Re: problems with "mail"

[Sam Roberts]

I've no objection to changing the option to --mailspool. It might be a little
clearer. However, no amount of option naming will help users who don't bother
reading the description of the option plainly printed to its right:

mail says:

   -m, --maildir=URL          use specified URL as a mailspool directory

and configure says:

  --with-maildir=PATH     use PATH instead of /var/spool/mail


#139678 isn't even a minor bug, it's a confession he didn't read the usage
messages.

I guess Sergey will know whats up with mail.

Cheers,
Sam

Quoteing address@hidden, on Tue, Mar 26, 2002 at 11:12:08PM +0100:
> Hi!
> 
> Finally we got a new mailutils snapshot from Jeff (hi Jeff ;) and while
> it fixes the "mail won't send any mail at all" bug, it doesn't make this
> command quite usable yet.
> 
> Issues:
> 
> mailx compat:
> In mailx's `mail`, you can end the data part of a message using
> <br>.<br> or ^D in a new line. In mailutils, the "." method doesn't
> appear to work. It confused me a little at the beginning.
> 
> reading mail:
> In short, I haven't been able.
> While mailx would show my mail in /var/mail/jordi just invoking it with
> "mail", mailutils seems to only look after ~/mbox by default.
> If I use the -f switch, it completely ignores it:
> 65563:address@hidden:~$ mail -f /var/mail/jordi
> mail (mailutils) 0.0.9c, Copyright (C) 2001 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
> mail is free software with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.
> For details type `warranty'.
> Send bug reports to <address@hidden>.
> Cc: 
> etc, trying to send a mail with no To:.
> 
> --file won't work either:
> 65565:address@hidden:~$ mail --file=/var/mail/jordi 
> mail (mailutils) 0.0.9c, Copyright (C) 2001 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
> mail is free software with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.
> For details type `warranty'.
> Send bug reports to <address@hidden>.
> Can not read mailbox
> 
> There's also Debian Bug#139678, which says that the -m long option name
> "--maildir", is confusing. I agree. I wish the option was called
> --mailspool or --spooldir or whatever, so it doens't clash with the
> Maildir format.
> 
> Thanks,
> Jordi
> -- 
> Jordi Mallach Pérez || address@hidden || Rediscovering Freedom,
>    aka Oskuro in    || address@hidden      || Using Debian GNU/Linux
>  Reinos de Leyenda  || address@hidden          || http://debian.org
> 
> http://sindominio.net  GnuPG public information:      pub  1024D/917A225E 
> telnet pusa.uv.es 23   73ED 4244 FD43 5886 20AC  2644 2584 94BA 917A 225E



-- 
Sam Roberts <address@hidden> (Vivez sans temps mort!)