Why was mail_bsd(1) changed?

[Vernon Schryver]

In article <1991Feb2.005029.19901 at cs.umn.edu>, slevy at poincare.geom.umn.edu (Stuart Levy) writes:
> I'd like to second Mark Andrews' complaint.  Yes, it's reasonable
> to have reply-to-all be non-default.  But if you were going
> to make that change, it'd be better just to swap 'r' <-> 'R'.
> We system administrators could then 'set replyall' in the systemwide Mail.rc
> to exchange them back.  ...

Well, the change was made in 1986 before we'd looked at the 4.3BSD Mail, so
we missed 'set replyall'.  I recall that we argued about whether to just
switch r & R, or to use a new command to "avoid confusion and calls to the
Hotline."  I don't remember which side I argued, so feel free to blame me.
I started the thing by borrowing the idea from a previous employer, but
don't remember if they switched r&R, or did ra.  In either case, they're
effectively out of business.  At this late date, SGI is stuck with ra, to
avoid making important people unhappy, most existing customers.

I think we should re-review the differences between our 4.2BSD+SGI Mail and
4.3BSD Mail.  How about adding a string valued replyall variable which
would select among the two 4.3BSD and the SGI [rR]* choices?

Is anyone bugged by the many ~ commands Robert added?  I like them, and so
hope not.


Vernon Schryver, vjs at sgi.com