Re: [Nmh-workers] whatnowproc tab completion

[norm]

Ralph Corderoy <address@hidden> writes:
>
>Hi,
>
>Jon Steinhart wrote:
>> > I'm thinking about adding tab completion for file and directory
>> > names for whatnowproc.  Is that on anyone's to-do list??
>> >
>> > steve
>>
>> Not on my list but it be great.
>
>I've no doubt some would find it useful and use it.  But I wonder if I'm
>alone in noticing a move to have more and more functionality at the
>whatnow prompt.  We're tending more towards mutt and away from the
>concept of having a group of commands that each do one thing, do it
>well, and work together in the existing shell.  That's where I normally
>cd and use tab completion.  :-)
>
>No problem, if that's what people want, but there's clearly room for
>something that takes MH's strong points and applies them afresh.

For whatever it's worth, I very strongly agree. For the record, the whatnow
feature was with mh almost from the very beginning. I believed then and believe
now that it was a mistake.

It amounts to trying to duplicate the functionality of a shell. One can think of
bash, csh, zsh etc as part of nmh. When mh was first developed shells were
pretty primitive compared to contemporary shells, but as shells become more
powerful so so does nmh.

More importantly I believe that the existence of the whatnow feature has had an
insidious effect on the architecture of mh.

But, what do I know.






    Norman Shapiro
    798 Barron Avenue
    Palo Alto CA 94306-3109
    (650) 565-8215
    address@hidden