus.google.com/+RalphCorderoy

-- 
nmh-workers
https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/nmh-workers

Re: [nmh-workers] Unnecessary dependency on vi???

[Paul Vixie]

Andy Bradford wrote:

Thus said Ralph Corderoy on Tue, 20 Mar 2018 12:56:09 -:


For evermore, programs that only offer one means of invoking an editor
have had to checking first $VISUAL, falling back to $EDITOR.  :-)


You mean like the following chunk of code: :-)

http://www.fossil-scm.org/index.html/artifact?udc=1=1180-1186+1196-1204=8d7c320c6bbe086b


here's how crontab(1) does it:


/* what editor to use if no EDITOR or VISUAL
 * environment variable specified.
 */
#if defined(_PATH_VI)
# define EDITOR _PATH_VI
#else
# define EDITOR "/usr/ucb/vi"
#endif

...

if (((editor = getenv("VISUAL")) == NULL || *editor == '\0') &&
((editor = getenv("EDITOR")) == NULL || *editor == '\0')) {
editor = EDITOR;
}




--
P Vixie


--
nmh-workers
https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/nmh-workers

Re: [nmh-workers] Unnecessary dependency on vi???

[Andy Bradford]

Thus said Ralph Corderoy on Tue, 20 Mar 2018 12:56:09 -:

> For evermore, programs that only offer one means of invoking an editor
> have had to checking first $VISUAL, falling back to $EDITOR.  :-)

You mean like the following chunk of code: :-)

http://www.fossil-scm.org/index.html/artifact?udc=1=1180-1186+1196-1204=8d7c320c6bbe086b

Andy
-- 
TAI64 timestamp: 40005ab16cc3



-- 
nmh-workers
https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/nmh-workers

Re: [nmh-workers] Unnecessary dependency on vi???

[Ken Hornstein]

>That reminds me, whatnow(1) needs a `visual'.

I'm not sure that's true ... you have always been able to supply your own
editor to "edit" at the whatnow prompt.

--Ken

-- 
nmh-workers
https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/nmh-workers

Re: [nmh-workers] Unnecessary dependency on vi???

[Bakul Shah]

On Tue, 20 Mar 2018 23:57:28 +0700 Robert Elz  wrote:
Robert Elz writes:
> Date:Tue, 20 Mar 2018 15:43:37 +0100
> From:Steffen Nurpmeso 
> Message-ID:  <20180320144337.zm2ro%stef...@sdaoden.eu>
> 
>   | BSD Mail had both of ~v and ~e from the very start.  I know of no
>   | known released file which acted otherwise.
> 
> Including in the first BSD distribution tape (1BSD) before vi existed (also 
> before csh existed, but that's unrelated...) ??

I looked at 1bsd and 2bsd distributions. I don't see Mail in
1bsd but it is included in 2bsd and uses VISUAL for ~v and
EDITOR for ~e.

There is an attempt to emulate getenv for v6 but it only
emulates HOME and SHELL, derived from getpw().  So on v6 only
the compiled in defaults for EDITOR and VISUAL would work.

2bsd READ_ME shows a date of Apr 19, 1979
1bsd READ_ME has no date but TAPE shows Jan 16, 1978

And yes, csh was also in 2bsd!

[All this is from the stuff archived @ TUHS. I didn't actually
use Unix until v7 and starting mid 1981. May be some folks
reading the TUHS list can provide more direct knowledge.]

-- 
nmh-workers
https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/nmh-workers

Re: [nmh-workers] Unnecessary dependency on vi???

[Steffen Nurpmeso]

Robert Elz  wrote:
 |Date:Tue, 20 Mar 2018 15:43:37 +0100
 |From:Steffen Nurpmeso 
 |Message-ID:  <20180320144337.zm2ro%stef...@sdaoden.eu>
 |
 || BSD Mail had both of ~v and ~e from the very start.  I know of no
 || known released file which acted otherwise.
 |
 |Including in the first BSD distribution tape (1BSD) before vi existed (also 
 |before csh existed, but that's unrelated...) ??
 |
 |This also predates the use of SCCS (or any other revision control system)
 |at UCB.

Now you got me.  No.
(Things that happened in the past only happened in your mind.
So, forget your mind, and you'll be: free.)

--steffen
|
|Der Kragenbaer,The moon bear,
|der holt sich munter   he cheerfully and one by one
|einen nach dem anderen runter  wa.ks himself off
|(By Robert Gernhardt)

-- 
nmh-workers
https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/nmh-workers

Re: [nmh-workers] Unnecessary dependency on vi???

[Robert Elz]

Date:Tue, 20 Mar 2018 15:43:37 +0100
From:Steffen Nurpmeso 
Message-ID:  <20180320144337.zm2ro%stef...@sdaoden.eu>

  | BSD Mail had both of ~v and ~e from the very start.  I know of no
  | known released file which acted otherwise.

Including in the first BSD distribution tape (1BSD) before vi existed (also 
before csh existed, but that's unrelated...) ??

This also predates the use of SCCS (or any other revision control system)
at UCB.

kre


-- 
nmh-workers
https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/nmh-workers

Re: [nmh-workers] Unnecessary dependency on vi???

[Steffen Nurpmeso]

Ralph Corderoy  wrote:
 |>> so a program like mail would offer two escapes (~e vs.  ~v) to let
 |>> yo invoke either.
 |>
 |> So ... I guess programs would look at the terminal and if your speed
 |> was 9600 baud or greater, you'd use VISUAL, and if it was slower you'd
 |> use EDITOR?
 |
 |No, AFAIK it was always the user's choice.  mail(1) had the `~e' escape
 |and then added a `~v' one, with VISUAL and EDITOR environment variables
 |echoing the cpp(1) macro names of the default values.  Kurt Shoens,
 |k...@ucbvax.berkeley.edu, is down as the author in
 |BSD-1-253-gc145e9e0ab5 of
 |https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo.

BSD Mail had both of ~v and ~e from the very start.  I know of no
known released file which acted otherwise.

--steffen
|
|Der Kragenbaer,The moon bear,
|der holt sich munter   he cheerfully and one by one
|einen nach dem anderen runter  wa.ks himself off
|(By Robert Gernhardt)

-- 
nmh-workers
https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/nmh-workers

Re: [nmh-workers] Unnecessary dependency on vi???

[Ralph Corderoy]

Hi Ken,

> > so a program like mail would offer two escapes (~e vs.  ~v) to let
> > yo invoke either.
>
> So ... I guess programs would look at the terminal and if your speed
> was 9600 baud or greater, you'd use VISUAL, and if it was slower you'd
> use EDITOR?

No, AFAIK it was always the user's choice.  mail(1) had the `~e' escape
and then added a `~v' one, with VISUAL and EDITOR environment variables
echoing the cpp(1) macro names of the default values.  Kurt Shoens,
k...@ucbvax.berkeley.edu, is down as the author in
BSD-1-253-gc145e9e0ab5 of
https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo.

For evermore, programs that only offer one means of invoking an editor
have had to checking first $VISUAL, falling back to $EDITOR.  :-)

That reminds me, whatnow(1) needs a `visual'.

-- 
Cheers, Ralph.
https://plus.google.com/+RalphCorderoy

-- 
nmh-workers
https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/nmh-workers

Re: [nmh-workers] Unnecessary dependency on vi???

[Jon Fairbairn]

Ken Hornstein  writes:
> So ... I guess programs would look at the terminal and if your speed was
> 9600 baud or greater, you'd use VISUAL, and if it was slower you'd use
> EDITOR?  I could believe that (although from memory I don't recall vi
> being that bad at 2400 baud, but it was a while ago!).

