Distributing Messages with dist
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The forw and dist commands do similar things.
But dist is designed for resending (distributing) messages
without any changes or extra text in the body.
This means that the people who receive a dist'ed message from you
will see it as:
From: whoever-sent-it-to-you
Date: whenever-original-was-sent
instead of:
From: you
Date: whenever-you-forwarded-the-copy
For example, let's say that Norm sent a message to Mary on May 13.
Then, on June 24, Mary sent two copies of the message to Mike as a
test -- the first copy was with dist, and the second copy was with
forw.
Here's what Mike would see in his scan listing of the two copies
of the same message:
1755+ 05/13 Norman Schwartzko Summary of the Zeta project<<This is
1756 06/24 Mary Shepley-Hunt Zeta info<<----- Forwarded Messages
You can dist only one message at a time (forw lets you forward
several messages as a unit).
Here's an example:
% dist 23
Resent-To: bigboss
Resent-cc:
--------
CTRL-D
--------
What now? send
If you try to add extra text (besides the Resent- fields),
send will ask you to "please re-edit draft
to consist of headers only!"
The distprompter shell script
will prevent this error and make dist easier to use.
The people who receive the resent message will get the original
message with
these three fields added (or four, if you filled in Resent-cc:):
% inc
...
% show
...
Resent-To: bigboss
Resent-Date: Mon, 09 Jan 1995 07:33:22 -0600
Resent-From: ehuser (Emma H. User)
...
Otherwise, the recipients' copies of the message will be identical to yours.
NOTE:
dist (actually, the send command) can't resend a message
from a read-only folder (explained in the Section
Sharing Other Users' Folders).
When you try to send the message, it gives you an error like:
send: unable to link xx/yy/zz/83 to /xx/yy/zz/send012817:
Permission denied.
One easy workaround is the rcvdist command.
rcvdist is in your system's MH library directory.
Put the addresses on the command line; redirect the standard input of
rcvdist to the message file.
Use mhpath in backquotes to get the message file pathname.
For example, to resend the current message to ehuser@xyz.edu
and fred@snora.com, type:
% /path/rcvdist ehuser@xyz.edu fred@snora.com < `mhpath cur`
The forw command also works from read-only folders.
You can add a few other fields to the header besides the default
Resent-To: and Resent-cc: by editing the draft header or
putting a distcomps template file
in your MH directory.
If you use the -annotate switch on the dist command line or
in your MH profile, the message you resend will have fields
like this added to its header:
Resent: Mon, 09 Jan 1995 09:13:52 -0500
Resent: al@phlabs.ph.com
Otherwise, this works just like
forw -annotate.
distprompter is an editor designed for dist.
It's also an example of
writing your own draft message editor.
By default, dist uses prompter to edit the draft.
prompter isn't a great editor for dist, because
if you accidentally type a message body after the row of dashes,
the message can't be sent.
Also, you always have to press
CTRL-D
to skip the body and get the What now? prompt.
Besides fixes for the two problems listed above, distprompter
acts a lot like prompter:
-
It reads the draft file that dist gives it, line by line.
-
If a field is empty, distprompter prompts you.
If you don't type anything but
RETURN,
the field is deleted.
-
If a field is already complete, distprompter shows
the field but doesn't prompt.
-
distprompter won't allow header fields that don't start
with Resent-.
(MH won't allow them, either.)
-
When distprompter has read the header, it exits; you don't need
CTRL-D.
To use distprompter, type its name on the dist command
line or add it to your MH profile:
dist: -editor distprompter
Another section
explains how to set up distprompter.
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