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Re: Rolling in sidebar, other mutt-ng type bits?



On Thu, Oct 23, 2008 at 05:51:28PM -0500, Kyle Wheeler wrote:
> On Thursday, October 23 at 02:23 PM, quoth Robin Lee Powell:
> > I gather there's now another sidebar patch.
> 
> Oh? Are you sure you aren't getting confused by the transfer of
> maintainer from Thomer M. Gil to Terry P. Chan?

mutt-ng had a sidebar feature; I have no idea if that's the same
code as the one at
http://www.lunar-linux.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=44
, which is what I was comparing to.

Is mutt-ng's sidebar the same as that one?

> > Is there some reason it, and anything else useful from mutt-ng,
> > hasn't been rolled into mutt proper?
> 
> Much of what was mutt-ng *has* been rolled into mutt proper. The
> sidebar patch is the only significant thing I'm aware of that
> hasn't. 

Lovely.

> The question about that particular sidebar patch is one that comes
> up every now and then, and has been answered several times. Rocco
> Rutte (one of the primary mutt bug squishers, and one of the three
> founders of mutt-ng) reviewed the patch in detail. He said the
> following (http://marc.info/?l=mutt-dev&m=112133798519807&w=2):

Thank you.  I did do a MARC search, but the results were unhelpful.

>      For example, the sidebar patch available for mutt looks to
>      work at first sight but there're many things just heavily
>      broken or things you really don't want to stay in the code
>      (like using snprintf() and strlen() to "calculate" the amount
>      of digits of a number.).
> 
>      Really to integrate a patch by means of merging its
>      functionality with the existing to get a better code base is
>      just much more difficult than it sounds especially when you
>      keep in mind that it also takes time to get an idea of what
>      the source is supposed to do [and] how.
> 
> Essentially: the sidebar patch is large (1789 lines), complex, and
> appears to be poorly written. Those are all characteristics of
> code you want to stay as far away from as possible. My
> understanding is that that patch touches pieces of mutt's source
> that should have nothing to do with displaying a "sidebar", such
> as the mbox parsing code. Because of this, it produces unfortunate
> side-effects. You have only to look into the mutt archives a few
> weeks back to find people complaining that the patch causes mutt
> to hang in some circumstances.

*Neat*.  Yeah, I had been wondering about that.

> And yet, the developer of the sidebar patch does not appear to
> provide support to those who use it (at least, not on the mutt
> users mailing list), and does not seem interested in cleaning it
> up, explaining it, or doing anything else that would be necessary
> or useful to getting it integrated with mainline mutt.

*nod*

> > The sidebar in particular sure seems like a really, really nice
> > feature.
> 
> Are you willing to reimplement it? Cleanly? Or explain the innards
> of the current sidebar patch to the primary mutt developers?

At this time that's unlikely, but I'll keep the option in mind.

> > Does current mutt have header caching?
> 
> Yes, and has for almost four years.
> 
> Mutt also has message caching (and has for almost two years),
> which mutt-ng does not have.

I checked "man mutt" before posting; I forgot to check "man muttrc".
My apologies.

"man muttrc" doesn't explain why it's not on by default; can I get a
pointer to that?

> Mutt enjoys ongoing development. Mutt-ng provided a good catalyst
> for  more development in mutt, but essentially atrophied as mutt
> development was renewed---mutt-ng hasn't been modified since April
> 2006. Mutt-ng has, for all intents and purposes, been subsumed by
> the original mutt. The sidebar patch, as it stands, was rejected.

Thank you for clearing things up for me!  Sorry to have failed to
find for what are obviously FAQs.

-Robin

-- 
They say:  "The first AIs will be built by the military as weapons."
And I'm thinking:  "Does it even occur to you to try for something
other than the default outcome?" -- http://shorl.com/tydruhedufogre
http://www.digitalkingdom.org/~rlpowell/ *** http://www.lojban.org/