Re: Rmail and headers in other than US-ASCII (RFC2047 encoded words)

Re: Rmail and headers in other than US-ASCII (RFC2047 encoded words)

[Paul Michael Reilly]

 > I have a question about where (Rmail, or an add-on MIME-package) the
 > feature of decoding RFC2047 (MIME Part Three) "encoded words" in
 > headers belongs.  Example:
 > 
 > Subject: =?iso-8859-1?q?sm=F6rg=E5s?=
 > 
 > Currently, Rmail does not support decoding of RFC2047 "encoded words"
 > in headers.

I've been doing some work on Rmail (converting to mbox format) and I
have a goal to make Rmail handle MIME in some first class fashion.
But I don't have a concrete plan on how I'm going to do that.

I'm not familiar with RFC2047 but I will take a look at it.

My gut feel is that decoding headers should be tied to some existing
mime support flag, possibly `rmail-enable-mime', or creating a new
variable `rmail-enable-mime-headers'.  But it is not high on my
priority list right now.  Feel free to create a patch if you so
desire.

FWIW, my priorities are to overhaul `unrmail' so that it deals with
mbox format, then I'm going to focus on full imap support, doing it
such that there is a clear delineation between an Rmail front end and
multiple back ends.

 > I understand (and support) motives for keeping Rmail simple, but as
 > Rmail currently supports decoding quoted-printable-encoded message
 > bodies, maybe supporting decoding of headers in Rmail wouldn't be
 > inappropriate.
 > 
 > Would Rmail want to support this?

If you send me a patch, I'll certainly try it out and integrate it
into the mbox branch.

 > It's possible to decode the headers with
 > 
 > (add-hook 'rmail-show-message-hook
 >           (lambda ()
 >             (save-restriction
 >               (let ((inhibit-read-only t))
 >                 (rmail-narrow-to-non-pruned-header)
 >                 (require 'mail-parse)
 >                 (mail-decode-encoded-word-region (point-min) (point-max))))))
 > 
 > but it has a dependency on mail-parse found in the gnus subdirectory.
 > I'm not sure if mail-parse is to be considered independent of Gnus
 > (though it seems to be documented as such in the Emacs MIME info
 > documentation), and even then it's questionable if it's appropriate to
 > have Rmail depend on it.
 > 
 > There's always the option of implementing the functionality in Rmail
 > itself, if the dependency is undesirable.

It seems to me that the function has general use.  I'm not sure where
it belongs, but it seems pretty clear that it should not be homed in
gnus for general consumption.  Maybe Richard will have some insight
here.

 > So far my experiences with the MIME packages for Rmail floating around
 > unfortunately haven't been satisfying.  I like Rmail and would like it
 > to be even more usable out-of-the-box, while keeping it simple.

I'll second that.  :-)

-pmr

Re: Rmail and headers in other than US-ASCII (RFC2047 encoded words)

[Satyaki Das]

Paul Michael Reilly <pmr@pajato.com> writes:

>  > I have a question about where (Rmail, or an add-on MIME-package) the
>  > feature of decoding RFC2047 (MIME Part Three) "encoded words" in
>  > headers belongs.  Example:
>  > 
>  > Subject: =?iso-8859-1?q?sm=F6rg=E5s?=
>  > 
>  > Currently, Rmail does not support decoding of RFC2047 "encoded words"
>  > in headers.
> 
> I've been doing some work on Rmail (converting to mbox format) and I
> have a goal to make Rmail handle MIME in some first class fashion.
> But I don't have a concrete plan on how I'm going to do that.

Recently, we added MIME display to MH-E (the Emacs interface to MH
mail). We used the MIME decoding and display code from Gnus and it
has worked out quite well. FWIW, I recommend reuse of Gnus MIME
display.

Satyaki

Re: Rmail and headers in other than US-ASCII (RFC2047 encoded words)

[Stefan Monnier]

> Recently, we added MIME display to MH-E (the Emacs interface to MH
> mail). We used the MIME decoding and display code from Gnus and it
> has worked out quite well. FWIW, I recommend reuse of Gnus MIME
> display.

I think it would be great to also reuse article-mode for editing
messages.


	Stefan

Re: Rmail and headers in other than US-ASCII (RFC2047 encoded words)

[Miles Bader]

On Tue, Feb 25, 2003 at 06:55:26PM -0500, Stefan Monnier wrote:
> I think it would be great to also reuse article-mode for editing
> messages.

