EXMH(1) User Commands EXMH(1) NAME exmh-use - A more advanced user guide to the exmh mail user interface. INTRODUCTION This man page provides more detail information about using _e_x_m_h, such as managing nested folders, filtering mail, and using an external editor. The _e_x_m_h-_c_u_s_t_o_m man page describes customization of _e_x_m_h, and the _e_x_m_h-_r_e_f man page describes all the buttons and menus of _e_x_m_h. _E_x_m_h uses the regular MH programs to manipulate your mail folders and messages. This means it is compatible with command-line use of MH programs, and its actions should be familar if you are an experienced MH user. If you are a new MH user, then the details of running MH programs is hidden behind the graphical interface. This man page will occasionally make references to advanced MH features like scan formats and reply filters. If you do not know about these you can ignore the comments. If you do know about them, however, you will see that _e_x_m_h can be affected by settings for these features in your MH profile. OVERVIEW OF FEATURES As well as providing basic MH functionality, _e_x_m_h has a number of other features: MIME support. _E_x_m_h can display MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) messages, either directly or with the help of the _m_e_t_a_m_a_i_l package. The built-in editor lets you com- pose enriched text messages and insert files as parts of a multipart message. Sun Attachments. These attachments are cooerced into MIME format. Special treatment is given to certain common sun attachments like Calendar Appointments. You cannot create a Sun format attachment within _e_x_m_h, hoever. Nested Folder Display. A display of your folders appears as a set of labels, one for each folder. This is similar to _x_m_h, except that the folder labels are highlighted to indi- cate the current folder, the target folder for moves, fold- ers with unread mail in them, and folders with nested fold- ers under them. _E_x_m_h supports arbitrarily nested folder structures, unlike _x_m_h, which only supports a single level of nesting. Scan Listing Highlights. The scan listing (folder table- of-contents) is also highlighted to indicate the current message, unread messages, and messages marked for move or delete. Either color or monochrome highlighting is used, Exmh 1.6.1 Last change: May 23, 1995 1 EXMH(1) User Commands EXMH(1) depending on your display. Facesaver bitmap display. If you have a facesaver database on your system, _e_x_m_h displays the bitmap face of the person that sent the current message (or their organization). Background processing. You can set _e_x_m_h to run _i_n_c periodi- cally, check for new mesages arriving asynchronously in folders, run the MH _m_s_g_c_h_k program, or count up the messages in your mail spool file. Mail filtering. _E_x_m_h is designed to work with external agents that filter arriving mail into different folders. Unseen folder display. If you use a system that delivers mail into various folders, not just inbox, then you have the problem of finding what folders have unseen messages in them. _e_x_m_h provides feedback in the folder display so you can tell which folders have new messages. Also, the Next command will chain to the next folder with unread messages if you are at the end of the current folder. Pick. An interface to MH _p_i_c_k lets you select messages by patterns in the header fields, by date, or by sequence name. The interface is similar, but not identical, to the _x_m_h pick interface. Fast Search. Because _p_i_c_k can be slow, _e_x_m_h also implements fast searching over the current folder listing and current message body. Glimpse interface. Glimpse is a full text search tool from the University of Arizona. It has a low overhead indexing scheme that costs about 10% to 12% of your mail storage space. It is quite useful to find messages in any of your many folders. Editor interface. You can hook _e_x_m_h to your favorite editor using the _e_x_m_h-_a_s_y_n_c script. Or, Tcl-based editors such as _m_x_e_d_i_t can interact with _e_x_m_h directly. As the default, a simple built-in editor named _s_e_d_i_t is provided. Keybinding User Interface. Bindings for common editting and cursor motion commands are exposed in a UI that lets you choose keystroke sequences to match your expectations. You can also define key bindings for Tcl commands that are part of the implementation. Aliases User Interface. A browser for your MH aliases lets you define new aliases and insert aliases into mail mes- sages. Exmh 1.6.1 Last change: May 23, 1995 2 EXMH(1) User Commands EXMH(1) Pretty Good Privacy (PGP). If you have PGP, you can use it from _e_x_m_h to digitally sign, encrypt, and decrypt messages. Preferences User Interface. There are many knobs and dials you can adjust to control the behavior of _e_x_m_h. URL Smarts. Exmh can scan for embedded URLs in your mes- sages, and it can look for X-URI: mail headers. These are turned into active text buttons. Click on them and exmh asks your favorite Web browser to display the URL. User Programming. If the preference settings are not enough for you, you can program _e_x_m_h more directly. You can define new buttons and menus and add new Tcl code to its implemen- tation. This is described in the _e_x_m_h-_c_u_s_t_o_m man page. GETTING STARTED Mostly likely you are already an MH user. If not, go through the tutorial in the basic _e_x_m_h man page. If you previously used a mail reader like Elm or Sun's mail- tool that manages mail folders in mbox-like files, then you can use the _I_m_p_o_r_t _m_a_i_l_b_o_x _f_o_l_d_e_r_s menu entry to copy your old folder contents into the folders manage by MH and _e_x_m_h. This menu entry is under the folder More... menu. There is an extensive Preferences system for _e_x_m_h that lets you tune it in many ways. Throughout the man page, refer- ences to Preference settings will be made when there are tunable parameters associated with a feature. A more com- plete description of the Preference facility is given in the _e_x_m_h-_c_u_s_t_o_m man page. KEYBOARD COMMANDS Several of the folder and message operations have keystroke bindings so you can do much of your browsing with hands on the keyboard. The default bindings are given here using the Tk syntax that you'll need to use in the Bind dialogs. Cap- italization is important. For more information, see the _e_x_m_h-_c_u_s_t_o_m man page. - Commit - Inc - Forward - Reply - Compose - Previous - Previous message, but do not display it. - Previous message, even if it is marked for delete or move. - Next - Next message, but do not display it. - Change to next folder with unseen messages. Exmh 1.6.1 Last change: May 23, 1995 3 EXMH(1) User Commands EXMH(1) - Next unseen message, if any. - Display the current message. - Delete and advance - Delete and advance, but do not display. - Move and advance - Move and advance, but do not display. - Unmark a pending delete or refile from the current message(s). - Highlight embedded URLs - page forward the message display. - page back the message display. - '$' Go to last message, but do not display. - '^' Go to first message, but do not display. - '?' Bring up the Command binding dialog. You can browse, change, and define new command keystrokes via the Bind user interfaces available under the Bindings menu. There are two dialogs: one for editing commands in the built-in editor, and another for the command bindings described above. THE EXMH DISPLAY At the top of the display is a subwindow that has a label for each of your top-level folders. In the middle there is a table of contents for the current folder. At the bottom the current message is displayed. Both the folder display and table of contents have some highlights that are described below. The command buttons are grouped into three sets. The but- tons along the top apply to _e_x_m_h itself, such as Help, Preferences, and Quit. The buttons above the scan listing are operations on folders, like Inc and Commit. There is a menu there labeled More... that has several more folder- related operations like Pack and Sort. The row of buttons above the message display are for operations on messages, such as Send, Next, and Delete. There is another menu here labeled More... that has several more operations on mes- sages, such as Print, Edit, Burst Digest, and Edit Message. The version number of _e_x_m_h is displayed next to the top row of buttons. The release cycle for _e_x_m_h goes something like 1.5alpha, 1.5beta, 1.5gamma, ... 