3 <!doctype linuxdoc system>
7 <title>The Mutt Next Generation E-Mail Client
8 <author>by Andreas Krennmair <htmlurl url="mailto:ak@synflood.at" name="<ak@synflood.at>"> and others
9 originally based on <em>mutt</em> by Michael Elkins <htmlurl url="mailto:me@cs.hmc.edu" name="<me@cs.hmc.edu>"> and others
10 <date>version @VERSION@
12 Michael Elinks on mutt, circa 1995: ``All mail clients suck.
13 This one just sucks less.'' - Sven Guckes on mutt, ca. 2003: ``But it still sucks!''
18 <chapt>Introduction <!--{{{-->
20 <sect>Overview <!--{{{-->
22 <bf/Mutt-ng/ is a small but very powerful text-based MIME mail client. Mutt-ng is
23 highly configurable, and is well suited to the mail power user with advanced
24 features like key bindings, keyboard macros, mail threading, regular
25 expression searches and a powerful pattern matching language for selecting
28 <p>This documentation additionally contains documentation to <bf/Mutt-NG/, a
29 fork from Mutt with the goal to fix all the little annoyances of Mutt, to
30 integrate all the Mutt patches that are floating around in the web, and to
31 add other new features. Features specific to Mutt-ng will be discussed in
32 an extra section. Don't be confused when most of the documentation talk about
33 Mutt and not Mutt-ng, Mutt-ng contains all Mutt features, plus many more.
37 <sect>Mutt-ng Home Page <!--{{{-->
39 <htmlurl url="http://www.muttng.org/"
40 name="http://www.muttng.org">
44 <sect>Mailing Lists <!--{{{-->
48 <item><htmlurl url="https://lists.berlios.de/mailman/listinfo/mutt-ng-users"
49 name="mutt-ng-users@lists.berlios.de"> -- This is where the mutt-ng user support happens.
50 <item><htmlurl url="https://lists.berlios.de/mailman/listinfo/mutt-ng-devel" name="mutt-ng-devel@lists.berlios.de"> -- The development mailing list for mutt-ng
55 <sect>Software Distribution Sites <!--{{{-->
57 So far, there are no official releases of Mutt-ng, but you can download
58 daily snapshots from <htmlurl url="http://mutt-ng.berlios.de/snapshots/" name="http://mutt-ng.berlios.de/snapshots/">
64 Visit channel <em/#muttng/ on <htmlurl
65 url="http://www.freenode.net/" name="irc.freenode.net
66 (www.freenode.net)"> to chat with other people interested in Mutt-ng.
70 <sect>Weblog <!--{{{-->
72 If you want to read fresh news about the latest development in Mutt-ng, and get informed
73 about stuff like interesting, Mutt-ng-related articles and packages for your favorite
74 distribution, you can read and/or subscribe to our
75 <htmlurl url="http://mutt-ng.supersized.org/" name="Mutt-ng development weblog">.
79 <sect>Copyright <!--{{{-->
81 Mutt is Copyright (C) 1996-2000 Michael R. Elkins
82 <me@cs.hmc.edu> and others
84 This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
85 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
86 the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
87 (at your option) any later version.
89 This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
90 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
91 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
92 GNU General Public License for more details.
94 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
95 along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
96 Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111, USA.
102 <chapt>Getting Started <!--{{{-->
104 <sect>Basic Concepts <!--{{{-->
106 <sect1>Screens and Menus <!--{{{-->
108 <p>mutt-ng offers different screens of which every has its special
113 <item>The <em/index/ displays the contents of the currently opened
116 <item>The <em/pager/ is responsible for displaying messages, that
117 is, the header, the body and all attached parts.
119 <item>The <em/file browser/ offers operations on and displays
120 information of all folders mutt-ng should watch for mail.
122 <item>The <em/sidebar/ offers a permanent view of which mailboxes
123 contain how many total, new and/or flagged mails.
125 <item>The <em/help screen/ lists for all currently available
126 commands how to invoke them as well as a short description.
