02-09-05  01:03, William Mcbrine told James Bradley about Re: MM Linux editor preff

 Well, how do, William?

 -=> James Bradley wrote to All <=-
 
 JB> I'm wondering if there is a general preference to a Linux editor
 JB> while in MultiMail?

 WM> Yes, it's the line that says:

 WM> editor:

 WM> in ~/.mmailrc.

That much I knew.  (I know, you have to assume 0 background.) When
BW wasn't working with the board I was using, I did install a few DOS and
W32 versions. Being quite new to *NIX, I was paying particular attention to
any mention of those OSes in the docs.
 JB> emacs is doing the job, but I'm more used to DOS's Q-edit. Anythig 
 JB> closer to that? Please: vi, and vim are not even on my radar.

 WM> Try pico. Also, a lot of people like joe.
 
Joe, I know, is already there, but I'll have to take a look for Pico. Thanks!
 JB> Mostly, I can't seem to find the docs. I installed from an ELF
 JB> version.

 WM> You mean mm-linux-i386elf.gz, right? Did you see what it says above
 WM> that on the web page?

 WM> Note that if you want the documentation, you'll also need the source
 WM> archive; these are only the binaries.

The elf version was the only one I could get to the Linux box so far. (See
below.) I looked at the page once, but remember little about it. The src
file showed up to the party in a mangled state, so I'll have to take
another shot at procuring it. (Dial-up from outside of town, and then
up-loading to the BBS spoofed the CRC somewhere, no doubt.)
 JB> 2.) When spawning the editor, MM shows "Unrecognized keyword: $"

 WM> That means there's something bogus in the .mmailrc file.
 
 JB> It only seems to appear in an X-terminal,

 WM> No, if it's on one, it's on the other. It just goes by too fast to see
 WM> on  the console.
 
Noticed that when I looked real close. Have to look real close at the rc now.
 JB> but when I run in the console, it does the funky ANSII character
 JB> shift, with sporadic "?" marks all over. As an aside; how would one
 JB> fix that?

 WM> setfont default8x16

 WM> For some reason it's not actually the default, at least in my distro,
 WM> nor I'm guessing in yours. To make the change permanent, you'd have to
 WM> do something like add that command to /etc/rc.d/rc.local.
 
Ahh... Will give it a go. Pictures... Er, text at eleven. (I'll be deleting
my previous reply.)
 JB> 3.) Read Markers don't seem to be saved. "zip -jkq" is the default
 JB> compression, Permission are likely all wonky, as I mentioned I'm quite
 JB> new to Linux.

 WM> The only thing I can think of is, do you in fact have
"zip" installed?
 WM> I can imagine a distro including unzip but not zip, at least by
 WM> default. 

Ah, HAH! That must be it. I was kind-a chasing my tail there with permissions.
 JB> 4.) I've only run MM as root so far, but am a little foggy about how to
 JB> run it as a normal user. Shouldn't the mmail directory go in something
 JB> like /usr/share or some-such?

 WM> Hell no. The idea of separate users is for each user to have separate
 WM> data.   You don't run selected apps as a normal user; you run
 WM> everything as a normal user, and use root only when absolutely
 WM> necessary. So, each user has a "home directory" (typically
 WM> /home/username on a Linux system, except for root, who's in /root), and
 WM> their individual files go there. 
 WM> In Unix, MultiMail uses $HOME/mmail for its data (i.e., typically 
 WM> /home/username/mmail), and $HOME/.mmailrc for its settings, unless
 WM> told  otherwise.

Mandrake wasn't availing the modems' lockfile to normal users, so I had to
use root to do any mailing. RH *does* allow normal users to use the
lockfile, so that much is sorted. When I couldn't get the QWK packets, I
couldn't use MM. <-;
 
 WM> Yes. MultiMail is originally a Linux program. The Unix-formatted docs
 WM> are  in the source code archive.

What was the acronym? Any Day Now, or was it Real Soon Now? I have no I-Net
access at this time, so I have to pester family and friends on my forays.

Thanks for the info, William!


... Roadkill on the Information Superhighway.

___ Blue Wave/QWK v2.20

--- Maximus 3.01