1.5, 1.6alpha, and so on. The unqualified versions are deemed "stable" enough for naive users. Summary information for the current folder appears next to the folder buttons. This indicates the current folder and how many messages are in it. Just below the scan listing is a status line that provides some feedback about what _e_x_m_h is doing. When a new message is displayed, the subject or Content-Description component is displayed there. Just to the left of this the folder and number of the current mes- sage is displayed. Exmh 1.6.1 Last change: May 23, 1995 4 EXMH(1) User Commands EXMH(1) To the left of the message buttons the EXMH logo appears. This is replaced with the facesaver image of the person, or their organization, that sent the current message. The black diamond to the right of the status message area is a grip that you use to change the boundaries between subwin- dows. Press the first mouse button on this and a horizontal line appears. As you drag the line up and down, the status message indicates what boundary you are changing. Initially you are adjusting the scan listing (middle subwindow). If you drag the line off the top of the scan listing, the mode changes and are now adjusting the folder cache size, if it exists. If you drag the line above the folder cache, the mode changes again you are changing the main folder display area. As you drag the line down, the mode changes again. The main drawback of the automatic mode sensing is that you cannot grow the main folder display area by more than the size of the folder cache, if it exists. There are also preference settings for each of the subwindow sizes. Look under Scan Listing, Folder Cache, and Folder Display preferences. FOLDER DISPLAY The top subwindow has a label for each of your MH folders. The folder display is highlighted to reflect the state of folders. The _C_o_l_o_r _L_e_g_e_n_d menu item under the main Help menu will display a key for the highlights. black - the current folder. bold outline - a folder with unseen messages. stippled background - the target folder for move and link operations. On color displays: red - the current folder. blue - a folder with unseen messages. yellow - the target folder for move and link operations. Folders that have nested folders under them are highlighted by a shadow box. The mouse bindings for the folders labels are: Left - Change to folder. Middle - View nested folders. Right - Refile current messages to the folder. Shift-Right - Link current messages to the folder. Shift-Middle - Drag a folder label to some drop target. Note that a right click does two things at once. It selects the target folder for refile, and it marks the currently selected message(s) for pending refile to that folder. This Exmh 1.6.1 Last change: May 23, 1995 5 EXMH(1) User Commands EXMH(1) might seem over-eager at first, but it is quite useful once you get used to it. The currently selected target folder remains highlighted, and you can move a message to this folder by clicking the Move button or typing 'm'. A middle click on the folder label displays a popup window with the folder labels for nested folders, and you can operate on these labels just like the top-level ones. The popups work recursively for nested folders. When the mouse leaves the pop-up it is withdrawn. The Folder Display preferences lets you adjust how the pop-up behaves. _H_i_n_t: If you change the popup-related settings, you'll have to resize the _e_x_m_h window a bit to force it to redisplay the folder labels. Only then will the new bindings take effect. You can make the folder display into a separate top-level window with a setting under the Folder Display Preferences. This means you can close the main window and still view the folder display to see what folders have new mail in them. When you click on a folder label the main window will be opened automatically. FOLDER CACHE Below the main folder display is a cache line of recently visted folders. If you have nested folders, their complete pathname is given in the cache window. Using the Folder Cache preferences settings you can choose how many lines of folder cache. You can also put some folders into the cache permanently with the Sticky Folders preference item. If you don't have many folders, the folder cache line is really just a waste of screen real estate. In this case, set the number of folder cache lines to 0 in the Folder Cache Preferences section to eliminate this part of the display altogether. You can drag folders in and out of the folder cache. Use to drag a folder label. Drag a label from the main display into the cache to add it, or from the cache to the main display to remove it from the cache. FOLDER TABLE OF CONTENTS The middle subwindow lists the messages in the current folder. The lines of the scan listing are highlighted to reflect the state of each message. On color displays: Red - the current message. Blue - unread messages. Grey background - messages marked for deletion. Exmh 1.6.1 Last change: May 23, 1995 6 EXMH(1) User Commands EXMH(1) Yellow background - message marked for refile to another folder. On monochrome displays: Reverse video - the current message. Underlined - unread messages. Cross-hatched background - messages marked for deletion. Stippled background - message marked for refile to another folder. The mouse bindings for the scan listing are listed below. "Drag" refers to holding the mouse button down while moving the mouse. Left - select and display a message. Left-Drag - select a range of messages. Shift-Left - modify the selected range. Middle-Drag - scroll the display. Right - select but do not display the message. Shift-Right - Drag folder/msgID to drop target. Several of the operations on messages can be applied to a set of selected messages. You can create a discontinuous selection by using the Shift-Left (and Shift-Left-Drag) mouse actions. _H_i_n_t: The scan listing comes from _b_o_t_h the MH _s_c_a_n and _i_n_c programs, depending on circumstance. If you define a custom scan format, set the same filter in your profile for both _i_n_c and _s_c_a_n. MESSAGE DISPLAY The current message, if any, is displayed in the bottom subwindow. The uninteresting mail headers are scrolled off the top of this display initially. You can control this with the Header-Display and Header-Suppress profile entries as described in the _e_x_m_h-_c_u_s_t_o_m man page. That man page also describes how to colorize different mail headers. Pressing the space bar will page you through the message, or take you to the next message if you