Re: [Nmh-workers] show message number scrolls off terminal?

[Andy Bradford]

Thus said Paul Fox on Sat, 07 Feb 2015 14:27:48 -0500:

> and as  eric pointed out  the other day, if  any of your  messages are
> MIME,  you'll currently  get  no per-message  headers  at all,  unless
> there's only  one of  them, in  which case you'll  get the  one you've
> mentioned.

By MIME I assume  you mean a multi-part MIME message?  For example, if I
``show'' the email that you send in response, it has:

$ show              
(Message MailingLists/nongnu/nmh-workers:12)
Date:    Sat, 07 Feb 2015 18:41:01 +0000
From:    Ralph Corderoy <address@hidden>
Subject: Re: [Nmh-workers] mhshow: unable to convert character set of...

And yet, I also see the following headers:

MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Is this  a ``MIME'' message as  you indicated? If so,  that doesn't jive
with  what  you just  said  about  when/how  the per-message  header  is
presented.

> so here's  a serious  question: are  there compelling  features within
> show that keep people using it? so much mail is MIME these days that i
> can't  imagine mhl  is  being  invoked very  often.  if "show"  became
> "mhshow" in a  future release, i wonder how many  folks would actually
> notice.

That's  a  good  question.  I'm  never  surprised  by  how  many  things
(anachronisms if  you will) that  people get  used to, or  how seemingly
trivial changes are detected by users.  This is especially true when the
program in  question has a  highly configurable interface or  allows the
user to  influence its operation in  many ways. Users often  find that 1
esoteric option that developers never thought would be used and, much to
their chagrin, sometimes use it. :-)

I continue to  use show out of habit, primarily  because I didn't really
know much  about mhshow, nor have  I seen a need  to investigate whether
mhshow  would be  better suited  to  my needs.  I suspect  that I  would
encounter some differences, as would others, in perhaps unforseen ways.

That being said, what exactly are the primary differences between them? 
Why should a user use one or the other?

As I indicated above, I've only  ever used show... (for one it's shorter
to type).

Thanks,

Andy
-- 
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