Speed wasn’t the only thing, remember. I certainly used a
hardcopy terminal in 1979, probably later (not connected to a
Unix system, but still), and neither vi nor emacs would have
been a good choice :-)


-- 
Jón Fairbairn jon.fairba...@cl.cam.ac.uk


-- 
nmh-workers
https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/nmh-workers

Re: [nmh-workers] Unnecessary dependency on vi???

[Robert Elz]

Date:Mon, 19 Mar 2018 15:29:30 -0400
From:Ken Hornstein 
Message-ID:  <20180319192931.209f1d0...@pb-smtp1.pobox.com>

  | So since you were there ... I never did understand the point (or the
  | distinction) between VISUAL and EDITOR.

Paul's explanation seems right to me - commands like Mail had two "run an 
editor" commands, so the user could choose what kind of editor they wanted
to run (and initially, so different users could pick the editing style of their
choice).Once env vars existed, and could be put to use to allow the user
to select which editor to run, I guess it just made sense to use a different 
one for each of the commands (editing styles) that existed.   But, for me, this
is guesswork, I was never part of any discussions (if there were any) on this.

kre


-- 
nmh-workers
https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/nmh-workers

Re: [nmh-workers] Unnecessary dependency on vi???

[Paul Fox]

ken wrote:
 > > > So since you were there ... I never did understand the point (or the
 > > > distinction) between VISUAL and EDITOR.  More specifically, I never
 > > > understood when you were supposed to use one versus the other.
 > >
 > >i can answer that one.
 > >
 > >in the bad old days, if you were working on a slow dialup (300 or
 > >1200 baud), or, actually, a printing terminal at any speed, you'd
 > >probably want to invoke ed or ex.  if you were working on a
 > >"high-speed" 9600 baud terminal, you'd likely want vi or emacs etc. 
 > >so a program like mail would offer two escapes (~e vs.  ~v) to let yo
 > >invoke either.
 > 
 > So ... I guess programs would look at the terminal and if your speed was
 > 9600 baud or greater, you'd use VISUAL, and if it was slower you'd use
 > EDITOR?  I could believe that (although from memory I don't recall vi
 > being that bad at 2400 baud, but it was a while ago!).

I suppose that might have been done, but I don't recall programs
making the choice by themselves.  It was more along the lines of the
mail(1) feature, where the user could decide on the fly to choose
"terse line oriented" (via EDITOR) or "feature-rich screen oriented"
(via VISUAL).  I don't recall any other examples of programs offering
that sort of choice at the moment.  (Nor will I probably for the
foreseeable future -- it was a while ago.  :-)

You're right about vi not being too bad at slower rates, and there was
a huge amount of optimization in the code to make it all feasible.  As
example, the ADM-3A (on which Bill Joy developed vi) lacked a 'delete
line' screen manipulation command.  So when vi deleted a line, it
would do a "clear to EOL", and then put insert an '@' sign at the
front of the resulting blank line, to indicate to the user that the
line didn't really exist in the edit buffer.  This saved adjusting the
rest of the lines.  If you deleted a bunch of lines, you'd end up with
a bunch of empty space on the screen.  Refreshes were expensive, so
there were two different "refresh the screen" commands:  ^L, which
would do a full redraw, and ^R, which would only redraw from the first
deleted line down, thereby saving the time of redrawing anything from
that point up.

(I still remember my sense of wonder when I saw an ADM-3A running vi
at Bell Labs, at a whopping 9600 baud, when I arrived there in 1980. 
I knew about tty-like terminals, and I knew about graphics, but it had
never occurred to me that you could do that kind of editing with a
text-based terminal.  Hey, I was young...)

paul
=--
paul fox, p...@foxharp.boston.ma.us (arlington, ma, where it's 32.5 degrees)


-- 
nmh-workers
https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/nmh-workers

Re: [nmh-workers] Unnecessary dependency on vi???

[Ken Hornstein]

> > So since you were there ... I never did understand the point (or the
> > distinction) between VISUAL and EDITOR.  More specifically, I never
> > understood when you were supposed to use one versus the other.
>
>i can answer that one.
>
>in the bad old days, if you were working on a slow dialup (300 or
>1200 baud), or, actually, a printing terminal at any speed, you'd
>probably want to invoke ed or ex.  if you were working on a
>"high-speed" 9600 baud terminal, you'd likely want vi or emacs etc. 
>so a program like mail would offer two escapes (~e vs.  ~v) to let yo
>invoke either.

So ... I guess programs would look at the terminal and if your speed was
9600 baud or greater, you'd use VISUAL, and if it was slower you'd use
EDITOR?  I could believe that (although from memory I don't recall vi
being that bad at 2400 baud, but it was a while ago!).

--Ken

-- 
nmh-workers
https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/nmh-workers

Re: [nmh-workers] Unnecessary dependency on vi???

[Paul Fox]

ken wrote:
 > So since you were there ... I never did understand the point (or the
 > distinction) between VISUAL and EDITOR.  More specifically, I never
 > understood when you were supposed to use one versus the other.

i can answer that one.

in the bad old days, if you were working on a slow dialup (300 or
1200 baud), or, actually, a printing terminal at any speed, you'd
probably want to invoke ed or ex.  if you were working on a
"high-speed" 9600 baud terminal, you'd likely want vi or emacs etc. 
so a program like mail would offer two escapes (~e vs.  ~v) to let yo
invoke either.

paul
=--
paul fox, p...@foxharp.boston.ma.us (arlington, ma, where it's 33.8 degrees)


-- 
nmh-workers
https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/nmh-workers

Re: [nmh-workers] Unnecessary dependency on vi???

[Ken Hornstein]

>EDITOR and VISUAL are environment variables - therefore did
>not exist before 7th edition (or 32V) - that is, about 79.   All of
>MH, e, ex, vi, and Mail existed long before those could possibly
>have been in use.Exactly when EDITOR first appeared I am
>not sure (it was not one of the env vars used by anthing in the
>7th edition - the editor there was just ed - no need to be able to
>specify an alternative.)   VISUAL as an alternative to EDITOR
>came much later.

So since you were there ... I never did understand the point (or the
distinction) between VISUAL and EDITOR.  More specifically, I never
understood when you were supposed to use one versus the other.

--Ken

-- 
nmh-workers
https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/nmh-workers

Re: [nmh-workers] Unnecessary dependency on vi???

[Ralph Corderoy]

> I've been using (N)MH since 2,000

Quick lads!  A new user!  Don't let him get away!

-- 
nmh-workers
https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/nmh-workers

Re: [nmh-workers] Unnecessary dependency on vi???

[Robert Elz]

Date:Sun, 18 Mar 2018 15:39:50 -0700
From:Bakul Shah 
Message-ID:  <20180318224005.c8d91156e...@mail.bitblocks.com>

  | Bill Joy wrote vi in 1976 while at UCB.

I know, but it wasn't on the 1BSD tape (ex was I think), the vi
command in ex (and the vi command) were on the 2BSD tape
(about 78 I think.)   Mail was on the 1BSD tape I believe
(that is, I thnk I remember...)

  | I believe MH came later.

The Rand distribution, with MH and e, was at a similar time
to the 1BSD tape, arund 76-77.   Which was first I have no
idea, but development on them would have been happening
more or less in parallel.

  |  From what I recollect, more people used Mail
  | than MH and I believe the $EDITOR/$VISUAL convention for
  | calling an editor was well established. 

EDITOR and VISUAL are environment variables - therefore did
not exist before 7th edition (or 32V) - that is, about 79.   All of
MH, e, ex, vi, and Mail existed long before those could possibly
have been in use.Exactly when EDITOR first appeared I am
not sure (it was not one of the env vars used by anthing in the
7th edition - the editor there was just ed - no need to be able to
specify an alternative.)   VISUAL as an alternative to EDITOR
came much later.

kre


-- 
nmh-workers
https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/nmh-workers

Re: [nmh-workers] Unnecessary dependency on vi???