are at the end of the current message. Backspace will go back a page. You can also scroll the message with the mouse by using the scrollbar or drag-scrolling. MIME messages are indicated by displaying their content- description in the status line. The mouse cursor is changed to a watch while the MIME message is parsed and displayed. On a color display, a MIME message body is displayed in a slightly darker background. This shading is used to indi- cate the depth of nesting in a multipart MIME structure. Exmh 1.6.1 Last change: May 23, 1995 7 EXMH(1) User Commands EXMH(1) A popup menu is available to process MIME messages, such as saving their contents or processing the contents with an external viewer. Press the right mouse button in the mes- sage display area to obtain this menu. Make sure you press the mouse button over the message body, not the headers. For multipart messages, the menu changes depending on what part of the message you are looking at. See also the Preferences entry for MIME for some parameters you can adjust. Every content type can be saved or printed, and other types can have additional options depending on entries in your site's mailcap file. The print function just prints the item as text using your Print preferences command. The print-with-mailcap entry, if available, uses the print com- mand as defined for the content-type in the mailcap file. You can display a message in a new top-level window in order to save it around on your display. Use the Clip operation under the message More... menu. This will display the current message in a new, larger window. Exmh can cooperate with a WWW browser to display web pages. If you get a URL in a mail message, then use the 'z' keys- troke to highlight the URLs in the message. (This is adhoc and not %100 accurate.) The URLs are turned into active text buttons. Click on one and exmh asks your web browser to display the page. You can have exmh scan every message automatically for URLs, although this can be slow. Tune this with the settings under the WWW preferences. If exmh sees special X-URL (or X-URI) headers it will turn the facesaver area into an active button. It takes on a raised relief and when you click on the face (or exmh logo) then the web browser is asked to display the URL in the X- URL header. More and more folks are putting X-URL headers into their mail messages so you can find their home page. MANAGING MESSAGES There are three basic actions you can take with a mail mes- sage: leave it alone, delete it, or refile it to another folder. You automatically advance to the next message after you delete or refile the current message. This makes it easy to go through your mail messages, deleting and refiling as you go. There are several settings under the Scan List- ing preferences section that control the behavior of _e_x_m_h when reading mail, and some of these will be mentioned below. Like _x_m_h, _e_x_m_h does deletes and refiles in two steps. In the first step you _m_a_r_k a message as needing some action. Exmh 1.6.1 Last change: May 23, 1995 8 EXMH(1) User Commands EXMH(1) Later on you _c_o_m_m_i_t these changes by pressing the Commit button, or by pressing . Unlike _x_m_h, how- ever, _e_x_m_h requires that you commit changes before you view a different folder. Marked messages are highlighted in the scan listing, as described above. If you reselect a message marked for refile, the destination folder for that message is shown in the Status line. Deleting Messages. To delete a message, use the Delete but- ton or press 'd'. Delete results in a call to _r_m_m. If you want deleted messages to be refiled into a special folder (e.g. +wastebasket or +deleted), you'll have to define a shell script and register that as your rmmproc in your .mh_profile. _T_r_i_c_k: If you press 'D' to delete a message, then you advance to the next message without displaying it, so you can quickly go through a folder to clean it up. Refiling Messages. To refile a message, right click on the destination folder. This marks the current message(s) for refile to that folder, and leaves the folder selected as the current target folder. If the right target is already selected, then you can use the Move button or type 'm' to refile the message and advance to the next message. _T_r_i_c_k: If you press 'M' to refile, you advance but do not display the next message. Undo. If you make a mistake, you can unmark a message with the _U_n_m_a_r_k (_U_n_d_o) message More... menu entry. This opera- tion applies to the currently selected message(s), not necessarily to the last message you marked for delete or refile. If you want to change the disposition of a message, like refile it instead of delete it, you do not need to unmark it first. Just select it and take the new action. _T_r_i_c_k: use '-' (minus) to back up to a message you just marked, and 'u' to unmark the message. Linking Messages. To link the current message(s) into a folder, hold the shift key down as you right click the desi- nation folder label. If the right folder happens to be selected as the target already, you can also use the Link button. If you use Link frequently, you should adjust the Scan Listing preferences item for _A_d_v_a_n_c_e _a_f_t_e_r _L_i_n_k. If you turn this off, then the current message remains selected after a Link, which makes it easier to link a message into multiple folders. Auto Commit. The _A_u_t_o _C_o_m_m_i_t Scan Listing preferences item will let _e_x_m_h commit your changes when you change folders, Exmh 1.6.1 Last change: May 23, 1995 9 EXMH(1) User Commands EXMH(1) sort or pack a folder, or quit the program. Without auto commit, you will be propted to commit when you try to take one of these actions and have messages still marked for delete or refile. In addition, auto commit will commit changes when you close the main window. Implied Direction. The next message viewed after a Delete or Move is usually the next message. However, if you set the _I_m_p_l_i_e_d _D_i_r_e_c_t_i_o_n preference item, then _e_x_m_h will remember your last Next or Prev action and move that direc- tion after a Delete or Move. This means you can just as conveniently go through a folder backwards as forwards, although it might catch you by suprise. Skipping Marked Messages. The _s_k_i_p _m_a_r_k_e_d _m_s_g_s preference item controls whether Next and Prev take you to a message marked for delete or refile, or whether you skip over these. Remember the handy '-' key binding, which takes you to the previous message even if it is marked. Changing Folders Automatically. When you are at the end of a folder, _e_x_m_h will be ready to take you to the next folder that has unseen messages in it. You can just press Next, and it will automatically change folders for you. If you have marked messages, however, you will be reminded of that. At this point you can press the Commit button, or if you have auto-commit enabled, then you can press the Next button again to trigger the commit and folder change. If you always want to be warned before an automatic folder change, enable the _N_e_x_t _G_u_a_r_d preference item. With this enabled you will have to click Next twice (or type 'n' twice) to get the automatic folder change. It will also tell you to which folder it is about to change. The final twist on automatic folder changing is that, by default, _e_x_m_h will automatically change back to your "first" folder if there are no more folders with unseen messages in them. You can disable this feature with the _C_y_c_l_e _b_a_c_k _t_o _f_i_r_s_t