128 <item>The <em/compose/ menu is a comfortable interface take last
129 actions before sending mail: change subjects, attach files, remove
132 <item>The <em/attachement/ menu gives a summary and the tree
133 structure of the attachements of the current message.
135 <item>The <em/alias/ menu lists all or a fraction of the aliases
138 <item>The <em/key/ menu used in connection with encryption lets
139 users choose the right key to encrypt with.
143 <p>When mutt-ng is started without any further options, it'll open
144 the users default mailbox and display the index.
148 <sect1>Configuration <!--{{{-->
150 <p>Mutt-ng does <em/not/ feature an internal configuration
151 interface or menu due to the simple fact that this would be too
152 complex to handle (currently there are several <em/hundred/
153 variables which fine-tune the behaviour.)
155 <p>Mutt-ng is configured using configuration files which allow
156 users to add comments or manage them via version control systems
159 <p>Also, mutt-ng comes with a shell script named <tt/grml-muttng/
160 kindly contributed by users which really helps and eases the
161 creation of a user's configuration file. When downloading the
162 source code via a snapshot or via subversion, it can be found in
163 the <tt/contrib/ directory.
167 <sect1>Functions <!--{{{-->
169 <p>Mutt-ng offers great flexibility due to the use of functions:
170 internally, every action a user can make mutt-ng perform is named
171 ``function.'' Those functions are assigned to keys (or even key
172 sequences) and may be completely adjusted to user's needs. The
173 basic idea is that the impatient users get a very intuitive
174 interface to start off with and advanced users virtually get no
175 limits to adjustments.
179 <sect1>Interaction <!--{{{-->
181 <p>Mutt-ng has two basic concepts of user interaction:
185 <item>There is one dedicated line on the screen used to query
186 the user for input, issue any command, query variables and
187 display error and informational messages. As for every type of
188 user input, this requires manual action leading to the need of
191 <item>The automatized interface for interaction are the so
192 called <em/hooks/. Hooks specify actions the user wants to be
193 performed at well-defined situations: what to do when entering
194 which folder, what to do when displaying or replying to what
195 kind of message, etc. These are optional, i.e. a user doesn't
196 need to specify them but can do so.
202 <sect1>Modularization <!--{{{-->
204 <p>Although mutt-ng has many functionality built-in, many
205 features can be delegated to external tools to increase
206 flexibility: users can define programs to filter a message through
207 before displaying, users can use any program they want for
208 displaying a message, message types (such as PDF or PostScript)
209 for which mutt-ng doesn't have a built-in filter can be rendered
210 by arbitrary tools and so forth. Although mutt-ng has an alias
211 mechanism built-in, it features using external tools to query for
212 nearly every type of addresses from sources like LDAP, databases
213 or just the list of locally known users.
217 <sect1>Patterns <!--{{{-->
219 <p>Mutt-ng has a built-in pattern matching ``language'' which is
220 as widely used as possible to present a consistent interface to
221 users. The same ``pattern terms'' can be used for searching,
222 scoring, message selection and much more.
228 <sect>Screens and Menus <!--{{{-->
230 <sect1>Index <!--{{{-->
232 <p>The index is the screen that you usually see first when you
233 start mutt-ng. It gives an overview over your emails in the
234 currently opened mailbox. By default, this is your system mailbox.
235 The information you see in the index is a list of emails, each with
236 its number on the left, its flags (new email, important email,
237 email that has been forwarded or replied to, tagged email, ...),
238 the date when email was sent, its sender, the email size, and the
239 subject. Additionally, the index also shows thread hierarchies:
240 when you reply to an email, and the other person replies back, you
241 can see the other's person email in a "sub-tree" below. This is
242 especially useful for personal email between a group of people or
243 when you've subscribed to mailing lists.
247 <sect1>Pager <!--{{{-->
249 <p>The pager is responsible for showing the email content. On the
250 top of the pager you have an overview over the most important email
251 headers like the sender, the recipient, the subject, and much more
252 information. How much information you actually see depends on your
253 configuration, which we'll describe below.
