Re: [9fans] Curious about faces and showmail

["Russ Cox" <rsc@swtch.com>]

> Turns out this had kind of unpredictable behavior. In the
> times I tried it 3-5 emails would open, but I couldn't really
> predict which ones it would be. Just on a hunch, I added
> sleep(250) under showmail() in the for() loop, and so far it
> works. I was just wondering why showmail() needs that
> delay and if such a need is common. I did a quick grep for
> sleep() in sources, and, while it shows up, it doesn't seem
> especially common. How does one know when one needs it?

easy: you only need to insert sleeps
when the surrounding code is broken.

that said, i don't know which of the
surrounding programs is broken.

you can start "cat /mnt/plumb/showmail"
in a new window and then do your sleep-less
click and see if all the plumbing messages
show up.  that will tell you whether the
plumber is dropping messages.

if the plumber is not dropping messages,
the next thing to do is see why the messages
aren't making your mail reader show mail.

are you using acme mail or nedmail?
probably the latter.  in that case the plumber
is supposed to be starting a window for every
message.  maybe sometimes the nedmail 
fails and the window disappears before you
get a chance to see it.

russ