preference item. The default Folder-Order profile component defines inbox to be the first folder, so ordi- narily you will change back there. The Folder-Order profile component is described in the _e_x_m_h-_c_u_s_t_o_m man page. SENDING MAIL This section describes how to start a mail message. The messages are created as templates in your drafts folder and then your editor is opened on the draft. The next two sec- tions describe how to actually compose the message when using the built-in editor or an external editor. Sending a New Message. Use the Send message button to create a new draft message. This runs the MH _c_o_m_p command Exmh 1.6.1 Last change: May 23, 1995 10 EXMH(1) User Commands EXMH(1) to set up the template for the draft, so it is affected by your components file, if any, and your comp profile entry, if any. Replying to a Message. The Reply... menu has two entries: _R_e_p_l_y _t_o _s_e_n_d_e_r and _R_e_p_l_y _a_l_l. These use the MH _r_e_p_l com- mand, so they are affected by your replcomps file, if any, and your repl profile entry, if any. The first entry uses -_n_o_c_c _t_o -_n_o_c_c _c_c so that the reply just goes to the sender and you, while the other entry uses -_c_c _a_l_l so that the reply goes to everyone in the To and Cc headers of the ori- ginal message. There is also an entry that displays instructions for adding more entries to the Reply... menu. This is described in more detail in the _e_x_m_h-_c_u_s_t_o_m man page.. Forwarding a Message. Use the Forward button to forward the current message, or messages. This uses the MH _f_o_r_w command to set up the message, so it is affected by your forwcomps file and your forw profile entry, if these exist. Using an Existing Message as a Template. You can use an existing message as a template for a new message by using the _U_s_e _m_e_s_s_a_g_e _a_s _d_r_a_f_t menu entry under the message More... menu. In this case the message is copied into the draft folder first. You will also use this menu entry if you have to go back into your drafts folder to continue work on a message draft. THE BUILT-IN EDITOR The built-in editor provides a handful of text editting com- mands and several operations that affect the formatting of a mail message. Sending a Message. Usually all you need to do is fill in the headers of your message, type in the message, and press the Send button. When you start, the cursor will be posi- tioned at the end of the first empty header line, or at the begining of the message body if, as with reply, all the headers are already initialized. When entering the headers, will take you to the next header line, and will position the cursor at the start of the message body. The only important rule to remember about mail messages is that the header and body are separated by a blank line. In addition, MH supports a header separator line of all dashes, ------. Saving a Draft. If you want to save a message draft and return to it later, use the Save&Quit button. If you want to send a message but save it for use as another draft, Exmh 1.6.1 Last change: May 23, 1995 11 EXMH(1) User Commands EXMH(1) select the _K_e_e_p _o_n _S_e_n_d checkbox item under the More... menu. In this case, when you click Send the editor will remain open and the message will remain in your drafts folder. Otherwise the draft message is removed from the drafts folder after it has been succesfully sent. (Actu- ally, it is renamed in the same fashion that _r_m_m renames deleted messages.) If you quit _e_x_m_h and you have drafts in progress, they are automatically saved and remain in your drafts folder. _W_a_r_n_i_n_g! the Save button under the More... just writes the editor's buffer to the file system. It does not imply that the draft will remain after it is sent. You probably want Save&Quit or Keep on Send instead. Aborting a Draft. If you decide you do not want to send a message, you can delete it by pressing the Abort button. If you have not changed the initial template it will be aborted immediately. Otherwise it will prompt you for confirmation. _T_r_i_c_k: a second click on the Abort button is the same as clicking the OK button in the confirmation dialog. Signatures. The editor supports signatures in two ways. If you select Auto-sign from the Simple Editor Preferences sec- tion, then your .signature file will be appended to the mes- sage when you press the Send button. Otherwise, you can use the Sign button to insert your .signature file at the end of the message. If you have several files that match the pattern ~/.signa- ture*, then you will have a menu of signature options avail- able under the Sign... menu, which replaces the Sign button. You can define the default choice with a Preference setting under the Simple Editor section. With auto-sign, the Sign... menu has a set of check box items that determine which signature file will be used. Otherwise, the menu sim- ply selects which signature you want to insert at the end of the message, and the signature is inserted when you select the menu entry. If you are composing a multipart MIME mes- sage, your signature is added as another MIME part. _T_r_i_c_k: if your signature file has the execute permission set, then exmh will try and execute it and use its output for the signature. If you accidentally have the execute bit set, the error that occurs may not be that clear. MAIL FORMATTING Line Breaks. By default, you can just type in long lines and they will wrap at word boundaries when the line gets too long. This actually happens twice, the first time by the Tk text widget when you enter text. Unfortunately, this Exmh 1.6.1 Last change: May 23, 1995 12 EXMH(1) User Commands EXMH(1) doesn't actually insert newline characters, and it is done based on the size of the window. Therefore, the line break- ing is done a second time by _e_x_m_h after you press the Send button. The line length limit defaults to 79, although you can change that in the Simple Edit Preferences section. _H_i_n_t: If you change the line length, you should also resize the editor window to match the width (e.g. 72) so your mes- sage will look right as you type it in. Set the following resource in your ~/.exmh-defaults *Sedit*Text.width: 72 Changing Fonts. You can use the Text... menu to change the font of the selected text. This promotes your message to a MIME content-type of text/enriched. The encoding of these text looks is also done when you press the Send button. You may see the encoding after clicking Send as a side-effect of the way this is implemented. The _I_n_s_e_r_t _F_i_l_e... menu entry is used to insert a file as- is, with no MIME structure. The file is inserted at the current insert point in the editor. The _I_n_s_e_r_t @ button is used to insert the body of the mes- sage being replied to. This button is only enabled when you are replying to a message. The body is formatted a little, just by prefixing each line of the message body with a string. The default is "> ", and you can change this via the Simple Editor Preferences section. _N_o_t_e: it is apparently not possible to define a repl prefix with leading spaces. This is a side effect of storing the prefix in the X resources database. The _C_i_t_e _S_e_l_e_c_t_i_o_n menu entry formats and inserts selected text. It is assumed that the text is from the current mes- sage, and the sender of that message is identified just before the inserted text. You can use this feature to insert text from several different messages. The PGP menu provides access to the Pretty Good Privacy pub- lic key