255 <p>Below the headers, you see the email body which usually contains
256 the message. If the email contains any attachments, you will see
257 more information about them below the email body, or, if the
258 attachments are text files, you can view them directly in the
261 <p>To give the user a good overview, it is possible to configure
262 mutt-ng to show different things in the pager with different
263 colors. Virtually everything that can be described with a regular
264 expression can be colored, e.g. URLs, email addresses or smileys.
268 <sect1>File Browser <!--{{{-->
270 <p>The file browser is the interface to the local or remote
271 file system. When selecting a mailbox to open, the browser allows
272 custom sorting of items, limiting the items shown by a regular
273 expression and a freely adjustable format of what to display in
274 which way. It also allows for easy navigation through the
275 file system when selecting file(s) to attach to a message, select
276 multiple files to attach and many more.
280 <sect1>Sidebar <!--{{{-->
282 <p>The sidebar comes in handy to manage mails which are spread
283 over different folders. All folders users setup mutt-ng to watch
284 for new mail will be listed. The listing includes not only the
285 name but also the number of total messages, the number of new and
286 flagged messages. Items with new mail may be colored different
287 from those with flagged mail, items may be shortened or compress
288 if they're they to long to be printed in full form so that by
289 abbreviated names, user still now what the name stands for.
293 <sect1>Help <!--{{{-->
295 <p>The help screen is meant to offer a quick help to the user. It
296 lists the current configuration of key bindings and their
297 associated commands including a short description, and currently
298 unbound functions that still need to be associated with a key
299 binding (or alternatively, they can be called via the mutt-ng
304 <sect1>Compose Menu <!--{{{-->
306 <p>The compose menu features a split screen containing the
307 information which really matter before actually sending a
308 message by mail or posting an article to a newsgroup: who gets
309 the message as what (recipient, newsgroup, who gets what kind of
310 copy). Additionally, users may set security options like
311 deciding whether to sign, encrypt or sign and encrypt a message
314 <p>Also, it's used to attach messages, news articles or files to
315 a message, to re-edit any attachment including the message
320 <sect1>Alias Menu <!--{{{-->
322 <p>The alias menu is used to help users finding the recipients
323 of messages. For users who need to contact many people, there's
324 no need to remember addresses or names completely because it
325 allows for searching, too. The alias mechanism and thus the
326 alias menu also features grouping several addresses by a shorter
327 nickname, the actual alias, so that users don't have to select
328 each single recipient manually.
332 <sect1>Attachment Menu <!--{{{-->
334 <p>As will be later discussed in detail, mutt-ng features a good
335 and stable MIME implementation, that is, is greatly supports
336 sending and receiving messages of arbitrary type. The
337 attachment menu displays a message's structure in detail: what
338 content parts are attached to which parent part (which gives a
339 true tree structure), which type is of what type and what size.
340 Single parts may saved, deleted or modified to offer great and
341 easy access to message's internals.
345 <sect1>Key Menu <!--{{{-->
353 <sect>Moving Around in Menus <!--{{{-->
356 Information is presented in menus, very similar to ELM. Here is a table
357 showing the common keys used to navigate menus in Mutt-ng.
360 j or Down next-entry move to the next entry
361 k or Up previous-entry move to the previous entry
362 z or PageDn page-down go to the next page
363 Z or PageUp page-up go to the previous page
364 = or Home first-entry jump to the first entry
365 * or End last-entry jump to the last entry
366 q quit exit the current menu
367 ? help list all key bindings for the current menu
372 <sect>Editing Input Fields<label id="editing"> <!--{{{-->
374 Mutt-ng has a builtin line editor which is used as the primary way to input
375 textual data such as email addresses or filenames. The keys used to move
376 around while editing are very similar to those of Emacs.
