Re: RMAIL, MIME-related bug

[Peter S Galbraith <p.galbraith@globetrotter.net>]

Eli Zaretskii <eliz@elta.co.il> wrote:

> > From: Stefan Monnier <monnier@IRO.UMontreal.CA>

> > It might be suboptimal in some cases, but in terms of programmer
> > resources, it's pretty close to optimal.  Admittedly, it's not clear
> > whether programmer resources is the bottleneck w.r.t MIME decoding
> > given the number of different MIME-decoding package have been
> > written in elisp.  Or maybe it is the bottleneck and it's a shame
> > that we would write yet-another one rather than use a pre-existing
> > one such as the one in Gnus (wisely used by MH-E).
> 
> Actually, I think it's a shame that every add-on mail package invented
> its own way of doing things instead of contributing the infrastructure
> to Emacs. 

I'm not sure what you say is so true.

 wanderlust -> uses SEMI or tm.
 mew -> ?
 gnus -> implemented their own.
 MH-E -> uses gnus.

I see two major implemenations, and from the little I know the gnus and
FLIM/SEMI camps have a complicated history.  There are still many files
in common between the two.

When we started doing MIME in MH-E, we briefly looked at semi.  I had
trouble making heads or tails of it (my own limitations; the Japanese
web sites didn't help since I couldn't understand them) and since it's
not part of Emacs we would have had to get it to be part of Emacs before
we could use in MH-E.  So we took the gnus route.  We were lucky that
Satyaki Das was familiar with gnus, and he did the vast majority of the
MIME work.

>            If they did it the Right Way, we would not need to have
> this discussion now, just point Alexander to the existing functions.

The only MIME functions currently in Emacs are from gnus, so point him
at those.  Then all three MUAs in Emacs (rmail, gnus, MH-E) will be
using the same thing.  Or you drop rmail and start using MH-E (Okay,
just kidding!).

Peter

-- 
Peter S. Galbraith, MH-E developer  <p.galbraith@globetrotter.net>
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