[Andy Bradford]

Thus said Ken Hornstein on Sun, 18 Mar 2018 19:49:03 -0400:

> If you're a long-time  MH user, I admit that I  am surprised you never
> set anything in  your profile; it seems like the  default was prompter
> for a long  time (although, like I said earlier,  that depends on your
> specific site configuration;

I've been  using (N)MH since  2,000 and I think  this is the  first time
I've run into  prompter; though I must  admit that I used  Exmh a couple
years before I began investigating the command line tools, but as far as
I can remember,  I've never had to interface with  prompter. As you say,
perhaps this was  due to specific configuration of which  I was unaware,
but I've usually just used whatever the OS vendor shipped as defaults.

Andy
-- 
TAI64 timestamp: 40005aaf0524



-- 
nmh-workers
https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/nmh-workers

Re: [nmh-workers] Unnecessary dependency on vi???

[Ken Hornstein]

>> Yeah, I  tried it quickly and  it seems simple enough.  And people who
>> have  editor in  their profile  or  use EDITOR/VISUAL  won't notice  a
>> change.
>
>Under what conditions will this change? I have neither EDITOR/VISUAL nor
>profile  settings for  editor, but  maybe that  won't matter  because my
>usage patterns will never invoke prompter?

If you're a long-time MH user, I admit that I am surprised you never set
anything in your profile; it seems like the default was prompter for a
long time (although, like I said earlier, that depends on your specific
site configuration; if people used the default configuration shipped in
MH 6.8 you ended up with vi).  I know I've been using Editor: vi in
my .mh_profile for approximately forever.

EDITOR/VISUAL support is a recent nmh thing.

--Ken

-- 
nmh-workers
https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/nmh-workers

Re: [nmh-workers] Unnecessary dependency on vi???

[Ralph Corderoy]

Hi Bakul,

> Initially I used vi and Mail but later switched to e and mh -- may be
> because @ Fortune we now had Dave Yost and Rick Kiessig they'd both
> worked at Rand and on at least the Rand Editor.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_Text_Editor isn't RAND's text editor,
unfortunately, though I did find
https://www.rand.org/pubs/notes/N2239-1.html that's a PDF on `The RAND
Editor e: Version 19'.  NED has a couple of pages on there too, e.g.
https://www.rand.org/pubs/reports/R2000.html

It's nice to see an outfit that has pride in keeping its old
publications available, unlike what remains of Bell Labs.

-- 
Cheers, Ralph.
https://plus.google.com/+RalphCorderoy

-- 
nmh-workers
https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/nmh-workers

Re: [nmh-workers] Unnecessary dependency on vi???

[Bakul Shah]

On Mon, 19 Mar 2018 04:06:30 +0700 Robert Elz  wrote:
Robert Elz writes:
> Date:Sun, 18 Mar 2018 13:47:24 -0400
> From:David Levine 
> Message-ID:  <2558-1521395244.835...@bijr.xoxa.ckyx>
> 
> 
>   | The precendence in order from high to low is:  1) editor
>   | component, 2) VISUAL, 3) EDITOR.
> 
> Actually, just to be precise, before those comes the -editor
> switch to the program (comp, repl, etc).
> 
> I too have had an "editor" component in $MH_PROFILE
> for a very very long time now, and had no idea that the
> default editor had been switched away from prompter
> (and I am glad to hear it has been switched back) - but
> I have continued to use prompter from time to time,
> especially with "repl" via the -editor switch (-ed) when
> the reply is going to be something very simple, like "OK"
> It is much easier & quicker to drive than any real editor
> for things like that.
> 
> I also suspect that many of you do not recall using MH
> back when the only real alternative editors to prompter
> were not vi or emacs (or semi-clones to one of those)
> but ed or Rand's 'e' and a few others similar (em from
> QMC for example) - I don't think ex is quite as old as
> MH (and vi certainly is not, not even as an ex cmd.)

Bill Joy wrote vi in 1976 while at UCB. I believe MH came
later. Initially I used vi and Mail but later switched to e
and mh -- may be because @ Fortune we now had Dave Yost and
Rick Kiessig they'd both worked at Rand and on at least the
Rand Editor.  From what I recollect, more people used Mail
than MH and I believe the $EDITOR/$VISUAL convention for
calling an editor was well established. But it is possible
MH picked this up much later.

-- 
nmh-workers
https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/nmh-workers

Re: [nmh-workers] Unnecessary dependency on vi???

[Robert Elz]

Date:Sun, 18 Mar 2018 13:47:24 -0400
From:David Levine 
Message-ID:  <2558-1521395244.835...@bijr.xoxa.ckyx>


  | The precendence in order from high to low is:  1) editor
  | component, 2) VISUAL, 3) EDITOR.

Actually, just to be precise, before those comes the -editor
switch to the program (comp, repl, etc).

I too have had an "editor" component in $MH_PROFILE
for a very very long time now, and had no idea that the
default editor had been switched away from prompter
(and I am glad to hear it has been switched back) - but
I have continued to use prompter from time to time,
especially with "repl" via the -editor switch (-ed) when
the reply is going to be something very simple, like "OK"
It is much easier & quicker to drive than any real editor
for things like that.

I also suspect that many of you do not recall using MH
back when the only real alternative editors to prompter
were not vi or emacs (or semi-clones to one of those)
but ed or Rand's 'e' and a few others similar (em from
QMC for example) - I don't think ex is quite as old as
MH (and vi certainly is not, not even as an ex cmd.)

kre


-- 
nmh-workers
https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/nmh-workers

Re: [nmh-workers] Unnecessary dependency on vi???

[David Levine]

Bakul wrote:

> > Yes, it does.  Add this to your profile to preserve your current behavior:
> > Editor: vi
> > 
> > You can add it before picking up the change, without impacting
> > current behavior.
>
> There are a number of programs that allow use of an editor.
> Commands like chfn, chpass, crontab, sdiff, less/more, various
> shells etc.  Setting EDITOR or VISUAL will help there as well.

Just to be clear:

The quote above about preserving, and not impacting, current behavior
applies to the "Editor: vi" profile addition.  That profile addition
will not affect programs invoked outside of nmh.

David

-- 
nmh-workers
https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/nmh-workers

Re: [nmh-workers] Unnecessary dependency on vi???

[Bakul Shah]

> 
> Yes, it does.  Add this to your profile to preserve your current behavior:
> Editor: vi
> 
> You can add it before picking up the change, without impacting
> current behavior.

There are a number of programs that allow use of an editor.
Commands like chfn, chpass, crontab, sdiff, less/more, various
shells etc.  Setting EDITOR or VISUAL will help there as well.

-- 
nmh-workers
https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/nmh-workers

Re: [nmh-workers] Unnecessary dependency on vi???

[David Levine]

Andy wrote:

> Thus said Ken Hornstein on Sat, 17 Mar 2018 20:25:05 -0400:
>
> > Yeah, I  tried it quickly and  it seems simple enough.  And people who
> > have  editor in  their profile  or  use EDITOR/VISUAL  won't notice  a
> > change.
>
> Under what conditions will this change?

If there is no editor component in the user's profile and the user
does not have either VISUAL or EDITOR set in their environment.

Editor: prompter
Defines the editor to be used by the commands comp, dist, forw,
and repl.  If not set, the value will be taken from the VISUAL and
EDITOR environment variables.  (profile, default: prompter)

The precendence in order from high to low is:  1) editor
component, 2) VISUAL, 3) EDITOR.

> I have neither EDITOR/VISUAL nor
> profile  settings for  editor, but  maybe that  won't matter  because my
> usage patterns will never invoke prompter?

If you use comp, dist, forw, or repl, it sounds like they will
invoke prompter, via whatnow, instead of vi.

> Right now, when I run comp from the command line, I get a vi editor with
> with components in it. Is this where prompter comes in?

