Re: NMH mail package utility "inc" aborts before incorporating first new email into an NMH folder

Thus said Philipp on Sat, 15 Aug 2026 10:52:03 +0200:

> In general I would say inc should  be able to receive this mail, but I
> don't have the capasity to write a patch for this.
 
This topic has come up a few times in the past.

I wrote a patch  a few years ago to deal with this  issue because I have
one sender that hasn't yet  fixed---or even acknowledged for that matter
that they  have a  problem with---their  software that  injects messages
that have lines well over 11 million characters.

It wasn't  incorporated into  nmh proper  as it was  found to  have some
flaws. Is  still run the patch  locally and haven't lost  any email, but
the flaws ought to be  resolved first before being seriously considered.
I haven't had as  much time to dig into the  issue lately. Also, Stephen
Gildea  (who  also  provided  a  separate  implementation)  raised  some
legitimate objections about its complexity in general:

https://lists.nongnu.org/archive/html/nmh-workers/2024-04/msg00003.html
https://lists.nongnu.org/archive/html/nmh-workers/2024-11/msg00002.html
https://lists.nongnu.org/archive/html/nmh-workers/2024-11/msg00035.html

Stephen then provided a different but  similar patch to address the same
issue, but then eventually decided his own patch was too messy:

https://lists.nongnu.org/archive/html/nmh-workers/2024-11/msg00038.html
https://lists.nongnu.org/archive/html/nmh-workers/2024-11/msg00039.html
https://lists.nongnu.org/archive/html/nmh-workers/2024-11/msg00035.html
https://lists.nongnu.org/archive/html/nmh-workers/2025-06/msg00014.html

Sadly, I agree  with both sides of the argument.  The Standard should be
followed, else why  have the Standard? But it seems  really difficult in
this day and age to actually get ahold of a human who has the initiative
to do anything about it.

I used to  reject this kind of garbage  but then I found that  it got my
email address blacklisted  by the Amazon SES Suppression  List (of which
it has two [1][2]) because apparently Amazon SES treats all 5xx failures
as some  kind of license to  block addresses despite the  reason for the
failure,  rather than  communicating back  the sender  that they  have a
problem.

[1] https://docs.aws.amazon.com/ses/latest/dg/sending-email-global-suppression-list.html
[2] https://docs.aws.amazon.com/ses/latest/dg/sending-email-suppression-list.html

Andy