379 ^A or <Home> bol move to the start of the line
380 ^B or <Left> backward-char move back one char
381 Esc B backward-word move back one word
382 ^D or <Delete> delete-char delete the char under the cursor
383 ^E or <End> eol move to the end of the line
384 ^F or <Right> forward-char move forward one char
385 Esc F forward-word move forward one word
386 <Tab> complete complete filename or alias
387 ^T complete-query complete address with query
388 ^K kill-eol delete to the end of the line
389 ESC d kill-eow delete to the end of the word
390 ^W kill-word kill the word in front of the cursor
391 ^U kill-line delete entire line
392 ^V quote-char quote the next typed key
393 <Up> history-up recall previous string from history
394 <Down> history-down recall next string from history
395 <BackSpace> backspace kill the char in front of the cursor
396 Esc u upcase-word convert word to upper case
397 Esc l downcase-word convert word to lower case
398 Esc c capitalize-word capitalize the word
400 <Return> n/a finish editing
403 You can remap the <em/editor/ functions using the <ref id="bind" name="bind">
404 command. For example, to make the <em/Delete/ key delete the character in
405 front of the cursor rather than under, you could use
407 <tt/bind editor <delete> backspace/
411 <sect>Reading Mail - The Index and Pager <!--{{{-->
414 Similar to many other mail clients, there are two modes in which mail is
415 read in Mutt-ng. The first is the index of messages in the mailbox, which is
416 called the ``index'' in Mutt-ng. The second mode is the display of the
417 message contents. This is called the ``pager.''
419 The next few sections describe the functions provided in each of these
422 <sect1>The Message Index
426 c change to a different mailbox
427 ESC c change to a folder in read-only mode
428 C copy the current message to another mailbox
429 ESC C decode a message and copy it to a folder
430 ESC s decode a message and save it to a folder
431 D delete messages matching a pattern
432 d delete the current message
434 l show messages matching a pattern
435 N mark message as new
436 o change the current sort method
437 O reverse sort the mailbox
438 q save changes and exit
440 T tag messages matching a pattern
441 t toggle the tag on a message
442 ESC t toggle tag on entire message thread
443 U undelete messages matching a pattern
446 x abort changes and exit
447 <Return> display-message
448 <Tab> jump to the next new message
449 @ show the author's full e-mail address
450 $ save changes to mailbox
453 ^L clear and redraw the screen
454 ^T untag messages matching a pattern
460 In addition to who sent the message and the subject, a short summary of
461 the disposition of each message is printed beside the message number.
462 Zero or more of the following ``flags'' may appear, which mean:
466 <tag/D/ message is deleted (is marked for deletion)
467 <tag/d/ message have attachments marked for deletion
468 <tag/K/ contains a PGP public key
469 <tag/N/ message is new
470 <tag/O/ message is old
471 <tag/P/ message is PGP encrypted
472 <tag/r/ message has been replied to
473 <tag/S/ message is signed, and the signature is succesfully verified
474 <tag/s/ message is signed
475 <tag/!/ message is flagged
476 <tag/*/ message is tagged
479 Some of the status flags can be turned on or off using
481 <item><bf/set-flag/ (default: w)
482 <item><bf/clear-flag/ (default: W)
486 Furthermore, the following flags reflect who the message is addressed
487 to. They can be customized with the
488 <ref id="to_chars" name="$to_chars"> variable.
492 <tag/+/ message is to you and you only
493 <tag/T/ message is to you, but also to or cc'ed to others
494 <tag/C/ message is cc'ed to you
495 <tag/F/ message is from you
496 <tag/L/ message is sent to a subscribed mailing list
502 By default, Mutt-ng uses its builtin pager to display the body of messages.
503 The pager is very similar to the Unix program <em/less/ though not nearly as
507 <Return> go down one line
508 <Space> display the next page (or next message if at the end of a message)
509 - go back to the previous page
510 n search for next match
511 S skip beyond quoted text
512 T toggle display of quoted text
514 / search for a regular expression (pattern)
515 ESC / search backwards for a regular expression
516 \ toggle search pattern coloring
517 ^ jump to the top of the message
520 In addition, many of the functions from the <em/index/ are available in
521 the pager, such as <em/delete-message/ or <em/copy-message/ (this is one
522 advantage over using an external pager to view messages).
