Re: [nmh-workers] Unnecessary dependency on vi???

[Paul Fox]

ralph wrote:
 > Hi Steffen,
 > 
 > > > mail(1) had the `~e' escape and then added a `~v' one, with VISUAL
 > > > and EDITOR environment variables echoing the cpp(1) macro names of
 > > > the default values.  Kurt Shoens, address@hidden, is down
 > > > as the author in BSD-1-253-gc145e9e0ab5 of
 > > > https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo.
 > >
 > > BSD Mail had both of ~v and ~e from the very start.  I know of no
 > > known released file which acted otherwise.
 > 
 > But peering at doc/Mail/mail3.nr in BSD-1-3-gfc8c50acc08, so just after
 > BSD 1 was cut, I see it documents all the tilde escapes and has `~e' but
 > no `~v'.
 > https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo/blob/fc8c50acc0870bf28753d3508770428682e915bb/doc/Mail/mail3.nr
 > 
 > By the time of BSD-1-54-ge684660a6a2, src/Mail/Mail.help.~ lists both.
 > https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo/blob/e684660a6a291c1e4672912bc1b80ffb00934623/src/Mail/Mail.help.%7E
 > 
 > So although the released code had both, I think it's likely that `~e'
 > was there on its own, and then `~v' added as ex's vi mode came along.
 > I also noticed that Mail's string option was at one point `EDITOR' for one
 > and `VISEDITOR' for the other;  also suggestive that one came first
 > rather than both together.
 > 

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=----------------------
paul fox, address@hidden (arlington, ma, where it's 31.3 degrees)