MH Reader (MHR) v2.0 - (c) Alec Muffett, 1998
---------------------------------------------

NB: minor tweaks may be needed to the script for local configuration.
Please feel free to hack, but if you add any neat functionality,
please let me know.

This software is made available under the licensing terms of the
latest version of the GNU GPL, available from the author upon request.

Original docs MH Reader (MHR) v1.8 - (c) Alec Muffett, 1997
-----------------------------------------------------------

Suggestions to: alecm@crypto.dircon.co.uk

This is a simple MH-frontend I wrote, after recently converting my
entire mail-reading setup to MH.

It was only once I completed the job that I remembered precisely the
one thing I hated about MH when I was first forced into using it in
1989; the amount of typing involved in using the user interface from
the command line.

Under a GUI, there ae many excellent alternatives (XMH and EXMH to
name but two - I use the latter), and from a terminal session you can
always control MH from one of the many Emacs-driven interfaces; but
(IMHO) hiding MH behind something like Emacs messes up its integration
with the rest of Unix.

Back in 1989 my solution was to write a shellscript frontend similar
to the VMS mail system that was de-rigeur at the site where I worked,
so as to inconvenience as few users as possible.

Now, nearly 10 years later, MH is still the only mailer that will cope
with the volume of e-mail I process, and so I have written a new
frontend to take advantage of the power of MH, but to try and make it
a bit quicker to use.

To be honest, I could have stayed using Elm, barring one thing: Elm
does not have anything *like* the power of "pick" when it comes to
tagging articles, and this really creases me when it comes to breaking
up my incoming mail into separate folders on (eg:) the basis of the
To: line... Elm's pattern-matching is just not controllable enough.

Of course I *could* use a elm-filter, but I prefer not to; I like my
e-mail to be delivered to a file, not pipe.

Anyway - the code is small and legibile, so read it and don't bug me
for documentation.  Type "h" at the prompt, for help.

	- alec
	  Wed Dec 31 13:28:08 GMT 1997