524 Also, the internal pager supports a couple other advanced features. For
525 one, it will accept and translate the ``standard'' nroff sequences for
526 bold and underline. These sequences are a series of either the letter,
527 backspace (^H), the letter again for bold or the letter, backspace,
528 ``_'' for denoting underline. Mutt-ng will attempt to display these
529 in bold and underline respectively if your terminal supports them. If
530 not, you can use the bold and underline <ref id="color" name="color">
531 objects to specify a color or mono attribute for them.
533 Additionally, the internal pager supports the ANSI escape sequences for
534 character attributes. Mutt-ng translates them into the correct color and
535 character settings. The sequences Mutt-ng supports are:
539 ESC [ Ps;Ps;Ps;...;Ps m
546 3x Foreground color is x
547 4x Background color is x
560 Mutt-ng uses these attributes for handling text/enriched messages, and they
561 can also be used by an external <ref id="auto_view" name="autoview">
562 script for highlighting purposes. <bf/Note:/ If you change the colors for your
563 display, for example by changing the color associated with color2 for
564 your xterm, then that color will be used instead of green.
566 <sect1>Threaded Mode<label id="threads">
568 When the mailbox is <ref id="sort" name="sorted"> by <em/threads/, there are
569 a few additional functions available in the <em/index/ and <em/pager/ modes.
572 ^D delete-thread delete all messages in the current thread
573 ^U undelete-thread undelete all messages in the current thread
574 ^N next-thread jump to the start of the next thread
575 ^P previous-thread jump to the start of the previous thread
576 ^R read-thread mark the current thread as read
577 ESC d delete-subthread delete all messages in the current subthread
578 ESC u undelete-subthread undelete all messages in the current subthread
579 ESC n next-subthread jump to the start of the next subthread
580 ESC p previous-subthread jump to the start of the previous subthread
581 ESC r read-subthread mark the current subthread as read
582 ESC t tag-thread toggle the tag on the current thread
583 ESC v collapse-thread toggle collapse for the current thread
584 ESC V collapse-all toggle collapse for all threads
585 P parent-message jump to parent message in thread
588 <bf/Note:/ Collapsing a thread displays only the first message
589 in the thread and hides the others. This is useful when threads
590 contain so many messages that you can only see a handful of threads on
591 the screen. See %M in <ref id="index_format"name="$index_format">.
592 For example, you could use "%?M?(#%03M)&(%4l)?" in <ref
593 id="index_format"name="$index_format"> to optionally
594 display the number of hidden messages if the thread is collapsed.
596 See also: <ref id="strict_threads" name="$strict_threads">.
598 <sect1>Miscellaneous Functions
599 <p><bf/create-alias/<label id="create-alias"> (default: a)<newline>
601 Creates a new alias based upon the current message (or prompts for a
602 new one). Once editing is complete, an <ref id="alias" name="alias">
603 command is added to the file specified by the <ref id="alias_file"
604 name="$alias_file"> variable for future use. <bf/Note:/
605 Specifying an <ref id="alias_file" name="$alias_file">
606 does not add the aliases specified there-in, you must also <ref
607 id="source" name="source"> the file.
609 <p><bf/check-traditional-pgp/<label id="check-traditional-pgp"> (default: ESC P)<newline>
611 This function will search the current message for content signed or
612 encrypted with PGP the "traditional" way, that is, without proper
613 MIME tagging. Technically, this function will temporarily change
614 the MIME content types of the body parts containing PGP data; this
615 is similar to the <ref id="edit-type" name="edit-type"> function's
619 <p><bf/display-toggle-weed/<label id="display-toggle-weed"> (default: h)<newline>
621 Toggles the weeding of message header fields specified by <ref id="ignore"
622 name="ignore"> commands.
624 <p><bf/edit/<label id="edit"> (default: e)<newline>
626 This command (available in the ``index'' and ``pager'') allows you to
627 edit the raw current message as it's present in the mail folder.
