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

[Steffen Nurpmeso]

Bakul Shah <address@hidden> wrote:
 |On Mar 20, 2018, at 5:04 PM, 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/fc8c50acc0870bf28753d\
 |> 3508770428682e915bb/doc/Mail/mail3.nr
 |
 |<nitpick>
 |This is a doc. bug! ~v is mentioned in mail7.nr in the
 |same fc8c50acc0 "commit". This has April 19, 1979 date.
 |The same as the 2bsd date on TUHS unix-archives. See my
 |previous message. ~v was already in!

It was in in 2BSD, yes.

 |> By the time of BSD-1-54-ge684660a6a2, src/Mail/Mail.help.~ lists both.
 |> https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history-repo/blob/e684660a6a291c1e46729\
 |> 12bc1b80ffb00934623/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.
 |
 |This is in mail7.nr but looking at the sources, it is 'VISUAL'
 |so I suspect this is another doc. bug (both bugs are also in
 |doc/Mail/mail{3,7}.nr in the 2bsd dist. on TUHS).
 |</nitpick>

Only EDITOR and VISUAL in 2BSD, yes.

--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)