Re: [Nmh-workers] nmh "post" doesn't read profile, fileproc ignored

[Robert Elz]

    Date:        Tue, 03 Jan 2012 13:14:02 +0000
    From:        Ralph Corderoy <address@hidden>
    Message-ID:  <address@hidden>

  | So scan(1), etc., in a script should ignore ~/.mh_profile?

I suspect it is more that most of the MH commands make no sense other
than as the MUA's interface to the user, and so the user's preferences
always make sense (even when scan is run in a script .. it is generally
run for the benefit of the user running the script).

On the other hand, sending mail can be done by a script entirely for the
script's own purposes (logging its uses for the developer, or ...) and
for that, the user's preferences as to how mail should get sent might more
reasonably want to be ignored.  This is the function that mst of us would
invoke using either "mail user" or some variation of sendmail (including
the sendmail front ends that postfix, etc, mostly all provide for exactly
this purpose), but being MH, the ability to use just MH for this purpose
makes sense, so post is the "just send this as instructed" interface, and
"send" is the front end to post that interprets the user's profile.

Personally, I'm not sure what the problem is, I can't imagine a reason anyone
would want to ever run post, other than from in a script, send is the command
for sending e-mail, and even that one only usually makes sense from the whatnow
prompt - anywhere else, to send e-mail, you use comp (you can turn off the
edit phase if you have a pre-prepared message).

I've been using MH since it was (truly) rand mh (ie: pre UCI) and I've
never felt the need to actually run the post command for anything (from
scripts, I use sendmail, or occasionally, mail, and skip MH completely).

kre