628 After you have finished editing, the changed message will be
629 appended to the current folder, and the original message will be
632 <p><bf/edit-type/<label id="edit-type"><newline>
633 (default: ^E on the attachment menu, and in the pager and index menus; ^T on the
636 This command is used to temporarily edit an attachment's content
637 type to fix, for instance, bogus character set parameters. When
638 invoked from the index or from the pager, you'll have the
639 opportunity to edit the top-level attachment's content type. On the
640 <ref id="attach_menu" name="attachment menu">, you can change any
641 attachment's content type. These changes are not persistent, and get
642 lost upon changing folders.
644 Note that this command is also available on the <ref
645 id="compose_menu" name="compose menu">. There, it's used to
646 fine-tune the properties of attachments you are going to send.
648 <p><bf/enter-command/<label id="enter-command"> (default: ``:'')<newline>
650 This command is used to execute any command you would normally put in a
651 configuration file. A common use is to check the settings of variables, or
652 in conjunction with <ref id="macro" name="macros"> to change settings on the
655 <p><bf/extract-keys/<label id="extract-keys"> (default: ^K)<newline>
657 This command extracts PGP public keys from the current or tagged
658 message(s) and adds them to your PGP public key ring.
660 <p><bf/forget-passphrase/<label id="forget-passphrase"> (default:
663 This command wipes the passphrase(s) from memory. It is useful, if
664 you misspelled the passphrase.
666 <p><bf/list-reply/<label id="list-reply"> (default: L)<newline>
668 Reply to the current or tagged message(s) by extracting any addresses which
669 match the regular expressions given by the <ref id="lists" name="lists or subscribe">
670 commands, but also honor any <tt/Mail-Followup-To/ header(s) if the
671 <ref id="honor_followup_to" name="$honor_followup_to">
672 configuration variable is set. Using this when replying to messages posted
673 to mailing lists helps avoid duplicate copies being sent to the author of
674 the message you are replying to.
676 <bf/pipe-message/<label id="pipe-message"> (default: |)<newline>
678 Asks for an external Unix command and pipes the current or
679 tagged message(s) to it. The variables <ref id="pipe_decode"
680 name="$pipe_decode">, <ref id="pipe_split"
681 name="$pipe_split">, <ref id="pipe_sep"
682 name="$pipe_sep"> and <ref id="wait_key"
683 name="$wait_key"> control the exact behavior of this
686 <bf/resend-message/<label id="resend-message"> (default: ESC e)<newline>
688 With resend-message, mutt takes the current message as a template for a
689 new message. This function is best described as "recall from arbitrary
690 folders". It can conveniently be used to forward MIME messages while
691 preserving the original mail structure. Note that the amount of headers
692 included here depends on the value of the <ref id="weed" name="$weed">
695 This function is also available from the attachment menu. You can use this
696 to easily resend a message which was included with a bounce message
697 as a message/rfc822 body part.
699 <bf/shell-escape/<label id="shell-escape"> (default: !)<newline>
701 Asks for an external Unix command and executes it. The <ref
702 id="wait_key" name="$wait_key"> can be used to control
703 whether Mutt-ng will wait for a key to be pressed when the command returns
704 (presumably to let the user read the output of the command), based on
705 the return status of the named command.
707 <bf/toggle-quoted/<label id="toggle-quoted"> (default: T)<newline>
709 The <em/pager/ uses the <ref id="quote_regexp"
710 name="$quote_regexp"> variable to detect quoted text when
711 displaying the body of the message. This function toggles the display
712 of the quoted material in the message. It is particularly useful when
713 are interested in just the response and there is a large amount of
714 quoted text in the way.
716 <bf/skip-quoted/<label id="skip-quoted"> (default: S)<newline>
718 This function will go to the next line of non-quoted text which come
719 after a line of quoted text in the internal pager.