Yes.

> Sounds like I might  have to add something to my  profile now after this
> change is made to avoid prompter.

Yes, it does.  Add this to your profile to preserve your current behavior:
Editor: vi

You can add it before picking up the change, without impacting
current behavior.

David

-- 
nmh-workers
https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/nmh-workers

Re: [nmh-workers] Unnecessary dependency on vi???

[Andy Bradford]

Thus said Ken Hornstein on Sat, 17 Mar 2018 20:25:05 -0400:

> Yeah, I  tried it quickly and  it seems simple enough.  And people who
> have  editor in  their profile  or  use EDITOR/VISUAL  won't notice  a
> change.

Under what conditions will this change? I have neither EDITOR/VISUAL nor
profile  settings for  editor, but  maybe that  won't matter  because my
usage patterns will never invoke prompter?

Right now, when I run comp from the command line, I get a vi editor with
with components in it. Is this where prompter comes in?

Sounds like I might  have to add something to my  profile now after this
change is made to avoid prompter.

Andy
-- 
TAI64 timestamp: 40005aae8212



-- 
nmh-workers
https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/nmh-workers

Re: [nmh-workers] Unnecessary dependency on vi???

[Ralph Corderoy]

Hi Ken,

> Paul Vixie wrote:
> > prompter is what i was thinking of.

Well remembered.  I've used that too a long time ago.
For quick short emails I prefer the imperative style of giving
recipients and subject on the command line rather than interactive of
being prompted as that's a bit slower.

> > i could say ^D and something would ask "What now?" and i'd give it
> > some instruction that would _then_ start my visual editor of choice.

Like `~e' or `~v' escapes, for ed(1) and vi(1) at the start of a line
when entering body in mail(1) to upgrade when editing is required.

> > i think it should still be prompter, so that we have no editor
> > assumption or dependency.
>
> That sounds reasonable to me.  Thoughts, objections?

+1.  It also matches

Editing the Draft with prompter
https://rand-mh.sourceforge.io/book/mh/senove.html#Edipro

-- 
Cheers, Ralph.
https://plus.google.com/+RalphCorderoy

-- 
nmh-workers
https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/nmh-workers

Re: [nmh-workers] Unnecessary dependency on vi???

[Ralph Corderoy]

Hi David,

> > sensible-editor(1) that programs can fall back on.
>
> That Debian package is available (sensible-utils) on Fedora.  If a
> suitable editor can't be found via VISUAL, EDITOR, etc., it falls back
> to nano.

It tries

$VISUAL
. ~/.selected_editor
# Maybe run select-editor.
$EDITOR
$SELECTED_EDITOR
nano
nano-tiny
vi
# Error: tell user to set $EDITOR.

select-editor is run if $EDITOR isn't set and stdin is a TTY.

> It breaks when run under env -i.

No PATH confuses which(1).  I expect no PATH confuses quite a few
things.  :-)

-- 
Cheers, Ralph.
https://plus.google.com/+RalphCorderoy

-- 
nmh-workers
https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/nmh-workers

Re: [nmh-workers] Unnecessary dependency on vi???

[Ken Hornstein]

>i'm good with prompter.  i didn't know it existed, and wrote my own
>script to do much the same thing a couple of years ago, for use on my
>phone.  bringing up vi on a phone's ssh connection is...  sub-optimal.

Alright, done!

--Ken

-- 
nmh-workers
https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/nmh-workers

Re: [nmh-workers] Unnecessary dependency on vi???

[David Levine]

Ken wrote:

> That sounds reasonable to me.  Thoughts, objections?  David, I saw
> your reply and it sounds like you'd be okay with that, unless I
> misunderstood you.

I'm fine with it.

David

-- 
nmh-workers
https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/nmh-workers

Re: [nmh-workers] Unnecessary dependency on vi???

[Ken Hornstein]

>> ... it turns out the default editor back in the day (if you didn't
>> configure one with mhconfig) was "prompter", which would give you a
>> kind of very simple message input interface (but not exactly like you
>> describe).
>
>prompter is what i was thinking of. repl and forw also used it. it was 
>great, because after i screwed something up and needed to get into an 
>editor, i could say ^D and something would ask "What now?" and i'd give 
>it some instruction that would _then_ start my visual editor of choice.

Yeah, I tried it quickly and it seems simple enough.  And people who have
editor in their profile or use EDITOR/VISUAL won't notice a change.

>> That suggests to
>> me that maybe the default editor (in absence of any environment
>> variables) should be prompter, actually
>
>i think it should still be prompter, so that we have no editor 
>assumption or dependency.

That sounds reasonable to me.  Thoughts, objections?  David, I saw
your reply and it sounds like you'd be okay with that, unless I
misunderstood you.

--Ken

-- 
nmh-workers
https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/nmh-workers

Re: [nmh-workers] Unnecessary dependency on vi???

[Paul Vixie]

Ken Hornstein wrote:

... it turns out the default editor back in the day (if you didn't
configure one with mhconfig) was "prompter", which would give you a
kind of very simple message input interface (but not exactly like you
describe).


prompter is what i was thinking of. repl and forw also used it. it was 
great, because after i screwed something up and needed to get into an 
editor, i could say ^D and something would ask "What now?" and i'd give 
it some instruction that would _then_ start my visual editor of choice.


i say again: this was really, really nice. simplicity by default, and 
then all the power you asked for.



When did that change? That's ... not super clear. The default inside
of mhconfig.c has always been prompter, but somewhere between MH 5
and MH 6 the default configuration file had line added that sets the
editor to be /usr/bin/vi. But a lot of the example site templates
specify prompter, so what you GOT seems to depend on how things were
configured by whomever set up your MH installation. That suggests to
me that maybe the default editor (in absence of any environment
variables) should be prompter, actually


i think it should still be prompter, so that we have no editor 
assumption or dependency.



In nmh the fallback editor was always 'vi', from as far back as we
have revision history.


i probably felt this change only rarely, since by the time nmh came out, 
i was using mh primarily from within emacs, not command line.


--
P Vixie


--
nmh-workers
https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/nmh-workers

Re: [nmh-workers] Unnecessary dependency on vi???

[David Levine]

Ken wrote:

> That suggests to me that maybe
> the default editor (in absence of any environment variables) should be
> prompter, actually

My first reaction was negative, but after looking at the man page and giving
it a quick try, it might not be so bad.  Someone should volunteer to live with
it for a while, though :-)

David

-- 
nmh-workers
https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/nmh-workers

Re: [nmh-workers] Unnecessary dependency on vi???

[Ken Hornstein]

>i have not run comp without first setting VISUAL for at least two 
>decades, but when i used to do this, it would print a message like "type 
>your message below, and then hit control-D" and then read from standard 
>input. when did that change to requiring an external editor? perhaps 
>that's where it all went wrong.

Since you asked ...

Supporting the EDITOR/VISUAL environment variables is actually a nmh
thing (and is actually a recent thing).  That was added by me in
2013.  Before that you had to configure it in your .mh_profile or via
configure/mhconfig

And I went back and looked at mh 6.8 and mh 5; they were the same way.
I could find no support for any kind of simple read-from-the-terminal
message input like you describe (I didn't feel like tracking down mh 4
or mh 3).  I seem to remember that the old mail/Mail/mailx had that
behavior, though ... is it possible you're conflating things?

Ah, okay, I went back and double-checked things ... it turns out the
default editor back in the day (if you didn't configure one with
mhconfig) was "prompter", which would give you a kind of very simple
message input interface (but not exactly like you describe).  When
did that change?  That's ... not super clear.  The default inside of
mhconfig.c has always been prompter, but somewhere between MH 5 and MH
6 the default configuration file had line added that sets the editor
to be /usr/bin/vi.  But a lot of the example site templates specify
prompter, so what you GOT seems to depend on how things were configured
by whomever set up your MH installation.  That suggests to me that maybe
the default editor (in absence of any environment variables) should be
prompter, actually

In nmh the fallback editor was always 'vi', from as far back as we
have revision history.

