Mailer questions and a Curses bug (was: mailx for 3b1 ver 3.0)

[Kevin O'Gorman]

In article <8014 at alice.UUCP> wilber at alice.UUCP writes:
>kevin at kosman.UUCP writes:
>>However, as an ex-mailx-from-the-store user, I can recommend mush, which
>>was recently posted to the comp.sources.somethingorother group.  It has
>>stuff in it for tailoring to the UNIX PC.  While still imperfect, it is
>>a better tool with its bugs than mailx is in its perfection.
>
>Right now I'm still using ye olde crufty standard-issue-out-of-the-box mail,
>but I read and write mail with Emac's rmail.  I would like to know what
>advantages, if any, there are to using one of mailx, smail, mush, etc., for
>someone who uses Emacs.

Sorry, can't really help with this.  Emacs is more than I want to try to
really learn.  I once in a while edit with it, but I'm really a vi user.
Thus, I cannot make comparisons.

Mush is a "user agent" -- i.e. it presents the user interface for dealing
with mail.  Mush has many options and commands, most of which you set once,
or set up in your .mushrc file, and forget about.  It presents the incoming
mail, allows you to do things to the letters or groups of letters, (like
sort according to sender, save everything from mike, read some of it,
print it, etc).  It allows you to make replies, it aliases (i.e. you say
"To: users" and the mail goes to all of them), it appends your signature
(which may depend on the recipient), etc.

Mailx is another user agent, with similar but less elaborate features.
It is tty oriented, as opposed to the mush curses-style interface.

Smail is an intermediary between the user agent and your favorite transport
mechanism.  It can handle coexisting with sendmail, but I use it without.
It is useful in the uucp world because it reads a pathalias database and
creates an appropriate route for you.  It can be used to reroute mail based
on the uucp maps.  I use it mostly because it can understand domain addresses
and get mail going right (thus, I can have To: mml at magnus, and it will get
there).  This last is useful especially when dealing with other people's
return addresses, or with addresses gleaned from net news.

It calls sendmail, the erstwhile /bin/mail, or uux depending on the
destination and the configuration.  You can use it directly, or you can
have your user agent call it.  Used directly, its user interface is like
the original /bin/mail.

>
>> [ more puffery from me, and a mention of the one problem I knew of,
>>   which has since been removed (not exactly solved) ]
>
> [description of curses bug which is not the problem]
>
>>... I use mush and smail (both are supplied with sources).
>
>What are the advantages of using both of these together?

As above, they are different animals, and can be used separately or together
according to the need.