Re: email headers

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <nospam [at] sk.tsukuba.ac.jp>]

>>>>> "Ross" == Ross Henderson <ros.h [at] virgin.net> writes:

    Ross> On Mon, 21 Feb 2000, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:

    >> >>>>> "Ross" == Ross Henderson <ros.h [at] virgin.net> writes:

    Ross> procmail as local delivery agent (procmail -ptoY -f)

    >> and

    Ross> mda 'procmail -ptoY -f'

    >> BTW, the fetchmail man page recommends "/usr/bin/procmail -d
    >> %T" (which is what I use in my smail configuration, too).
    >> Where'd the '-ptoY -f' stuff come from?

    Ross> comes from the first line of man procmail ! (i toolk it to
    Ross> be an example of use

<chuckle>

I can see that interpretation, but that's not the one conventionally
used by man page writers.

The man page is generally intended as a reference tool for fairly
expert users, and is written in a very formalized style.  The SYNOPSIS
section is intended to show all the _possible_ ways to invoke the
program, including _all_ the options.  This is useful as a quick
reminder for someone who forgot some of the command syntax.  The
multiline format is used to show which options are incompatible with
others.

Another hint to be gotten from this story is that it is usually better
to look at the docs for the calling program (here, fetchmail) than for
the called program (procmail).  The reason is that fetchmail's author
knows how fetchmail wants to use procmail, and may (if he's a good
documentation writer) therefore explain which _procmail_ options are
most useful with fetchmail.  Eric (S. Raymond) is an excellent
documenter; the fetchmail man page is beautiful (subject to the caveat
that it really should be a hypertext manual, not in Unix man format).
But it's still a man page, not a tutorial.


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