> > > I thought "copiousoutput" meant "non-interactive stdout". Am > > > I mistaken? > > > > "copiousoutput" indicates that the program produces a lot of output > > and should be fed into a "pager" program so as to not overwhelm the > > user. I've added a "--nopager" option in the latest upload. > > So by strict RFC interpretation, a mailcap rule specifying > "copiousoutput" implies non-interactive output on stdout, however > a mailcap rule lacking "copiousoutput" does not strictly imply > the opposite. >
No, it doesn't. You can't win here. Mailcap was written with the intent of user interaction, not for filtering. No solution is going to work in all situations unless you deviate from the RFC. > Unfortunately this strict interpretation of the flag isn't > useful for a couple reasons: > > 1. there's no way for the mailcap rule to know the length of the > output since it depends on the input. > > 2. the use of a pager depends on the size of the output compared > to the size of the terminal, but the mailcap doesn't know the > size of the terminal either. > > This is probably why mutt deviates from strict RFC for the > "copiousoutput" flag, meaning that mutt uses the flag to find > rules that generate non-interactive stdout. > Sure, but you can't depend on the people writing the mailcap entries to flag their programs that way unless you want to create a new RFC or make it Debian policy. I can change the "cat" option to only match "copiousoutput" entries if you wish. It's a perfectly reasonable behavior given that "cat" isn't defined in the first place. Brian bcwh...@pobox.com ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Treat someone as they are and they will remain that way. Treat someone as they can be and they will become that way.