system. With this you can send messages with a digital signature that certifies that you sent the message. You can also encrypt and decrypt messages with PGP. A com- plete discussion of PGP is far beyond the scope of this man page. However, if you know PGP, you will find the PGP features of _e_x_m_h useful. _H_i_n_t:. The _P_G_P _i_n _a_n _x_t_e_r_m menu entry will run PGP interac- tively. In particular, it will extract and save public key blocks from messages. So, if someone sends you their key, Exmh 1.6.1 Last change: May 23, 1995 13 EXMH(1) User Commands EXMH(1) use this operation to save it. MIME FORMATTING _W_a_r_n_i_n_g! The line-break formatting described above can interact poorly with the formatting described next. This is one of the roughest spots in the _e_x_m_h implementation. For example, if you include a file in your message that has important formatting, like a Postscript file or some program code, you will want to disable the line-break formatting. You can do this by turning off the _F_o_r_m_a_t _m_a_i_l checkbox item under the More... menu. If you are familiar with MHN directives, you can enter them into your message. In this case, you will want to select the _A_t_t_e_m_p_t _M_H_N checkbox menu item under the More... menu. Again, you will probably want to disable _F_o_r_m_a_t _m_a_i_l to make sure that long MHN directives are not chopped into multiple lines at the wrong place. You can create a multipart MIME message by using the _I_n_s_e_r_t _P_a_r_t... menu item. This adds another part to your message, promoting it to MIME content-type multipart/mixed if neces- sary. The first time you add a part, you have the option of preserving the existing message body or completely replacing it. When the file is inserted you are asked to choose its MIME content-type and content-transfer-encoding. The _I_n_s_e_r_t _E_x_t_e_r_n_a_l... menu entry is used to create a MIME part of Content-Type message/external-body. This is an indirect reference to a file, which is either a local file or a file available via anonymous FTP. A dialog lets you fill in the various parameters to the indirect reference. For an anonymous FTP pointer, the _S_i_t_e is the internet host name and the _D_i_r_e_c_t_o_r_y and _F_i_l_e _n_a_m_e determine what file it is. The _T_r_a_n_s_f_e_r _m_o_d_e is either "text" or "image". Use "image" to ensure that all 8 bits of each byte get transferred. The _D_e_s_c_r_i_p_t_i_o_n is for the benefit of the reciever of the mail message and should describe what the pointer references. _T_r_i_c_k: A file section dialog appears first, but this is not always appropriate if you are making an external reference to a non-local FTP site. Just hit cancel on the file selec- tion dialog. Then, when you enter the file name, the content-type will be inferred from the name. You can always override the content-type if _e_x_m_h guesses wrong. 8 BIT CHARACTERS The built-in editor supports 8-bit characters found in Euro- pean character sets. Insert an 8-bit character by pressing the Compose key and then two other keys to get the special character. For example, Compose, then e and ' creates an Exmh 1.6.1 Last change: May 23, 1995 14 EXMH(1) User Commands EXMH(1) accented e character. All the vowels can be composed with ' ` and " to get accents, and there are several more bindings. The complete table of compose key sequences is given by the _C_o_m_p_o_s_e _K_e_y entry in the Bindings... menu. When you compose a mail message that contains 8-bit charac- ters you need to be careful when sending it. Some mail gateways do not like 8-bit characters and will bounce the message or corrupt it. The Quoted-Printable encoding will protect 8-bit characters. The built-in editor will do this quoting for you if it detects input of an 8-bit character. The quoting is done when you press Send. You can control whether or not this happens with a combination of the Quote Printable menu entry (for per-message control) and the Quoted Printable default preference item for the Simple Edi- tor. The built-in editor handles the special coding required when including 8-bit characters in mail headers. When you are replying to a message that contains 8-bit char- acters, it may be encoded, too. The Insert @ operation will first decode the message so that the true 8-bit characters are inserted into the editor buffer. This works better than the repl filters than include the message body. If you use one of those, then you'll see the quoted-printable encoding instead of the 8-bit character. USING ANOTHER EDITOR You can use your favorite editor with exmh by specifying an _E_d_i_t_o_r _c_o_m_m_a_n_d in the Editor Support Preferences section. This command has the complete pathname of the draft message appended to it before it is executed. Several examples of editor commands include: sedit mxedit emacsclient & gnuclient & exmh-async emacs exmh-async emacsclient exmh-async gnuclient exmh-async xterm -e vi The built-in editor is called _s_e_d_i_t. _M_x_e_d_i_t and _t_k_v_i are Tcl-based editors that know how to communicate with _e_x_m_h about draft messages. _e_m_a_c_s_c_l_i_e_n_t is a program that is used to communicate with a running _e_m_a_c_s in order to get it to edit a specified file. You will need the "server.el" pack- age for emacs in order to set up your emacs as a server for this arrangement. There is more information about this in the misc directory of the _e_x_m_h distribution. _e_m_a_c_s_c_l_i_e_n_t can used in two ways. If you can post the message directly Exmh 1.6.1 Last change: May 23, 1995 15 EXMH(1) User Commands EXMH(1) from emacs, then just use "emacsclient &" and _e_x_m_h forgets about the draft and assumes _e_m_a_c_s will take care of it. Otherwise, use the exmh-async wrapper that is described below. After the editor exits you are presented with a _W_h_a_t _N_o_w dialog that gives you several options: Send, Abort, Save, Re-edit, and More... Under the More.. menu you can apply MHN, run a spell checker, or run the MH whom program to ver- ify the addresses you have specified. You can also invoke the built-in editor, _s_e_d_i_t, in case you want to use its MIME composition features. There is an "Alternate Editor" preference setting. The built-in editor has a menu entry that saves the draft and starts the alternate editor. The What Now dialog also has a menu entry to do this. In most cases you will use the _e_x_m_h-_a_s_y_n_c wrapper script to run an external editor. This is a short Tcl/Tk script that runs your editor and then communicates with _e_x_m_h when your editor exits. This means the _e_x_m_h user interface can remain active while you compose your message. You can even compose several messages at once. You will get a different _W_h_a_t _N_o_w dialog for each message draft. The _e_x_m_h-_a_s_y_n_c wrapper tries to pass through all the argu- ments to the editor command you specify. However, a couple arguments are picked up by the Tcl/Tk shell (wish). Some tricks are played, however, so you can protect arguments. For example, the following works: exmh-async xterm {-geo 80x40+0+0} -e vi {+c /: *$} This protects the -geo argument from exmh-async, and it pro- tects the complex format of the _v_i search command from interpretation by the Tcl parser. As a final note, if you try to test exmh-async from the com- mand line, you need to execute it like this: exmh-async exmh xterm -e vi & The first argument is the name of the exmh application, which is needed for the Tk-based communication between exmh-async and exmh. This argument does not appear when you