I think the biggie is message-mode vs. mail-mode -- we really ought to get
rid of one of them (they're _so_ similar, I have no idea why Lars couldn't
have just hacked on mail-mode back whenever to add whatever features he
needed for gnus...).

[I'm a bit annoyed since I recently spent a bunch of time writing clever
header-filling code for message-mode (which is what I use), only to later
discover that mail-mode already had that feature.*  Gah!]

-Miles

* Of course, my version is better.. :-|
-- 
Next to fried food, the South has suffered most from oratory.
  			-- Walter Hines Page

Re: Rmail and headers in other than US-ASCII (RFC2047 encoded words)

[Stefan Monnier]

> > I think it would be great to also reuse article-mode for editing
> > messages.
> 
> I think the biggie is message-mode vs. mail-mode -- we really ought to get

Oops, `message-mode' is what I meant.

> rid of one of them (they're _so_ similar, I have no idea why Lars couldn't
> have just hacked on mail-mode back whenever to add whatever features he
> needed for gnus...).

Yes, yes, yes, ...


	Stefan

Re: Rmail and headers in other than US-ASCII (RFC2047 encoded words)

[Richard Stallman]

    I think the biggie is message-mode vs. mail-mode -- we really ought to get
    rid of one of them (they're _so_ similar, I have no idea why Lars couldn't
    have just hacked on mail-mode back whenever to add whatever features he
    needed for gnus...).

I would like to have just one, and I would like it to be Mail mode.
What features do you suggest adding to Mail mode?  (Why did you choose
Message mode?)

Re: Rmail and headers in other than US-ASCII (RFC2047 encoded words)

[Miles Bader]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:
> (Why did you choose Message mode?)

I think it was just because I got annoyed at the subtle inconsistencies
between the two interfaces (replies in Gnus always used message-mode,
presumably because it has various hooks that Gnus needs, whereas the
default `compose-mail' interface is mail-mode).

[Another issue is that they they use different buffer-naming schemes,
which I recall as being a bit confusing]

-Miles
-- 
97% of everything is grunge

Re: Rmail and headers in other than US-ASCII (RFC2047 encoded words)

[Richard Stallman]

    I think it was just because I got annoyed at the subtle inconsistencies
    between the two interfaces (replies in Gnus always used message-mode,
    presumably because it has various hooks that Gnus needs, whereas the
    default `compose-mail' interface is mail-mode).

I think that Gnus should use compose-mail.

Re: Rmail and headers in other than US-ASCII (RFC2047 encoded words)

[Miles Bader]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:
>     I think it was just because I got annoyed at the subtle inconsistencies
>     between the two interfaces (replies in Gnus always used message-mode,
>     presumably because it has various hooks that Gnus needs, whereas the
>     default `compose-mail' interface is mail-mode).
> 
> I think that Gnus should use compose-mail.

Perhaps so, but my impression is that it uses various features that are
only in message-mode, so mail-mode and the generic mail interfaces
would have have to be buffed up quite a bit to make this possible.

One thing Stefan pointed out, BTW, is that message-mode has better mime
support, in particular, it supports mime attachments.  I use these a
_lot_, and my impression is that many other people do as well (mail-mode
supports a sort of ad-hoc attachment function, but it's basically just
`insert-file', and far less useful than real mime attachments).

-Miles
-- 
The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.
  --Albert Einstein

Re: Rmail and headers in other than US-ASCII (RFC2047 encoded words)

[Richard Stallman]

    Perhaps so, but my impression is that it uses various features that are
    only in message-mode, so mail-mode and the generic mail interfaces
    would have have to be buffed up quite a bit to make this possible.

That's not a good state of affairs.  We should try to make compose-mail
handle all these features.

stktrc wrote:

    It seems to work fine in mail-mode to invoke mml-mode, attach files,
    and then invoke mml-to-mime to generate the MIME message before
    sending.  I suppose there is a hook to invoke mml-to-mime in
    message-mode's send as this conversion is made automatically there.

That would be a good feature to merge into Mail mode, I think,
and an easy one.

Re: Rmail and headers in other than US-ASCII (RFC2047 encoded words)

[Miles Bader]

On Fri, Feb 28, 2003 at 01:26:29PM +0100, stktrc wrote:
> AFAICT, the MIME composing support comes from the independent `mml'
> library (documented in `Emacs MIME' under info) .

That would be cool... maybe mail-mode could turn that on by default right
now, regardless of what happens with message-mode.

