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

[Steffen Nurpmeso]

Hello Ralph.

Ralph Corderoy <address@hidden> wrote:
 |>> 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/fc8c50acc0870bf28753d35\
 |08770428682e915bb/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/e684660a6a291c1e4672912\
 |bc1b80ffb00934623/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.

Ok, i do not have Spinellis repo locally (yet), it is too big.
(How large is it in the end, Ralph?)

Looking at github i see at the same commit [1], and just in case
i do that right, that both of the `edit' and `visual' commands are
already available, so maybe ~v had only been forgotten by that
time?

  It is often useful to be able to invoke one of two editors,
  based on the type of terminal one is using.  To invoke
  a display oriented editor, you can use the
  .b visual
  command.  The operation of the
  .b visual
  command is otherwise identical to that of the
  .b edit
  command.

  [1] 
https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo/blob/fc8c50acc0870bf28753d3508770428682e915bb/doc/Mail/mail6.nr

Really a shame i do not have Spinellis repo yet.  In the repo
i only have history back to 2BSD...
Ciao,

--steffen
|
|Der Kragenbaer,                The moon bear,
|der holt sich munter           he cheerfully and one by one
|einen nach dem anderen runter  wa.ks himself off
|(By Robert Gernhardt)