--Ken

-- 
nmh-workers
https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/nmh-workers

Re: [nmh-workers] Unnecessary dependency on vi???

[David Levine]

Ralph wrote:

> That reminds me: Debian, and Ubuntu, have /usr/bin/editor and

Fedora doesn't.

> sensible-editor(1) that programs can fall back on.

That Debian package is available (sensible-utils) on Fedora.  If a suitable
editor can't be found via VISUAL, EDITOR, etc., it falls back to nano.

It breaks when run under env -i.

David

-- 
nmh-workers
https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/nmh-workers

Re: [nmh-workers] Unnecessary dependency on vi???

[Ralph Corderoy]

Hi Andy,

> I generally don't set VISUAL or EDITOR unless I absolutely have to
> (e.g. on Ubuntu which defaults to nano)

That reminds me: Debian, and Ubuntu, have /usr/bin/editor and
sensible-editor(1) that programs can fall back on.  What that is can be
set system-wide, or per user.
https://manned.org/sensible-editor.1
https://manned.org/select-editor.1
https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/#editors-and-pagers

-- 
Cheers, Ralph.
https://plus.google.com/+RalphCorderoy

-- 
nmh-workers
https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/nmh-workers

Re: [nmh-workers] Unnecessary dependency on vi???

[Andy Bradford]

Thus said Paul Vixie on Sat, 17 Mar 2018 08:55:41 -0700:

> i have  not run  comp without  first setting VISUAL  for at  least two
> decades, but  when i used  to do this, it  would print a  message like
> "type your message  below, and then hit control-D" and  then read from
> standard input. when did that change to requiring an external editor?

I generally don't set VISUAL or EDITOR unless I absolutely have to (e.g.
on Ubuntu  which defaults to  nano) as I generally  expect vi to  be the
default.

$ set | grep -E '(EDITOR|VISUAL)'
$ echo $?
1

Andy
-- 
TAI64 timestamp: 40005aad45d8



-- 
nmh-workers
https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/nmh-workers

Re: [nmh-workers] Unnecessary dependency on vi???

[Paul Vixie]

Ralph Corderoy wrote:

why would our build or install dependency list include any editor?


Fedora's is changing from an install dependency on /usr/bin/vi to a
Suggests one.  I haven't checked what the other distributions do.  AIUI
the idea is a user won't see

 $ comp
 unable to exec vi: No such file or directory
 whatnow: problems with edit--draft left in /home/ralph/mail/draft
 $


i have not run comp without first setting VISUAL for at least two 
decades, but when i used to do this, it would print a message like "type 
your message below, and then hit control-D" and then read from standard 
input. when did that change to requiring an external editor? perhaps 
that's where it all went wrong.


--
P Vixie


--
nmh-workers
https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/nmh-workers

Re: [nmh-workers] Unnecessary dependency on vi???

[David Levine]

Ralph wrote:

> I'd prefer that if they don't have vi installed then they don't gain it.

Fedora's slogans include "Less setup".  So I can see it wanting to avoid your
comp fail scenario.

If we want to do anything, nmh could add support to install-mh to ask the user
what editor what they want to use, and put the result in their new profile.

David

-- 
nmh-workers
https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/nmh-workers

Re: [nmh-workers] Unnecessary dependency on vi???

[Ralph Corderoy]

Hi Paul,

> i set VISUAL to /usr/local/bin/jove,

Don't forget this is a public mailing list.

> why would our build or install dependency list include any editor?

Fedora's is changing from an install dependency on /usr/bin/vi to a
Suggests one.  I haven't checked what the other distributions do.  AIUI
the idea is a user won't see

$ comp
unable to exec vi: No such file or directory
whatnow: problems with edit--draft left in /home/ralph/mail/draft
$

but instead they'll find themselves with a draft on the screen and lots
of beeping when they try to do anything.  Including getting out of `this
damn nmh' thing back to the shell.  :-)  If they don't have vi already
installed, they may not know how to use it.

The background: get_default_editor() is called for `edit' at the
whatnow(1) prompt, and to set the miscased `mheditor' in the environment
of a `whatnowproc' so it knows what to use.  It's the value of `editor'
if it's set in the context, else $VISUAL if set, else $EDITOR if set,
else `vi'.  `vi' as the fallback because it's POSIX.  But then so's
ed(1).  At least ed responds more visually than audibly.

I'd prefer that if they don't have vi installed then they don't gain it.
Perhaps the `problems with edit' message can benefit from knowing the
exec of the editor failed and point the user at the right bit of a man
page.

-- 
Cheers, Ralph.
https://plus.google.com/+RalphCorderoy

-- 
nmh-workers
https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/nmh-workers

Re: [nmh-workers] Unnecessary dependency on vi???

[Bakul Shah]

On 16 Mar 2018 14:28:15 -0600 "Andy Bradford"  wrote:
Andy Bradford writes:
> Thus said Paul Fox on Wed, 14 Mar 2018 14:59:57 -0400:
> 
> > The big exception  that I remember was his  implementation of infinite
> > undo using '.', which broke a corner  case of the redo command, but is
> > so easy to use.
> 
> Oddly enough, that is one exception that I praise and the one difference
> between nvi and vim that I cannot  live without. I use infinite undo via
> '.'  all the  time,  but not  only  that,  I'm impressed  by  how I  can
> ``reverse'' the direction of the undo and '.' repeats that decision.

Early in Vim's life I had emailed Moolenaar to suggest that
vim emulate nvi's behavior for the '.' command, at least as an
option.  He declined to do so and I continued using nvi.
Rapidly switching undo/redo direction in vim with e.g.
uuu^R^R^Ruu^R^R is much harder on my left thumb (& brain) than
vi's u..u..u.u. May be because reversing direction == u turn!

-- 
nmh-workers
https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/nmh-workers

Re: [nmh-workers] Unnecessary dependency on vi???

[Paul Fox]

paul wrote:
 > rewind, please. i set VISUAL to /usr/local/bin/jove, and never have used 
 > any version of vi with any version of mh, ever.

that was a simple case of mistaken identity.

paul

 > 
 > why would our build or install dependency list include any editor?
 > 
 > -- 
 > nmh-workers
 > https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/nmh-workers
 > 


=--
paul fox, p...@foxharp.boston.ma.us (arlington, ma)


-- 
nmh-workers
https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/nmh-workers

Re: [nmh-workers] Unnecessary dependency on vi???

[Paul Vixie]

rewind, please. i set VISUAL to /usr/local/bin/jove, and never have used 
any version of vi with any version of mh, ever.


why would our build or install dependency list include any editor?

--
nmh-workers
https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/nmh-workers

Re: [nmh-workers] Unnecessary dependency on vi???

[Andy Bradford]

Thus said Paul Fox on Wed, 14 Mar 2018 14:59:57 -0400:

> The big exception  that I remember was his  implementation of infinite
> undo using '.', which broke a corner  case of the redo command, but is
> so easy to use.

Oddly enough, that is one exception that I praise and the one difference
between nvi and vim that I cannot  live without. I use infinite undo via
'.'  all the  time,  but not  only  that,  I'm impressed  by  how I  can
``reverse'' the direction of the undo and '.' repeats that decision.

Andy
-- 
TAI64 timestamp: 40005aac2904



-- 
nmh-workers
https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/nmh-workers

Re: [nmh-workers] Unnecessary dependency on vi???