define the command in Preferences. FILTERING MAIL One of the strong points for _e_x_m_h is its support for mail filtering systems that file messages into different folders as they are delivered. The filtering is done by looking for patterns in the mail headers. For example, you can put all the mail from your boss into one folder, and all the mail Exmh 1.6.1 Last change: May 23, 1995 16 EXMH(1) User Commands EXMH(1) from a mailing list or digets into another folder. _E_x_m_h visually highlights the folders that have new mail. This depends on the definition of the Unseen-Sequence profile component, and the support of this sequence by the mail filtering system. Both the _s_l_o_c_a_l and _p_r_o_c_m_a_i_l filtering systems use the _r_c_v_s_t_o_r_e program that takes care of these details. The _i_n_c program also adds messages to the unseen sequence, so even if you do not filter mail the new messages in inbox will be highlighted by _e_x_m_h. The standard filter used with MH is described in the mhook (or slocal) man page. Below is a quick summary of how it works. You must maintain a file named ~/.maildelivery that has your mail filter specifications. The contents of the file are explained below. If you can forward mail into pro- grams at your site, then put this into your .forward file to get filtering: | /usr/local/mh/lib/slocal -user yourname Alternatively, if you select the "presort" inc-style described below, then exmh will run slocal for you each time you say Inc. If you use the _p_r_o_c_m_a_i_l system, or perhaps supply your own, use the MH rcvstore program to put messages into folders. This program updates the unseen sequence so exmh can find the new mail. Unfortunately, the rcvstore program is in the MH library, so you must reference it with a long pathname, (e.g., /usr/local/mh/lib/rcvstore.) A sample .maildelivery filter file is shown below. Note: this file is ignored if it has group or world write permis- sion. It uses the _r_c_v_s_t_o_r_e program to refile messages into different folders. The first field is the header to match, and the second is the value to look for. This is a case- insensitive string. The third column specifies an action. In this case | says to pipe the message into the program in the last column. The fourth column provides limited deci- sion making. In this case the ? means to try and match this filter if the message has not already matched a previous filter. The complete syntax of the filters is given in the mhook man page. subject exmh | ? "/usr/local/lib/mh/rcvstore +exmh" subject mxedit | ? "/usr/local/lib/mh/rcvstore +mxedit" subject book | ? "/usr/local/lib/mh/rcvstore +book" to journalclub | ? "/usr/local/lib/mh/rcvstore +journal" from footbag-digest" | ? "/usr/local/lib/mh/rcvstore +footlist" default - | ? "/usr/local/lib/mh/rcvstore +inbox" Exmh 1.6.1 Last change: May 23, 1995 17 EXMH(1) User Commands EXMH(1) _W_a_r_n_i_n_g! If you use the .maildelivery file to filter mes- sages, you should always have a default action in the file that refiles the messages into your inbox (or some catch-all folder). Depending on your local configuration, there might not be a good pre-default default action. If there is no default action, mail that does not match a filter will be discarded! A patch for the slocal program is distributed with exmh. It adds an additional syntax to the maildelivery file that makes it simpler to use rcvstore. Use the + operation instead of | (pipe) to specify a refile action. The above example looks like this: subject exmh + ? "exmh" subject mxedit + ? "mxedit" subject book + ? "book" to journalclub + ? "journal" from footbag-digest" + ? "footlist" default - + ? "inbox" Incorportating Mail. The filtering support affects the way you incorportate mail from your system spool file. _E_x_m_h supports several different styles: _i_n_b_o_x, _m_u_l_t_i_d_r_o_p, _p_r_e_s_o_r_t, _p_r_e_s_o_r_t_m_u_l_t_i and _n_o_n_e. Use the _I_n_c_o_r_p_o_r_a_t_e _M_a_i_l preference section to choose one. You may also want to enable periodic inc under the _B_a_c_k_g_r_o_u_n_d _P_r_o_c_e_s_s_i_n_g prefer- ences section. inbox Inc moves new messages into your inbox folder. This is the default. No filitering is done, but the inbox folder label will highlight when new mail is incor- porated into it, and unread messages will be highlighted. none If you use your .forward file to process mail through an external program in order to deliver messages into various folders, then you don't need Inc in the user interface. Selecting "none" will eliminate the Inc button altogether and disable the internal Inc pro- cedure. A background "flist" task is a nice complement to this setting so that you can see what folders are getting mail. presort Inc moves new messages directly into various folders. This is similar to what you may be doing already with an external program. This is built this into exmh in order to elminate the need for an external program. (I cannot use a .forward file at my site.) The way presort works is to inc from your spool file into a Exmh 1.6.1 Last change: May 23, 1995 18 EXMH(1) User Commands EXMH(1) temporary folder (MyIncTmp). Then, the MH filtering hook _s_l_o_c_a_l is run on each message. In this mode, it is expected that the filtering action is to put the message into a folder. You do this by specifying an action that is to pipe the message into the MH _r_c_v_s_t_o_r_e program. See the MH man page for _m_h_o_o_k for details. multidrop This assumes that you use POP or the MH maildelivery facilities (see _m_h_o_o_k) to put new messages into a set of dropboxes (inbox-like files). You set up the correspondence between POP hosts and folders, or between inbox files and folders with your ~/.xmhcheck file. Inc moves messages from the POP server or drop- boxes into folders. The format of each line of ~/.xmhcheck file is shown below. In the first case, the file name must be an absolute pathname (i.e., has leading /). In the second case (POP), the third field is an optional user ID. presortmulti This is a combination of multidrop and presort. Set up your All messages in this folder get filtered by slo- cal. folder_name /filename/of/dropbox or folder_name POP_hostname [POP_user_name] multidrop+filter Currently there is no combination of presort and mul- tidrop, but there should be. If you are adventurous, take a look at inc.tcl and combine Inc_Presort with Inc_All. FACES One of the more fun features of exmh is its ability to display the facesaver bitmap of the person that sent you mail. There are two sources of the bitmap images, either the facesaver database or inline X-Face mail header fields. These two sources can be used independently, but the main trick is getting _e_x_m_h configured properly to use them. Facesaver Database. The exmh installer asks for two pieces of facesaver-related information: the root directory of your faces installation and a search path of faces direc- tories. This assumes that you have retrieved the faces software and associated databases and installed them under on directory, which is referred to as its root directory. The default is /usr/local/faces. Underneath this directory there is assumed to be one or more directories that contain facesaver databases. It is these directories that are named Exmh 1.6.1 Last change: May 23, 1995 19 EXMH(1) User Commands EXMH(1) in the search path; the names are relative to the root of the faces installation. Typically there is facesaver, logos, and a local database, which is called "parc" at my site. The first two databases come