progress - submit a ~pls-style progress report

The progress utility reads a progress report file, nominally in html format, and writes it to the user's directory with a new filename in the format requried by the ~pls weblog. If a non-option argument is present on the command line, progress attempts to read from this file. If no file is given, and the -e option is set, progress invokes an editor for input, otherwise progress reads from standard input.

An additional flag, -m, indicates the resulting html file should also be pretty-printed as ascii, and posted to the email address set by the PROGRESS_LIST variable, or pls.all otherwise. The default behaviour, without -m, is to not send mail.

Additionally, a mechanism is provided to abort the submission progress. If the text to be sent contains no characters in the range [a-zA-Z] then no file is written, and no mail is sent, irrespective of the -m -- flag. This is the only internal means of aborting an editing session.

Some options also have a long form.

OPTIONS:

     -m --mail

Format the resulting file as ascii and mail to list.

     -e --edit

Invoke and editor, and take input from the resulting file

        --help

Display a helpful message

     -p --path path

Save file to $USER directory under different path

     -l --list list

Mail to list list

     -w --with cmd

Use cmd to postprocess the source before mailing

     -s string

Use string as email subject line

     -g group

Set file group to be group

     -t tag

Append a different, possibly null, tag to the email that is sent. Useful for generating the mail with a postprocessor that won't parse the tag.

The progress utility exits with 0 on success >0 otherwise

EXAMPLES:

    $ progress

Read from stdin, writing to default directory

    $ progress -m

Same as above, but mail the result to list

    $ progress -e

Read input from file resulting from editor invocation

    $ progress -m file.html

Write file.html into default directory and send postprocessed output to default mailing list.

    $ progress -me

And mail the result

    $ progress -mw 'lynx -dump'
    $ progress -mw cat
    $ progress -mw cpp
    $ progress -mw runhugs -t""

Before mailing, filter source through a variety of postprocessors.

ENVIRONMENT:

progress utilises the EDITOR variable when the -e option is given.

Additionally, the following variables may be set:

    PROGRESS_PATH   [ /web/pls/internal/meetings/progressreports/ ]

The path to a directory in which a USER directory can be found, into which the resulting file will be renamed and written.

    PROGRESS_LIST   [ pls.all ]

Email address to mail pretty printed result.

    PROGRESS_SUBJ   [ Progress report ]

Subject line of the mail to be sent.

    PROGRESS_PPR    [ w3m -T text/html -dump -cols 70 ]

Html pretty printer to use. This command must pretty print it's file argument to stdout.

    PROGRESS_GROUP  [ pls+install ]

Unix group to chown the resulting file to.

    PROGRESS_TAG    [ \n\n-- $USER ]

Tag to append to outgoing mail

FILES:

    /tmp/progress_report.XXXXXXXXXX

Temp file, generated by mkstemp(3) to which stdin, editor or file is written.

BUGS:

If you provide both a file name and the -e option on the command line argument, the -e is silently ignored. The mail client is hardwired, as are the permissions to which the log file is set.