Subject: Re: Sending patches with KMail

From: Jonathan Nieder <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 14 Jan 2012 12:31:11 -0600

Junio C Hamano wrote:
> Jonathan Nieder <[email-masked]> writes:

>> The hints at [1] might also be useful, in case you would like to try
>> and consider improving the manpage to document them if they work.
>
> Don't you need similar updates to sections for other MUAs and procedures?

Thunderbird approach 3, yes[*].  The others, no.

[...]
> Perhaps rephrasing the early part of the Discussion section, with an
> illustration that is designed to be more visible, would be a better
> approach?

I understand what you mean, but I don't think so.  The Discussion
section already seems clear to me, so I would prefer to wait to hear
from someone confused by it to find what exactly in it needs tweaking.
Adding additional paragraphs for each potential misunderstanding by
people who have not necessarily read the section has the potential to
backfire and lead even more people not to read the section...

My favorite approach would be to introduce a new option
--format=plain|mbox, with the default being mbox, allowing
format-patch --format=plain to produce a nice patch that does _not_
include a "From " line or q-encode its header lines, ready for use
without much tweaking in an email body as an attachment.  Then we can
just say "If you are not importing your patch as an mbox file, use the
--format=plain option".

Sane?

Jonathan

[*] Though I'd rather just remove it, since "how to use an external
editor" seems orthogonal to "how to teach Thunderbird not to mangle my
patches".