On Thu, Jun 08, 2000 at 14:59:21 +0200, Roland Rosenfeld wrote:
> BTW: does it make sense to combine "needsterminal" and "copiousoutput"
> in one mailcap entry? As far as I understand they are quite contrary,
> because "needsterminal" needs a terminal with user input while
> "copiousoutput" pipes the output to some kind of pipe.
Right. RFC 1524 which describes the mailcap file format, says:
-- The "needsterminal" field indicates that the view-command must be
run on an interactive terminal. This is needed to inform window-
oriented user agents that an interactive terminal is needed. (The
decision is not left exclusively to the view-command because in
some circumstances it may not be possible for such programs to
tell whether or not they are on interactive terminals.) The
needsterminal command should be assumed to apply to the compose
and edit commands, too, if they exist. Note that this is NOT a
test -- it is a requirement for the environment in which the
program will be executed, and should typically cause the creation
of a terminal window when not executed on either a real terminal
or a terminal window.
-- The "copiousoutput" field indicates that the output from the
view-command will be an extended stream of output, and is to be
interpreted as advice to the UA (User Agent mail-reading program)
that the output should be either paged or made scrollable. Note
that it is probably a mistake if needsterminal and copiousoutput
are both specified.
--
Byrial
http://home.worldonline.dk/~byrial/
