Re: [Nmh-workers] sortm's Default of all is Brain-Damaged.

[David Levine]

Ralph wrote:

> Hi Paul,
> 
> > rather than changing the default behavior by default, how
> > about adding an option to change the default behavior.  :-)
> >     sortm -noall
> > would error out if no other args are given.  clearly this
> > would be most useful as profile entry.
> 
> Yes, great.

I'll commit shortly.

> Would make me happy without changing the default for existing
> content users.  Might I suggest that the default ~/.mh_profile for
> new users, if there is such a thing, have it turned on so they avoid
> the trap until they're au fait enough to turn it off.  Else they'll
> learn by being burnt.

>From the snippets that Steve provided, it looks like that could
upset exmh and MH-V.

Paul wrote:

> the man page says that "-textfield subject -limit 0" should sort
> in subject-major, date-minor order, which i think is what i want
> -- messages grouped by subject, and by date within each subject.

The man page (and verbose output if you watch that) is wrong.  If
sortm does a text sort first, it doesn't do another.  It does use
qsort.

I'll "fix" the man page to match the behavior for now, but if
someone wants to dive in and fix the code, have at it.  Search for
"qsort" in uip/sortm.c.

It looks like that behavior goes back to the '90s.  Maybe the early
'90s.

David