[Paul Fox]

andy wrote:
 > Thus said Paul Fox on Tue, 13 Mar 2018 09:50:24 -0400:
 > 
 > > well, part of  me wants to take  offense at that, since  it's not like
 > > vim is completely  compatible with the "real" vi. nvi  is much closer,
 > > in that regard, and should really be  the rewrite that gets to use the
 > > /usr/bin/vi name.
 > 
 > As a long-time  nvi user, I'm always annoyed that  vim doesn't work more
 > like vi. :-)

:-)  I confess I haven't used nvi much, but I got the impression from
Keith Bostic (completely unbiased, I'm sure :-) that he'd done a pretty
good job on compatibility.  The big exception that I remember was his
implementation of infinite undo using '.', which broke a corner case
of the redo command, but is so easy to use.  I shamelessly stole that
UI when I implemented infinite undo in vile, and still love it.

On the other hand, I'm impressed that anyone can even remember what
"real" vi was like these days, given how long its been since most
people used it.  though I suppose Solaris still ships it.  For a
couple more years.

paul
=--
paul fox, p...@foxharp.boston.ma.us (arlington, ma, where it's 36.3 degrees)


-- 
nmh-workers
https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/nmh-workers

Re: [nmh-workers] Unnecessary dependency on vi???

[Andy Bradford]

Thus said Paul Fox on Tue, 13 Mar 2018 09:50:24 -0400:

> well, part of  me wants to take  offense at that, since  it's not like
> vim is completely  compatible with the "real" vi. nvi  is much closer,
> in that regard, and should really be  the rewrite that gets to use the
> /usr/bin/vi name.

As a long-time  nvi user, I'm always annoyed that  vim doesn't work more
like vi. :-)

Andy
-- 
TAI64 timestamp: 40005aa96d14



-- 
nmh-workers
https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/nmh-workers

Re: [nmh-workers] Unnecessary dependency on vi???

[David Levine]

Ralph wrote:

> Weak dependencies are a recentish addition to RPM specs AIUI.

Thanks.  These don't seem to be widely used; of the 2,945 packages
on my Fedora 27 system, only 78 have a recommendation or
suggestion, and some of those are related packages.

But it'll have to wait for Fedora 29.  The Fedora 28 ship has
sailed, and I don't think it's worth cranking out updates for
Fedora 26-28 just for this.

> Looking at https://src.fedoraproject.org/rpms/nmh/blob/master/f/nmh.spec
> I'd say /usr/sbin/sendmail, libcurl, and w3m are similarly weak?

libcurl is there so that nmh configures and builds with OAUTH
support.  It doesn't need to be an explicit Requires; rpmbuild
notices that it's used, due to the BuildRequires, and implicitly
includes the run-time requirement.  And, libdb and readline don't
need explicit BuildRequires because their -devel packages require
their presence.

w3m is used (on Fedora) for these:
mhbuild-convert-text/html: charset="%{charset}"; /usr/bin/w3m -dump 
${charset:+-I} ${charset:+"$charset"} -O utf-8 -T text/html %F  | fmt | sed 
's/^\(.\)/> \1/; s/^$/>/;'
mhfixmsg-format-text/html: charset="%{charset}"; /usr/bin/w3m -dump 
${charset:+-I} ${charset:+"$charset"} -O utf-8 -T text/html %F
mhshow-show-text/html: charset="%{charset}"; %l/usr/bin/w3m -dump 
${charset:+-I} ${charset:+"$charset"} -T text/html %F

The net result is that I'm thinking of these changes to the spec:

-Requires:  /usr/bin/vi
-Requires:  /usr/sbin/sendmail
+Suggests:  /usr/bin/vi
+Suggests:  /usr/sbin/sendmail

-Requires:  libcurl
-BuildRequires: libdb
-BuildRequires: readline

> An aside: Does any package other than vim provide /usr/bin/vi?  I think
> the command might be `dnf provides /usr/bin/vi'.

Doesn't look like it:

$ dnf whatprovides /usr/bin/vi
vim-minimal-2:8.0.1187-1.fc27.x86_64 : A minimal version of the VIM editor
Repo: @System
Matched from:
Filename: /usr/bin/vi

(I excised updates of vim-minimal from the output.)

> I expect it's a bunch of different sized vim-based packages.

Other packages provide derivatives with slightly different names, e.g.,
/usr/bin/vim, and /usr/bin/nvi and /usr/bin/vile as you found.

David

-- 
nmh-workers
https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/nmh-workers

Re: [nmh-workers] Unnecessary dependency on vi???

[Ralph Corderoy]

Hi Paul,

> i thought we were talking about (the fedora equivalent of)
> /etc/alternatives, not installed pathname:

Nope.

> surely the nmh package requirement isn't on a a specific provider of
> {/usr}/bin/vi, is it?

Yep.  Please examine
https://src.fedoraproject.org/rpms/nmh/blob/master/f/nmh.spec,
especially line eight.  :-)

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging:Alternatives#Usage_within_Fedora
says Fedora's `alternatives' system mustn't be used for vi, and explains
why.

-- 
Cheers, Ralph.
https://plus.google.com/+RalphCorderoy

-- 
nmh-workers
https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/nmh-workers

Re: [nmh-workers] Unnecessary dependency on vi???

[Paul Fox]

ralph wrote:
 > Hi Paul,
 > 
 > > > An aside: Does any package other than vim provide /usr/bin/vi?  I
 > > > think the command might be `dnf provides /usr/bin/vi'.  I expect
 > > > it's a bunch of different sized vim-based packages.
 > >
 > > vile is another vi alternative, on all linux distributions, and at
 > > least some of the bsd distros.
 > 
 > https://src.fedoraproject.org/rpms/vile/blob/master/f/vile.spec provides
 > /usr/bin/vile.
 > 
 > > i'd bet nvi is also available everywhere, though i haven't checked
 > > that, since i don't use it.
 > 
 > Yes, I checked
 > https://src.fedoraproject.org/rpms/nvi/blob/master/f/nvi.spec and it
 > provides /usr/bin/nvi, not .../vi.

i thought we were talking about (the fedora equivalent of)
/etc/alternatives, not installed pathname:

$ update-alternatives --list vi
/usr/bin/levee
/usr/bin/nvi
/usr/bin/vile
/usr/bin/vim.basic
/usr/bin/vim.tiny

(i've never tried levee -- i only just now installed it to make the list
longer. ;-)

surely the nmh package requirement isn't on a a specific provider of
{/usr}/bin/vi, is it?  i guess i would have never noticed, since vim
is always present before i install vile, and i never bother removing it.

paul

 > 
 > (I was unable to find a web-based equivalent of Debian's or Ubuntu's
 > package search for Fedora.)
 > 
 > > ubuntu provides elvis, but i think it's more of a toy at this point.
 > 
 > Not at the above web site.  And there was Stevie, vim's ancestor.
 > That's not there either.
 > 
 > -- 
 > Cheers, Ralph.
 > https://plus.google.com/+RalphCorderoy
 > 
 > -- 
 > nmh-workers
 > https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/nmh-workers
 > 


=--
paul fox, p...@foxharp.boston.ma.us (arlington, ma, where it's 40.8 degrees)


-- 
nmh-workers
https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/nmh-workers

Re: [nmh-workers] Unnecessary dependency on vi???

[Ralph Corderoy]

Hi Paul,

> > An aside: Does any package other than vim provide /usr/bin/vi?  I
> > think the command might be `dnf provides /usr/bin/vi'.  I expect
> > it's a bunch of different sized vim-based packages.
>
> vile is another vi alternative, on all linux distributions, and at
> least some of the bsd distros.

https://src.fedoraproject.org/rpms/vile/blob/master/f/vile.spec provides
/usr/bin/vile.

> i'd bet nvi is also available everywhere, though i haven't checked
> that, since i don't use it.

Yes, I checked
https://src.fedoraproject.org/rpms/nvi/blob/master/f/nvi.spec and it
provides /usr/bin/nvi, not .../vi.