723 <sect>Sending Mail <!--{{{-->
726 The following bindings are available in the <em/index/ for sending
730 m compose compose a new message
731 r reply reply to sender
732 g group-reply reply to all recipients
733 L list-reply reply to mailing list address
734 f forward forward message
735 b bounce bounce (remail) message
736 ESC k mail-key mail a PGP public key to someone
739 Bouncing a message sends the message as is to the recipient you
740 specify. Forwarding a message allows you to add comments or
741 modify the message you are forwarding. These items are discussed
742 in greater detail in the next chapter <ref id="forwarding_mail"
743 name="``Forwarding and Bouncing Mail''">.
745 <sect1>Composing new messages <!--{{{-->
747 <p>When you want to send an email using mutt-ng, simply press <tt/m/ on
748 your keyboard. Then, mutt-ng asks for the recipient via a prompt in
755 <p>After you've finished entering the recipient(s), press return. If you
756 want to send an email to more than one recipient, separate the email
757 addresses using the comma "<tt/,/". Mutt-ng then asks you for the email
758 subject. Again, press return after you've entered it. After that, mutt-ng
759 got the most important information from you, and starts up an editor
760 where you can then enter your email.
762 <p>The editor that is called is selected in the following way: you
763 can e.g. set it in the mutt-ng configuration:
766 set editor = "vim +/^$/ -c ':set tw=72'"
771 <p>If you don't set your preferred editor in your configuration, mutt-ng
772 first looks whether the environment variable <tt/$VISUAL/ is set, and if
773 so, it takes its value as editor command. Otherwise, it has a look
774 at <tt/$EDITOR/ and takes its value if it is set. If no editor command
775 can be found, mutt-ng simply assumes <tt/vi/ to be the default editor,
776 since it's the most widespread editor in the Unix world and it's pretty
777 safe to assume that it is installed and available.
779 <p>When you've finished entering your message, save it and quit your
780 editor. Mutt-ng will then present you with a summary screen, the compose menu.
781 On the top, you see a summary of the most important available key commands.
782 Below that, you see the sender, the recipient(s), Cc and/or Bcc
783 recipient(s), the subject, the reply-to address, and optionally
784 information where the sent email will be stored and whether it should
785 be digitally signed and/or encrypted.
787 <p>Below that, you see a list of "attachments". The mail you've just
788 entered before is also an attachment, but due to its special type
789 (it's plain text), it will be displayed as the normal message on
792 <p>At this point, you can add more attachments, pressing <tt/a/, you
793 can edit the recipient addresses, pressing <tt/t/ for the "To:" field,
794 <tt/c/ for the "Cc:" field, and <tt/b/ for the "Bcc: field. You can
795 also edit the subject the subject by simply pressing <tt/s/ or the
796 email message that you've entered before by pressing <tt/e/. You will
797 then again return to the editor. You can even edit the sender, by pressing
798 <tt/<esc>f/, but this shall only be used with caution.
800 <p>Alternatively, you can configure mutt-ng in a way that most of the
801 above settings can be edited using the editor. Therefore, you only
802 need to add the following to your configuration:
808 <p>Once you have finished editing the body of your mail message, you are
809 returned to the <em/compose/ menu. The following options are available:
812 a attach-file attach a file
813 A attach-message attach message(s) to the message
814 ESC k attach-key attach a PGP public key
815 d edit-description edit description on attachment
816 D detach-file detach a file
817 t edit-to edit the To field
818 ESC f edit-from edit the From field
819 r edit-reply-to edit the Reply-To field
820 c edit-cc edit the Cc field
821 b edit-bcc edit the Bcc field
822 y send-message send the message
823 s edit-subject edit the Subject
824 S smime-menu select S/MIME options
825 f edit-fcc specify an ``Fcc'' mailbox
826 p pgp-menu select PGP options
827 P postpone-message postpone this message until later
828 q quit quit (abort) sending the message
829 w write-fcc write the message to a folder
830 i ispell check spelling (if available on your system)
831 ^F forget-passphrase wipe passphrase(s) from memory
834 <bf/Note:/ The attach-message function will prompt you for a folder to
835 attach messages from. You can now tag messages in that folder and they
836 will be attached to the message you are sending. Note that certain
837 operations like composing a new mail, replying, forwarding, etc. are
838 not permitted when you are in that folder. The %r in <ref
839 id="status_format" name="$status_format"> will change to
840 a 'A' to indicate that you are in attach-message mode.
