Re: [Nmh-workers] $editalt and -noatfile

[Ken Hornstein]

>$editalt just seems out of place to me.  It's the only
>lower-case environment variable that doesn't start with "mh".

I understand your issue, but we lack a time machine to go back and
find the person responsible to complain about it :-)  I see it predates
the conversion of MH to RCS.

>Looking at the descriptions of $editalt and $mhfolder in
>mh-profile(5), I think we should move the description from
>$editalt to $mhaltmsg.  And keep $editalt, of course, but
>just note that it's a synonym for $mhaltmsg.

So ... it looks like editalt was guaranteed only to be available
for the editor.  Changing it does nothing.  mhaltmsg actually changes
the behavior of programs (like send), so saying they're synonyms
isn't quite correect.  In theory you could change that in a custom
whatnowproc to do something.  Okay, I don't know how common a custom
whatnowproc is nowadays, or what you would do with changing mhaltmsg.
Even though it's awkwardly named I personally view that interface
as stable and I'm reluctant to mess with it.

--Ken