Re: [Nmh-workers] Feature Request: Comments in $HOME/.mh_profile

[Ken Hornstein]

>I and at least one other user -- and probably many others, have .mh_profile
>entries that we added years ago, for reasons now obscure and not remembered.
>There ought to be an easy way to incorporate comments in that file. As I read
>the man page, there is none provided.

Yeah .... let me speak on that a bit.

You probably have noticed that the config file kinda looks like a RFC-822
message message, sans body.  That is not a coincidence.

Much to my surprise I discovered along the way that the config file
is read in with .... wait for it .... m_getfld().  Yes, again,
m_getfld() is the cause of this problem.  No doubt it is also
responsible for Global Warming, the USA's War on Drugs, and the
cancellation of Arrested Development.

So what's the solution?  Well, m_getfld() needs to die.  Maybe me,
Paul Vixie, and Lyndon Nerenberg need to get together and kill it
once and for all; this might involve a ritual sacrifice, I'm not
sure at this point.  But in all seriousness ... we've talked about
more integrated MIME support, and Lyndon made some very good points
about putting directives in draft messages instead of the pseudo-headers
we use now.  This is all hindered by the current m_getfld()
implementation.  I'm not sure when that's going to happen ... I
think I'm going to get busy soon, so I don't know if I can put a
lot of effort into it in the short term.

I see that Earl has pointed out (in hindsight) a stupidly simple solution:
Make a comment that looks like a RFC-822 header.  Seems like a reasonable
workaround for now.

--Ken