(I was unable to find a web-based equivalent of Debian's or Ubuntu's
package search for Fedora.)

> ubuntu provides elvis, but i think it's more of a toy at this point.

Not at the above web site.  And there was Stevie, vim's ancestor.
That's not there either.

-- 
Cheers, Ralph.
https://plus.google.com/+RalphCorderoy

-- 
nmh-workers
https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/nmh-workers

Re: [nmh-workers] Unnecessary dependency on vi???

[Paul Fox]

ralph wrote:
 > An aside: Does any package other than vim provide /usr/bin/vi?  I think
 > the command might be `dnf provides /usr/bin/vi'.  I expect it's a bunch
 > of different sized vim-based packages.

vile is another vi alternative, on all linux distributions, and at least
some of the bsd distros.

i'd bet nvi is also available everywhere, though i haven't checked that,
since i don't use it.

ubuntu provides elvis, but i think it's more of a toy at this point.

paul
=--
paul fox, p...@foxharp.boston.ma.us (arlington, ma, where it's 39.2 degrees)


-- 
nmh-workers
https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/nmh-workers

Re: [nmh-workers] Unnecessary dependency on vi???

[Ralph Corderoy]

Hi David,

> > (I think under debian/ubuntu, the vi dependency would be a
> > "suggested" installation, not a requirement.)
>
> I don't know of a good way to do that in a Fedora RPM spec.  I don't
> consider mentioning it in the rpm description to be "good".

I've been poking about.  Here's some links and extracts from them.


https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging:Guidelines#Effect_of_the_UsrMove_Fedora_Feature
Things that history has placed into /bin, /sbin, /lib, or /lib64
should be listed in the %files section as being in those
directories.

So it's reasonable that Fedora's vim package recently moved /bin/vi to
/usr/bin;  it's far too big for /bin.  :-)

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging:Guidelines#Weak_dependencies
Weak dependencies (Recommends:, Suggests:, Supplements: and
Enhances:) MAY be used to specify relationships between packages
which are less strict than mandatory requirements.

Weak dependencies are a recentish addition to RPM specs AIUI.

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging:WeakDependencies
Weak dependencies should be used where possible to minimize the
installation for reasonable use cases, especially for building
virtual machines or containers that have a single purpose only and
do not require the full feature set of the package.

`where possible'.  nmh is readily usable without a text editor, e.g. for
incoming mail filtering, so I don't think it should be a Requires.
Looking at https://src.fedoraproject.org/rpms/nmh/blob/master/f/nmh.spec
I'd say /usr/sbin/sendmail, libcurl, and w3m are similarly weak?

An aside: Does any package other than vim provide /usr/bin/vi?  I think
the command might be `dnf provides /usr/bin/vi'.  I expect it's a bunch
of different sized vim-based packages.

Package cronie provides crontab(1) that F27's
https://manned.org/crontab/b340cf46 says uses $VISUAL, then $EDITOR, for
`-e' but I don't see a dependency for an editor, weak or otherwise, in
https://src.fedoraproject.org/rpms/cronie/blob/master/f/cronie.spec.  I
suspect other editor-using packages also ignore this.  I don't think
Fedora has a generic feature package like `text-editor' that multiple
editor packages can satisfy;  certainly
https://src.fedoraproject.org/rpms/ed/blob/master/f/ed.spec doesn't seem
to provide it.

-- 
Cheers, Ralph.
https://plus.google.com/+RalphCorderoy

-- 
nmh-workers
https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/nmh-workers

Re: [nmh-workers] Unnecessary dependency on vi???

[David Levine]

Kevin wrote:

> For what it's worth, Fedora 26 has the same issue as 27.

The issue was fixed for Fedora 26 (and Fedora 28 and EL6 and EPEL 7).
The Fedora 26 package was moved to stable 2 hours ago, so should soon
be available as an update:
https://bodhi.fedoraproject.org/updates/FEDORA-2018-ca3ff1ee8d

If you'd like to help expedite nmh 1.7.1's passage through the
testing process for the benefit of users on Fedora 26, please
click under the green +1 button and then the "Add Comment &
Feedback" button on:
https://bodhi.fedoraproject.org/updates/FEDORA-2018-4bfdedd0a9

David

-- 
nmh-workers
https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/nmh-workers

Re: [nmh-workers] Unnecessary dependency on vi???

[Kevin Cosgrove]

On 11 March 2018 at 14:19, David Levine  wrote:

> Jon wrote:
> 
> > Things always get weird as one's installed distribution gets crusty.
> > My Fedora Core 27 installation recently started whining about conflicts
> > between nmh and vi.  Surprised me.
> 
> Here's why:
> 
> 1) nmh depended on /bin/vi
> 2) vim-minimal recently changed what it provides from /bin/vi to /usr/bin/vi
> 
> The even-more-recent fix was to change the nmh dependency from /bin/vi
> to /usr/bin/vi.
> 
> That nmh package is currently in testing if you want to get it
> from there.  If you'd like to help expedite nmh's (1.7.1) passage
> through the testing process for the benefit of users on Fedora 27,
> please click under the green +1 button and then the "Add Comment &
> Feedback" button on:
> https://bodhi.fedoraproject.org/updates/FEDORA-2018-05bd7b4801

For what it's worth, Fedora 26 has the same issue as 27.

Cheerio...



--
Kevin



-- 
nmh-workers
https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/nmh-workers

Re: [nmh-workers] Unnecessary dependency on vi???

[David Levine]

Here's the Fedora bug report:

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1551126

The initial report included this:

Additional info:
I guess that shows how few people still use nmh ;^)

David

-- 
nmh-workers
https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/nmh-workers

Re: [nmh-workers] Unnecessary dependency on vi???

[David Levine]

Paul F wrote:

> I don't think anyone participating was suggesting that there be a
> hard dependency on vi.

The decision on Fedora was made prior to that discussion.  (And, it
was made on Fedora, not by nmh.)

> (I think under
> debian/ubuntu, the vi dependency would be a "suggested" installation,
> not a requirement.)

I don't know of a good way to do that in a Fedora RPM spec.  I don't
consider mentioning it in the rpm description to be "good".

David

-- 
nmh-workers
https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/nmh-workers

Re: [nmh-workers] Unnecessary dependency on vi???

[David Levine]

Jon wrote:

> Things always get weird as one's installed distribution gets crusty.
> My Fedora Core 27 installation recently started whining about conflicts
> between nmh and vi.  Surprised me.

Here's why:

1) nmh depended on /bin/vi
2) vim-minimal recently changed what it provides from /bin/vi to /usr/bin/vi

The even-more-recent fix was to change the nmh dependency from /bin/vi
to /usr/bin/vi.

That nmh package is currently in testing if you want to get it
from there.  If you'd like to help expedite nmh's (1.7.1) passage
through the testing process for the benefit of users on Fedora 27,
please click under the green +1 button and then the "Add Comment &
Feedback" button on:
https://bodhi.fedoraproject.org/updates/FEDORA-2018-05bd7b4801

> I don't know if anybody has given any thought as to what should be a
> dependency and what shouldn't.

The decision to add Fedora nmh dependency on vi was made over 12
years ago.  I didn't make it, but I agree with it (and I set
Editor in my profile, and EDITOR, and VISUAL to something other
than vi).  It minimizes the configuration required by a user in
order to use nmh.  If a user wants a different configuration, they
can easily change it.

> Seems to me that dependencies should
> be things necessary to build, install, and run (libraries) a program.

Note that build (BuildRequires) and run-time (Requires) dependencies
are separate for this purpose.

> Of course, I could be completely off base here if vi is actually used
> as part of the build process.  But that would seem weird to me too.

Right, vi is a run-time dependency, not a build dependency.

