On Wed, Mar 31, 1999, Roland Rosenfeld ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) said:
|
| The compressed folders patch is a bigger problem. The patch works but
| it isn't checked against all possible problems. Additionally it is not
| programmed very clean. So Thomas seems to be waiting for someone
| cleaning up the sources before incorporating into the mainstream
| sources. I didn't hear that someone except me is using this patch, so
| I fear that nobody needs it and wants it. But maybe this only means
| that there are no problems with this patch? In the latter case the
| patch should be incorporated now. This shouldn't be a big problem,
| because it can be completely disabled by a configure option (it is
| switched off by default). You'll hopefully find actual versions of
| this patch at http://www.spinnaker.de/mutt/.
I wouldn't be without compressed support, and use it extensively and
without problems (and have, since the *original* version of the patch
was posted), with both gzip, and bzip2 folders.
This feature has been requested *many* times, by *many* people, but
despite that, TPTB refuse to incorporate it into the distribution.
As to it's not having been checked "against all possible problems" ..
.. I believe it is more thoroughly debugged than many other "features"
that are in mutt (else there wouldn't be a continuous stream of bugfix
patches against them; eg, the IMAP support).
As to "style"/"cleanliness" ... there was already one significant effort
to "mutt'ify" the feature, when the compressed statement was tossed out,
in favor of the current open/close/append-hook statements, and which
operate in a very mutt-like fashion. What (specifically) more is needed?
Perhaps if TPTB would simply view compressed folders as a variation of
the mbox mailbox *type* (much as mmdf is such a variation), there would
be a greater chance that the compressed feature would *finally* make it
into the distribution. It is certainly long overdue.
I fear, however, that having adopted a negative stance on including
compressed support in the past, there is simply too much, uhmm, "inertia"
involved in keeping this out of the distribution. Ie, the issue has
become a "political thing", and borders on being a religious issue, akin
to answering the age-old question of "which editor is better, emacs or
vi?".
Fortunately, those of us who build/install our own versions of mutt, do
have the patch to fall back on. Unfortunately, those who rely on a pre-
compiled or ISP-installed version of mutt are simply SOL ...
/kim
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"Never underestimate the power of human stupidity."
--Lazarus Long [aka R.A.Heinlein]