-Miles
-- 
Fast, small, soon; pick any 2.

Re: Rmail and headers in other than US-ASCII (RFC2047 encoded words)

[Richard Stallman]

    > AFAICT, the MIME composing support comes from the independent `mml'
    > library (documented in `Emacs MIME' under info) .

    That would be cool... maybe mail-mode could turn that on by default right
    now, regardless of what happens with message-mode.

I would like that.

Re: Rmail and headers in other than US-ASCII (RFC2047 encoded words)

[Michael Welsh Duggan]

stktrc <stktrc@yahoo.com> writes:

> Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:
>
>>     > AFAICT, the MIME composing support comes from the independent `mml'
>>     > library (documented in `Emacs MIME' under info) .
>>
>>     That would be cool... maybe mail-mode could turn that on by default right
>>     now, regardless of what happens with message-mode.
>>
>> I would like that.
>
> I decided to look closer at the independence of MML from Gnus and
> found that a part of MML (encoding the body) used parts of Gnus'
> message-mode.  Would need to look closer at what this dependency
> means.  But it will have to wait if it's going to be done by me.  If I
> find time and decide to go deeper into this I will let you all know
> what I find.

Is anything in mail-mode missing in message-mode?  Is there any
reason to port messsage-mode's functionality into mail-mode if the
reverse turns out to be much easier?

-- 
Michael Welsh Duggan
(md5i@cs.cmu.edu)

Re: Rmail and headers in other than US-ASCII (RFC2047 encoded words)

[Edward O'Connor]

> Is anything in mail-mode missing in message-mode? Is there any reason
> to port messsage-mode's functionality into mail-mode if the reverse
> turns out to be much easier?

I was wondering the same thing.


Ted

-- 
Edward O'Connor
ted@oconnor.cx

Ense petit placidam sub libertate quietem.

Re: Rmail and headers in other than US-ASCII (RFC2047 encoded words)

[Richard Stallman]

    Is anything in mail-mode missing in message-mode?  Is there any
    reason to port messsage-mode's functionality into mail-mode if the
    reverse turns out to be much easier?

I understand Mail mode, and I can and do maintain it.  As far as I am
concerned Message mode is a replacement that I am a complete stranger
to.

Re: Rmail and headers in other than US-ASCII (RFC2047 encoded words)

[Kai Großjohann]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

> I understand Mail mode, and I can and do maintain it.  As far as I am
> concerned Message mode is a replacement that I am a complete stranger
> to.

If I understand Lars correctly, he started from mail-mode.  So I think
the difference between mail-mode and message-mode is not as large as
one might fear.
-- 
A preposition is not a good thing to end a sentence with.

Re: Rmail and headers in other than US-ASCII (RFC2047 encoded words)

[Richard Stallman]

    If I understand Lars correctly, he started from mail-mode.  So I think
    the difference between mail-mode and message-mode is not as large as
    one might fear.

I hope so.

Re: Rmail and headers in other than US-ASCII (RFC2047 encoded words)

[Miles Bader]

stktrc <stktrc@yahoo.com> writes:
> I don't know.  Probably not.  Though I find mail-modes simplicity
> appealing.  mail-mode loaded from mail/sendmail.el has ~1700 lines and
> message-mode from gnus/message.el has ~4700 lines.  But then again,
> maybe the 3000 extra lines are all good stuff, I wouldn't know.

Hmmm, even if there are many great features, 3000 lines seems like a
lot, given the apparent similarity of the two modes (perhaps I'm a naive
user, but aside from the MIME stuff, I never noticed much difference)!

I wonder if porting the extra features in message-mode back to mail-mode
could be a good chance to clean up whatever bloat has crept into
message-mode as well -- or even better, split off some of the
functionality into separate packages...

-Miles
-- 
Run away!  Run away!

Re: Rmail and headers in other than US-ASCII (RFC2047 encoded words)

[Richard Stallman]

    I wonder if porting the extra features in message-mode back to mail-mode
    could be a good chance to clean up whatever bloat has crept into
    message-mode as well -- or even better, split off some of the
    functionality into separate packages...

I would like that approach.

Re: Rmail and headers in other than US-ASCII (RFC2047 encoded words)

[Robert J. Chassell]

I've been using Ray Moody's 1996 `rmime-1.2.el' library to read and
Marc Andreessen's `mime-compose.el' library to write MIME.  These
libraries have worked fine, but have not been touched for 7 years.