Ken wrote:

# we have to fall back to SOMETHING, and I think vi is a reasonable default.

Especially because vi is POSIX.

David

-- 
nmh-workers
https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/nmh-workers

Re: [nmh-workers] Unnecessary dependency on vi???

[Jon Steinhart]

Ken Hornstein writes:
> >Things always get weird as one's installed distribution gets crusty.
> >My Fedora Core 27 installation recently started whining about conflicts
> >between nmh and vi.  Surprised me.
> 
> Is this a "conflict" (as in, you can't have both of the packages
> installed at the same time) or a "requirement" (you need to have vi
> installed to use nmh)?  You say "conflict", but later on you imply
> it's a dependency issue.
> 
> FWIW, the spec file we use as a template in nmh only has a BuildRequires
> of flex and ncurses-devel, and no requirements for vi.  We don't
> necessarily have control over the dependencies used by various
> distributions in their nmh packages.
> 
> As for the the editor ... we had a discussion about that a while ago,
> and the consensus was ${VISUAL} -> ${EDITOR} -> vi.
> 
>   http://lists.nongnu.org/archive/html/nmh-workers/2013-01/msg00099.html
> 
> Does that mean that it should be a dependency of the packaging system?
> I'm unclear on that.  I'm not really interested in requiring people to
> have EDITOR/VISUAL set, so we have to fall back to SOMETHING, and I think
> vi is a reasonable default.
> 
> --Ken

Below is a recent update attempt.  It seems that part of the issue is requiring
a particular version of vi which doesn't seem necessary.

And I'm not disagreeing with the need to fall back to SOMETHING, I just think
that it makes more sense to have an error if that SOMETHING can't be found than
to have it be dependency.  After all, that SOMETHING could go away after nmh
was installed, so it would seem like that case would need to be handled anyway.

sudo dnf -y update
[sudo] password for jon: 
Last metadata expiration check: 0:59:34 ago on Fri 09 Mar 2018 07:00:04 AM PST.
Dependencies resolved.

 Problem: package nmh-1.6-14.fc27.x86_64 requires /bin/vi, but none of the 
providers can be installed
  - cannot install both vim-minimal-2:8.0.1553-1.fc27.x86_64 and 
vim-minimal-2:8.0.1527-1.fc27.x86_64
  - cannot install both vim-minimal-2:8.0.1176-1.fc27.x86_64 and 
vim-minimal-2:8.0.1553-1.fc27.x86_64
  - cannot install the best update candidate for package 
vim-minimal-2:8.0.1527-1.fc27.x86_64
  - cannot install the best update candidate for package nmh-1.6-14.fc27.x86_64

 Package Arch   Version 
  Repository   Size

Skipping packages with conflicts:
(add '--best --allowerasing' to command line to force their upgrade):
 vim-minimal x86_64 2:8.0.1176-1.fc27   
  fedora  532 k
 vim-minimal x86_64 2:8.0.1553-1.fc27   
  updates 540 k

Transaction Summary

Skip  2 Packages


-- 
nmh-workers
https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/nmh-workers

Re: [nmh-workers] Unnecessary dependency on vi???

[Ralph Corderoy]

Hi Jon,

> Things always get weird as one's installed distribution gets crusty.
> My Fedora Core 27 installation

What is Fedora Core 27?  :-)  Fedora 26 is the latest version, so 27
might be Fedora Devel, but then you said it's crusty as if the 27 is a
typo for something older, but they stopped calling it Core with Core 6,
which is very crusty;  2006.

> I think that a run-time error message of the form "No editor defined.
> Set EDITOR or VISUAL in your environment , or Editor in your
> .mh_profile" is a better way to go.

It would be nice to see what you're seeing.

Using $VISUAL, $EDITOR, then `vi', as Ken said, is fine, but should not
create a packaging `requires' on a `vi', or even a `suggests' IMO.  As
Paul said, the error message when running vi fails just needs to be
clear.  I imagine Emacs users out there would not like to have to
install vi just for this;  imagine if it was the other way around.  :-)

-- 
Cheers, Ralph.
https://plus.google.com/+RalphCorderoy

-- 
nmh-workers
https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/nmh-workers

Re: [nmh-workers] Unnecessary dependency on vi???

[Paul Fox]

ken wrote:
 > >Things always get weird as one's installed distribution gets crusty.
 > >My Fedora Core 27 installation recently started whining about conflicts
 > >between nmh and vi.  Surprised me.
 > 
 > Is this a "conflict" (as in, you can't have both of the packages
 > installed at the same time) or a "requirement" (you need to have vi
 > installed to use nmh)?  You say "conflict", but later on you imply
 > it's a dependency issue.
 > 
 > FWIW, the spec file we use as a template in nmh only has a BuildRequires
 > of flex and ncurses-devel, and no requirements for vi.  We don't
 > necessarily have control over the dependencies used by various
 > distributions in their nmh packages.
 > 
 > As for the the editor ... we had a discussion about that a while ago,
 > and the consensus was ${VISUAL} -> ${EDITOR} -> vi.
 > 
 >   http://lists.nongnu.org/archive/html/nmh-workers/2013-01/msg00099.html
 > 
 > Does that mean that it should be a dependency of the packaging system?
 > I'm unclear on that.  I'm not really interested in requiring people to
 > have EDITOR/VISUAL set, so we have to fall back to SOMETHING, and I think
 > vi is a reasonable default.

I remember that thread.  I don't think anyone participating was
suggesting that there be a hard dependency on vi.  As long as it's
clear from the docs (or the error message) that you can choose the
editor of your choice by setting an environment variable, then the
default of vi is just a nicety.  So Jon's reported behavior should
be considered a bug in his distribution.  (I think under
debian/ubuntu, the vi dependency would be a "suggested" installation,
not a requirement.)

paul
=--
paul fox, p...@foxharp.boston.ma.us (arlington, ma, where it's 42.6 degrees)


-- 
nmh-workers
https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/nmh-workers

Re: [nmh-workers] Unnecessary dependency on vi???

[Ken Hornstein]

>Things always get weird as one's installed distribution gets crusty.
>My Fedora Core 27 installation recently started whining about conflicts
>between nmh and vi.  Surprised me.

Is this a "conflict" (as in, you can't have both of the packages
installed at the same time) or a "requirement" (you need to have vi
installed to use nmh)?  You say "conflict", but later on you imply
it's a dependency issue.

FWIW, the spec file we use as a template in nmh only has a BuildRequires
of flex and ncurses-devel, and no requirements for vi.  We don't
necessarily have control over the dependencies used by various
distributions in their nmh packages.

As for the the editor ... we had a discussion about that a while ago,
and the consensus was ${VISUAL} -> ${EDITOR} -> vi.

  http://lists.nongnu.org/archive/html/nmh-workers/2013-01/msg00099.html

Does that mean that it should be a dependency of the packaging system?
I'm unclear on that.  I'm not really interested in requiring people to
have EDITOR/VISUAL set, so we have to fall back to SOMETHING, and I think
vi is a reasonable default.

--Ken

-- 
nmh-workers
https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/nmh-workers

[nmh-workers] Unnecessary dependency on vi???

[Jon Steinhart]

Things always get weird as one's installed distribution gets crusty.
My Fedora Core 27 installation recently started whining about conflicts
between nmh and vi.  Surprised me.

I don't know if anybody has given any thought as to what should be a
dependency and what shouldn't.  Seems to me that dependencies should
be things necessary to build, install, and run (libraries) a program.
Not other companion programs on the system.  I think that a run-time
error message of the form "No editor defined.  Set EDITOR or VISUAL
in your environment , or Editor in your .mh_profile" is a better way
to go.

Of course, I could be completely off base here if vi is actually used
as part of the build process.  But that would seem weird to me too.

Jon

-- 
nmh-workers
https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/nmh-workers