Re: dist with -nowhatnowproc

Michael Richardson <[email protected]> Mon, 22 Sep 2025 20:06:08 -0400
Newsgroups	gmane.mail.nmh.devel
Message-ID	<[email protected]>
Ken Hornstein <[email protected]> wrote:
    >> Only I have no reason to edit the outgoing draft, so I used:
    >>
    >> % dist -nowhatnowproc -form fmcomps +inbox 179
    >>
    >> but that does nothing.  I strace it, no call to mhbuild, no call to
    >> post.  No activity in /var/log/mail.log.

    > Well, it does exactly what every other command that takes
    > -nowhatnowproc does ... it builds the draft file based on what you give
    > it and then exits.  The comp(1) man page kind of explains this, but not
    > very well:

    >        The -build switch is intended to be used by the Emacs mh-e
    > interface to nmh.  It implies -nowhatnowproc.  It causes a file
    > <mh-dir>/draft to be created, containing the draft message that would
    > normally be presented to the user for editing.  No mail is actually
    > sent.

Not using the -build switch directly, and while I am working in the end from
Emacs/MH-E, I didn't think I wanted that.

What is the purpose of -nowhatnowproc without -build then?

    > Maybe you want -whatnowproc send ?  I didn't test that, but I think
    > that should work.

I didn't know that I could use "send" as the bare whatnowproc.
I guess that did the trick.   When first reading your suggestion, I thought
that this was some magic to tell whatnowproc to do it's send thing, but now
as I wrote this, I realize it's saying "send" will be the whatnowproc.

I had problems with the draftfolder, and I found that "dist" does not accept -use?

I was prompted:
obiwan-[~](3.3.8) mcr 10025 %dist -draftfolder +inbox/drafts -whatnowproc send -form fmcomps +inbox 277
Use "/home/mcr/Mail/drafts/14"? n

And since *this* message was in the middle of composition (yes, in Emacs), I
said no, since I wasn't sure which message was which.
Actually, 14 was a new message, this draft is 13.  So I tried with -use,
based upon reading mh-draft(5), but dist does not accept it.

so trying again:
dist -draftfolder +drafts -draftmessage new -whatnowproc send -form fmcomps +inbox 277
this prompted me:
Use "/home/mcr/Mail/drafts/15"? y

and this did the right thing, but can I suppress this query?

--
]               Never tell me the odds!                 | ipv6 mesh networks [
]   Michael Richardson, Sandelman Software Works        |    IoT architect   [
]     [email protected]  http://www.sandelman.ca/        |   ruby on rails    [
signature.asc (application/pgp-signature, 487 B)