Although it is not very important to me, if anything has changed with
regard to MIME in the recent past, I would not mind seeing new code so
long as it does as good a job as the old code and still lets me toggle
RMIME mode (since most of the time, I want it off).

Perhaps a merge of the GNUS message and the mail compose modes is
warranted.

-- 
    Robert J. Chassell                         Rattlesnake Enterprises
    http://www.rattlesnake.com                  GnuPG Key ID: 004B4AC8
    http://www.teak.cc                             bob@rattlesnake.com

Re: Rmail and headers in other than US-ASCII (RFC2047 encoded words)

[Richard Stallman]

    and the default mail-user-agent setting can not meet some special
    requirements of Gnus, such as forwarding MIME messages.

Let's look at fixing this.

Re: Rmail and headers in other than US-ASCII (RFC2047 encoded words)

[Kai Großjohann]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

>     I think the biggie is message-mode vs. mail-mode -- we really ought to get
>     rid of one of them (they're _so_ similar, I have no idea why Lars couldn't
>     have just hacked on mail-mode back whenever to add whatever features he
>     needed for gnus...).
>
> I would like to have just one, and I would like it to be Mail mode.

Should it also work for news postings?  That's a good thing about
message mode: it works for mails and news articles.
-- 
A preposition is not a good thing to end a sentence with.

Re: Rmail and headers in other than US-ASCII (RFC2047 encoded words)

[Richard Stallman]

    > I would like to have just one, and I would like it to be Mail mode.

    Should it also work for news postings?

That would be a good feature for the merged mode to have.  If done in
a simple clean way, that would be a small aspect of the mode--just
changes in the code for sending the message.

Re: Rmail and headers in other than US-ASCII (RFC2047 encoded words)

[Stefan Monnier]

>     I think the biggie is message-mode vs. mail-mode -- we really ought to get
>     rid of one of them (they're _so_ similar, I have no idea why Lars couldn't
>     have just hacked on mail-mode back whenever to add whatever features he
>     needed for gnus...).
> 
> I would like to have just one, and I would like it to be Mail mode.
> What features do you suggest adding to Mail mode?  (Why did you choose
> Message mode?)

I always thought of message-mode as a superset of mail-mode.
I have almost never used mail-mode, so I don't know the detailed
list of features that are missing from it, tho MIME is probably
among them, along with news-posting.


	Stefan

Re: Rmail and headers in other than US-ASCII (RFC2047 encoded words)

[Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen]

Miles Bader <miles@gnu.org> writes:

> I think the biggie is message-mode vs. mail-mode -- we really ought to get
> rid of one of them (they're _so_ similar, I have no idea why Lars couldn't
> have just hacked on mail-mode back whenever to add whatever features he
> needed for gnus...).

Message mode started out as a consolidation of the old Gnus news mode
and sendmail.el.  The idea was to create a mode applicable for both
doing news and mail -- hence the name "Message".

(I had also expected Rmail (and the other Emacs mailers) to switch to
Message, since it is (or at least, was) a superset of mail mode (and
has enough hooks in it to tie into just about anything), but that
obviously, er, hasn't happened.)

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
   larsi@gnus.org * Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen

Re: Rmail and headers in other than US-ASCII (RFC2047 encoded words)

[Richard Stallman]

    (I had also expected Rmail (and the other Emacs mailers) to switch to
    Message, since it is (or at least, was) a superset of mail mode (and
    has enough hooks in it to tie into just about anything), but that
    obviously, er, hasn't happened.)

That's because you simply implemented it as another mode,
rather than working with me on extending Mail mode.

But it isn't necessarily too late.  We can still merge them.  However,
I fear that various unrelated changes will have crept into one or both
of the modes, making merging more complicated now than it would have
been earlier.

Re: Rmail and headers in other than US-ASCII (RFC2047 encoded words)

[Richard Stallman]

     > but it has a dependency on mail-parse found in the gnus subdirectory.
     > I'm not sure if mail-parse is to be considered independent of Gnus
     > (though it seems to be documented as such in the Emacs MIME info
     > documentation), and even then it's questionable if it's appropriate to
     > have Rmail depend on it.
     > 
     > There's always the option of implementing the functionality in Rmail
     > itself, if the dependency is undesirable.

    It seems to me that the function has general use.  I'm not sure where
    it belongs, but it seems pretty clear that it should not be homed in
    gnus for general consumption.  Maybe Richard will have some insight
    here.

If mail-parse is self-contained and generally useful, we can move
it out of Gnus.