Re: [Nmh-workers] Announce: Release of mmh-0.1 (meillo's mail handler)

[Paul Vixie]

On 2012-12-08 11:14 PM, markus schnalke wrote:
> ...
>
> one year ago, I've told you that I work on an experimental version
> of nmh, which I call mmh (meillo's mail handler).
>       http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/nmh-workers/2011-12/msg00038.html
>
> ...
>
> Please have a look at my master's thesis as it will answer many
> questions.

i think this is good work and i thank you for doing it. like others, i
don't agree with every assertion of fact or conclusion from such facts
as you've written them, but i do believe that your thesis advances the
state of play in MH and i think it will do much good and no harm.

quoting from <schnaike-mmh.pdf>:

> The simplications within the code were moderate. Mainly, the reading
> and writing of MMDF mailbox
> les was removed. But also, switches of packf and rcvpack could be
> removed [3916ab6]. In the message parsing function sbr/m_getfld.c,
> knowledge of MMDF packed mail boxes was removed [ 684ec30]. Further
> code structure simplications may be possible there, because only one
> single packed mailbox format is left to be supported. I have not
> worked on them yet because m_getfld() is heavily optimized and thus
> dangerous to touch. The risk of damaging the intricate workings of the
> optimized code is too high.

i would have rewritten m_getfld.c a year ago if i hadn't thought that
its API layering was one of its big problems and that a correctness
preserving transformation of code that implements a bad idea is not the
way to improve the overall system. maybe i was wrong.

let me ask: if i fix m_getfld.c by replacement, including major changes
at every call site, would that patch get any daylight? i'm not unwilling
to work on it, i'm just unwilling to let the work languish because it's
too "edgy" for a conservative code base.

paul

-- 
"It seems like the rules for automagic completion of incomplete names typed 
into browsers are going to start to look like those for the game of fizbin." 
--rick jones