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In article <905@bdmrrr.bdm.com> shprentz@bdmrrr.bdm.com (Joel Shprentz) writes:
>Can anyone comment on how Mush, the mail user's shell just posted to 
>comp.sources.unix, compares with Elm or MH?

I've not ever used ELM or MH but have looked at them enough to know
their features.  And we've done a little bit of work on Mush to run
it under MMDF (so that we can evaluate it) ...

At the moment our problem with it is that

	1. It wants to do routing ... That feature can be turned
	   off, but still it doesn't belong in a User Agent.
	2. It doesn't follow RFC822 closely.  (I don't know the
	   details on this, but probably will eventually ...)

(Also, it core-dumped with one message that had a To: line that went
for about 30 lines ... there weren't any syntax errors, but it did go
for a looooong time ... core-dumping isn't a very friendly thing to do).

Other than that it looks like a nice program.



>Joel Shprentz                   Phone:  (703) 848-7305
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In article <905@bdmrrr.bdm.com>, shprentz@bdmrrr.bdm.com (Joel Shprentz) writes:
> Can anyone comment on how Mush, the mail user's shell just posted to 
> comp.sources.unix, compares with Elm or MH?
> 

I can't comment on MUSH yet because I am missing parts 7-12 but I can tell
you that although ELM works fine on the 3B2 that I am writting this on it
does have some problems.  I have been trying for some months now to get it
run on an INTEL 310 without success.  Don't get me wrong, it isn't ELM's 
fault, the compiler on the INTEL is a disaster.  It is also inconsistent.
It has some of the system calls for SYSV and some for V7. Makes for some
interesting programming.

MH is a new one to me but if someone can send me the sources I would be 
willing to give it a try too.  Almost anything is better than vanilla mail.

bill gunshannon


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As quoted from <926@trotter.usma.edu> by bill@trotter.usma.edu (Bill Gunshannon):
+---------------
| In article <905@bdmrrr.bdm.com>, shprentz@bdmrrr.bdm.com (Joel Shprentz) writes:
| > Can anyone comment on how Mush, the mail user's shell just posted to 
| > comp.sources.unix, compares with Elm or MH?
| > 
| 
| I can't comment on MUSH yet because I am missing parts 7-12 but I can tell
| you that although ELM works fine on the 3B2 that I am writting this on it
| does have some problems.  I have been trying for some months now to get it
| run on an INTEL 310 without success.  Don't get me wrong, it isn't ELM's 
| fault, the compiler on the INTEL is a disaster.  It is also inconsistent.
| It has some of the system calls for SYSV and some for V7. Makes for some
| interesting programming.
| 
| MH is a new one to me but if someone can send me the sources I would be 
| willing to give it a try too.  Almost anything is better than vanilla mail.
+---------------

If you thought Mush was big, wait until you see MH!  BTW, you'll have even
worse problems with MH:  it wants either sendmail or MMDF, and is workable
but extremely unsatisfying if you have neither.  Also, if you have neither
you have to kiss BellMail goodbye:  MH-MTS (the delivery scheme used if
you don't have sendmail or MMDF) wants to write mailboxes in MMDF maildrop
format rather thsn Bell-compatible format.

As for differences:  I can't speak about Mush (didn't even look at it; heck,
I've got MH and my own IMS is in the queue for a rewrite), but MH and Elm
I have used, and they have radically different philosophies.  I suspect from
the name that Mush is closer to MH than Elm, but...

Elm is a mail user agent contained in a single program plus a few auxiliary
programs; the intent is that all mail sending/reading/manipulating is done
with the Elm program itself.  It attempts to provide a wide range of capa-
bilities, but because it is a single program its capabilities are ultimately
"fixed" -- difficult to augment.  On the plus side, it's relatively small
(see below; I'm not talking mailx/ucbmail or BellMail) and has a pleasant,
easy-to-use full screen interface.

MH, on the other hand, is a collection of utilities for generating and
manipulating RFC822-compatible messages.  Note that it is not limited to
mail; MH 6.5 has support for "bboards", which are a cross between news and
mail: submissions are mailed to an alias which saves them into a special
mailbox, and standard MH utilities can be used to manipulate these mailboxes
even though they are read-only to the majority of readers.  The utilities
implement _parts_ of a mail user agent; the "utility" connecting them is
your favorite shell, supported by Unix files and pipes.  This means that if
you want to implement a new command, you can write a shell script to do it;
there are low-level utilities which can essentially turn _any_ command or
program into an MH command.  I, personally, swear by it.  However, if you're
interested in stuff that doesn't require (or at least want) the user to be a
shell guru, Elm is the better choice. (MH is definitely the mailer for "power
users".)

[My own IMS is somewhere in between; it's a single program which can be used
as a regular mailer or as building blocks, depending on how it is invoked.
The current version isn't as intelligent as it could be and has a few known
bugs, but there are still users who swear by it.]
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