from the facesaver.tar.Z and logos.tar.Z files, respecitively. The default values are: Faces Root Directory /usr/local/faces Faces Search Path parc logos news facesaver If you are setting up your own database, you need to under- stand how it is organized. It is easiest to demonstrate by example. For myself, welch@parc.xerox.com, my facesaver image is found as com/xerox/parc/welch/face.xbm. _E_x_m_h will look for this file under each of the directories named by the faces search path. The complete pathname might be /usr/local/faces/parc/com/xerox/parc/welch/face.xbm. If a bitmap is not found, then the search algorithm trims off trailing components in an effort to find a more general bit- map, typically a company or organizational logo. At your site, for example, you might only have /usr/local/faces/logos/com/xerox/face.xbm, which contains the Xerox corporate logo. If your _e_x_m_h installation is not correct, or if you have a personal faces database that the _e_x_m_h maintainer doesn't know about, then you can also override the install-time set- tings with the FACEPATH environment variable. This is a more traditional search path of colon-separated directory names. X-Face headers. The X-Face header contains a compressed version of a facesaver bitmap, which is a 48x48x1 (mono- chrome) bitmap. The faces software comes with some filters and scripts to generate these and decompress them. The orignial purpose of the X-Face header is as a way of distri- buting your facesaver image so that folks can update their database. However, at the moment _e_x_m_h just decompresses the bitmap and displayes it. It requires a Preference setting for the X-Face pipeline for this to work. If the pipeline is blank (the default), no processing is done. To decompress and display the header, use a pipeline setting like this: uncompface | ikon2xbm The uncompface program comes with the faces software. It also has a version of _i_k_o_n_2_x_b_m, but a faster version of this program (a C program instead of some scripts) is distributed with _e_x_m_h in its misc directory. Future versions of _e_x_m_h will cache the results of decompressing the X-Face line in a personal faces database, but in the current version it just writes the file to /tmp/FACES.[pid]. If you are inspired Exmh 1.6.1 Last change: May 23, 1995 20 EXMH(1) User Commands EXMH(1) you could add a Hook_MsgDisplay to stash this file into a real facesaver database. The _e_x_m_h-_c_u_s_t_o_m man page describes hook procedures. SEARCHING IN EXMH There are several ways to search for things in exmh: Find in message body Searching uses regular expression syntax, and case is ignored. Find in table of contents Searching uses regular expression syntax, and case is ignored. This just searches over what you can see in the display. If you select All, then all matching mes- sages are selected. Hint: Use the "List only selected messages" folder More... menu entry to get a listing that only contains the selected messages. Pick by attributes A general search (i.e, MH pick) over the messages in the folder. This can run slowly because each message in the folder must be processed. You can match on various header fields by using the "Choose pick option" menu in the Pick dialog. If you choose more than one option, the messages must match all of them, unless you use the Not and Or buttons to build up more complex criteria. This interface is explained in more detail in the _e_x_m_h man page. The "Add to Sequence(s)" option will add the matching messages to an MH sequence. Just pick a meaningful name for the sequence. (Sequences are not supported well by exmh, yet.) The "Pick from Seq/msg(s)" lets you narrow the search to a sequence (e.g., "unseen" or something you defined yourself) or a set of messages (e.g., last:100 for the last 100 messages in the folder). The "All to Sel" option determines if the matching mes- sages are added to the currently selected set, or if a new set is created. Glimpse full text Glimpse is a full text searching tool from the Univer- sity of Arizona. Invoke the "Glimpse full text" menu entry under the Search... menu to bring up an interface to this tool. You must first index your mail, so to get started click "index" to build your indexes. This process runs in the background, and the status of the Exmh 1.6.1 Last change: May 23, 1995 21 EXMH(1) User Commands EXMH(1) index process is displayed in the Glimpse log. The storage overhead of the indexes is about 10% to 15%, which is quite good for a full text index system. To search, enter a word in the search area and press "Search". The button changes to a "Stop" button, although the stop may take a moment to take effect. The search results are displayed in the log. Click on the message in the log and exmh will visit that mes- sage. Glimpse supports approximate pattern matching, so under the Opts... menu you can choose how many errors are allowed in a word match. You can also control if the search is case sensitive or whole word. Exmh creates one glimpse index per mail folder. These are stored under the ~/Mail/.glimpse directory. This lets you limit the search to the current folder, or to the current folder and its subfolders. To update the index, just press index again. If a folder has not changed then the index is not rebuilt. While Glimpse has an incremental reindex feature, exmh does not use it. There appear to be bugs in it. For more information about Glimpse, see this URL: http://glimpse.cs.arizona.edu:1994/ TIPS Background Processing. You can set up _e_x_m_h to periodically incorporate mail (i.e., _i_n_c) for you. If you already do this via an external agent, then you should have _e_x_m_h periodically check for new mail in your folders, which is the _f_l_i_s_t action. The folder highlighting and icon feedback work best with _i_n_c and _f_l_i_s_t. You can also have it periodi- cally run _m_s_g_c_h_k or count messages in your spool file, but the disadvantage of doing this is that there is no audible or icon feedback when it sees mail waiting in your spool file. Instead, there is just a status message that you might not notice. Choose what background action is taken and how frequently it is done with the Background Processing preferences section. Scan Caches. _E_x_m_h maintains a cache of the scan output for each folder. If you run MH programs from the command line it can invalidate the cache. You can manually update the cache with the _R_e_s_c_a_n _F_o_l_d_e_r operation under the Folder More... menu. There are also menu entries that update scan caches for all your folders. These run in the background so the user interface can remain active. The scan cache is compatible with _x_m_h. Exmh 1.6.1 Last change: May 23, 1995 22 EXMH(1) User Commands EXMH(1) Performance. If you want message display to go as fast as possible, do three things. 1) Disable the X-Face pipeline command so you do not try to decompress X-Face headers. 2) Disable the facesaver database, which is distinct from the X-Face pipeline. Actually, this is only slow on the first message you receive from a new email address. The pathname of the bitmap image that corresponds to that address is cached to avoid the expensive lookup the next time you view a message from that address. 