Re: [Nmh-workers] temporary files

[David Levine]

Ken wrote:

> Because ... I'm writing the code, and I get to make the decision? :-)
>
> In all seriousness ... it's a balancing act between "move nmh forward"
> and "keep around existing interfaces".  So I have to make a judgement
> call, and my judgement is to add switches.  If someone ELSE wants to
> write the code, they can use their judgement.
>
> There are practical concerns as well.  Specifically:
>
> - A LOT of people apparantly just take whatever the package manager
>   chooses for the options.  That means effectively that if it's an
>   option which is turned off by default, that means it's turned off
>   for most people.

- Just a guess, but I expect that most people who use
  prepackaged nmh don't use @.  (Again assuming no use by
  mh-e and xmh.)

- And the facts that there's only one @, and that the user
  won't get a @ if they can't write to the directory, means
  that they really have to know what they're doing with it.

- It really is bad form to open a file in the current
  directory.  Someone finally got burned by it, though
  admittedly with the help of su.  This is one ugly default
  that really needs to be phased out.  If someone wants to
  keep using it, they'll have the run-time/profile option to
  do so.

How about this:

* Add the switches.
* Default to disabled.
* I'll write the code :-)

If we prefer to default to the current behavior (@ enabled)
but deprecate that default, OK by me.

David

nmh fun fact of the day:  mhn was deprecated in June 2001.