3) Disable the Graphic Separa- tor in the MIME preferences. That uses a 3D line of text instead of a blank line, and it takes a bit longer to display. _e_x_m_h does not like really big folders. If you have more than several hundred messages in a folder you will notice that folder change times get pretty slow. Take this as a nudge to reorganize things into subfolders. Every three months I move saved messages into subfolders with names like 94Q2, 94Q3, etc. I understand the performance problems involved, and plan to overhaul some of the exmh internals to improve this situtation. In the meantime... More Keyboard Stuff. If you really like using the keyboard instead of the mouse, you can change folders, set the target folder, and select messages by number with keyboard com- mands. When you type plus ('+'), focus warps to the status line so you can type in the name of a folder. In this mode, a plus cycles between choosing the target folder for moves or a folder to change into. does folder name com- pletion, accepts the folder name, and cancels the folder selection. If you start by typing a number (not plus), that message is selected, but it is not displayed until you press . INSTALLATION Installation is done via the exmh.install script. Invoke it as: wish -f ./exmh.install This puts up a dialog box that lets you patch various file system specific pathnames and enable or disable features that your system cannot support (e.g., facesaver, sound). Read the info in the dialog box and enter the appropriate file system pathnames. Click Patch to sed the exmh.MASTER script and create the main exmh file, then click TclIndex to generate the library index, and click Test to try it out. If you are satisfied, click Install to copy the main script and the supporting libraries into their destination direc- tories. Note: the "Script Library" and the "Install lib directory" are usually the same place. The script library is the run- Exmh 1.6.1 Last change: May 23, 1995 23 EXMH(1) User Commands EXMH(1) time value of the library directory, while the install lib directory is the install-time value. During the Test run, the Script library is automatically set to "./lib" so you can run without installing. When you hit the Patch button, some consistency checks are done and a relative pathname will trigger a warning. You can ignore this when you are testing, but you should install a working copy that only references absolute pathnames. NOTE: Currently you cannot leave the script library where it gets unpacked. The installation procedure really assumes that the Install Directory is a different place than ./lib. You'll get an error during the install, and in fact, background.tcl will get removed as it tries to copy it onto itself. The original motivation for install-directory vs script- directory was AFS installations in which writeable volumes have different names than their read-only, replicated volumes. In this case you want to install to the writeable volume, but run from the read-only replicas. If you get the Script library wrong, it will be manifest as a Tcl error about an undefined procedure named Exmh. Upon startup, the install will look for ../*/.exmhinstall so you can retrieve configuration information from previous versions installed in peer directories. You can also main- tain configuration information via the "Conf" button, which looks for ../*/.exmhinstall*. A patch to the MH slocal program is included as "misc/slocal.patch". The patch adds a "+" syntax to your .maildelivery file that results in messages being filed into a folder by means of the MH rcvstore library program. You can keep your patched copy of slocal distinct from the installed version because _e_x_m_h runs slocal directly. The installation dialog lets you set up the pathname for your custom copy. There is also a patch for the MH folder.c program. The patch makes "folders -recurse" run much faster because it avoids directories that do not have subfolders. The patches apply to MH 6.7. TK SEND AND XAUTHORITY The thing that causes the most trouble with new exmh users is the Tk send facility and the Xauthority mechanism. This matters if you use the detached background process or the _e_x_m_h-_a_s_y_n_c editor wrapper. Exmh 1.6.1 Last change: May 23, 1995 24 EXMH(1) User Commands EXMH(1) The send facility is used for communication between Tk interpreters. The most recent releases of Tk require that you have your X environment set up to use Xauthority. The details for doing this vary from X server to X server. The basic idea is that, _b_e_f_o_r_e you start the X server you create a file, ~/.Xauthority, that contains a random bit string. The file is only readable by your user account. You pass the name of this file to the X server when you start it up. Then, each time a window is created, the client programs read this file and pass the random bit string to the server. The idea is that only programs run from your account can read the file to get the right bit string. For the details, read about the -auth or -xauth argument to your server. Even if you get this right, you must also make sure that the old _x_h_o_s_t security system is not used. That is, the xhost list must be empty. To do this, run the following command: xhost - The other alternative is to recompile the Tk library with the -DTK_NO_SECURITY compile flag. This is appropriate if your X server just cannot do the Xauthority protocol, or you think your environment is safe enough. That is, you don't have to worry about other users popping up rogue windows on your display. MORE INFORMATION You are welcome to send bug reports and comments about exmh to the following email address: Brent.Welch@Sun.COM. Exmh is available via FTP on parcftp.xerox.com in the pub/exmh directory. MH is available as pub/mh/mh-6.8.tar.Z from ftp.ics.uci.edu Tcl and Tk are available in the ucb/tcl directory on ftp.cs.berkeley.edu Expect is available as pub/expect/expect.tar.Z from ftp.cme.nist.gov Metamail (for MIME support) is available in thumper.bellcore.com:pub/nsb Faces are available from cs.indiana.edu:/pub/faces. The individual databases are: facedir.tar.Z accumulated personal faces facesaver.tar.Z Usenix FaceSaver faces logos.tar.Z Internet domain logos news.tar.Z Usenet news hierarchy icons Exmh 1.6.1 Last change: May 23, 1995 25 EXMH(1) User Commands EXMH(1) (not intended for e-mail) Glimpse is available from the University of Arizona: http://glimpse.cs.arizona.edu:1994/ or ftp://cs.arizona.edu/glimpse To get PGP, send mail to pgp-bugs@mit.edu. FILES Your mail is collected under a directory usually called Mail. If you are using another mail system that uses that directory, set your Path MH profile entry to something else. The current folder and other information is stored in a file named "context" in your Mail directory. Your mail is stored as one message per file in directories that correspond to your mail folders. Nested folders are supported, up to the maximum depth supported for directories in your file system. Information about message sequences is kept in a file named is in the sequence named "cur", for example. New mail is in the sequence named "unseen". You can define more sequences, up to 10 per folder, but exmh doesn't support them very well. Exmh adds a few more files for its own purposes. It uses an alternate context stored in .exmhcontext so that command line MH programs and exmh do not interfere with each other. The .folders file lists all the mail folders you have. Each folder has a .xmhcache file that has a cache of the scan output. SEE ALSO exmh, exmh-ref, exmh-custom, mh AUTHOR Brent.Welch@Sun.COM THANKS To Xerox PARC/CSL, for supporting this work initially, to Sun Microsystems Laboratories for continuing the support, and to all the exmh users that contributed ideas and code. Exmh 1.6.1 Last change: May 23, 1995 26