844 <sect1>Replying <!--{{{-->
846 <sect2>Simple Replies <!--{{{-->
848 <p>When you want to reply to an email message, select it in the index
849 menu and then press <tt/r/. Mutt-ng's behaviour is then similar to the
850 behaviour when you compose a message: first, you will be asked for
851 the recipient, then for the subject, and then, mutt-ng will start
852 the editor with the quote attribution and the quoted message. This
853 can e.g. look like the example below.
856 On Mon, Mar 07, 2005 at 05:02:12PM +0100, Michael Svensson wrote:
857 > Bill, can you please send last month's progress report to Mr.
858 > Morgan? We also urgently need the cost estimation for the new
859 > production server that we want to set up before our customer's
860 > project will go live.
863 <p>You can start editing the email message. It is strongly
864 recommended to put your answer <em/below/ the quoted text and to
865 only quote what is really necessary and that you refer to. Putting
866 your answer on top of the quoted message, is, although very
867 widespread, very often not considered to be a polite way to answer
870 <p>The quote attribution is configurable, by default it is set to
872 set attribution = "On %d, %n wrote:"
875 <p>It can also be set to something more compact, e.g.
877 set attribution = "attribution="* %n <%a> [%(%y-%m-%d %H:%M)]:"
880 <p>The example above results in the following attribution:
882 * Michael Svensson <svensson@foobar.com> [05-03-06 17:02]:
883 > Bill, can you please send last month's progress report to Mr.
884 > Morgan? We also urgently need the cost estimation for the new
885 > production server that we want to set up before our customer's
886 > project will go live.
889 <p>Generally, try to keep your attribution short yet
890 information-rich. It is <em/not/ the right place for witty quotes,
891 long "attribution" novels or anything like that: the right place
892 for such things is - if at all - the email signature at the very
893 bottom of the message.
895 <p>When you're done with writing your message, save and quit the
896 editor. As before, you will return to the compose menu, which is
897 used in the same way as before.
901 <sect2>Group Replies <!--{{{-->
903 <p>In the situation where a group of people uses email as a
904 discussion, most of the emails will have one or more recipients,
905 and probably several "Cc:" recipients. The group reply functionality
906 ensures that when you press <tt/g/ instead of <tt/r/ to do a reply,
907 each and every recipient that is contained in the original message
908 will receive a copy of the message, either as normal recipient or
913 <sect2>List Replies <!--{{{-->
915 <p>When you use mailing lists, it's generally better to send your
916 reply to a message only to the list instead of the list and the
917 original author. To make this easy to use, mutt-ng features list
920 <p>To do a list reply, simply press <tt/L/. If the email contains
921 a <tt/Mail-Followup-To:/ header, its value will be used as reply
922 address. Otherwise, mutt-ng searches through all mail addresses in
923 the original message and tries to match them a list of regular
924 expressions which can be specified using the <tt/lists/ command.
925 If any of the regular expression matches, a mailing
926 list address has been found, and it will be used as reply address.
929 lists linuxevent@luga\.at vuln-dev@ mutt-ng-users@
932 <p>Nowadays, most mailing list software like GNU Mailman adds a
933 <tt/Mail-Followup-To:/ header to their emails anyway, so setting
934 <tt/lists/ is hardly ever necessary in practice.
940 <sect1>Editing the message header <!--{{{-->
942 When editing the header of your outgoing message, there are a couple of
943 special features available.
945 If you specify<newline>
946 <tt/Fcc:/ <em/filename/<newline>
947 Mutt-ng will pick up <em/filename/
948 just as if you had used the <em/edit-fcc/ function in the <em/compose/ menu.
950 You can also attach files to your message by specifying<newline>
951 <tt/Attach:/ <em/filename/ [ <em/description/ ]<newline>
952 where <em/filename/ is the file to attach and <em/description/ is an
953 optional string to use as the description of the attached file.
955 When replying to messages, if you remove the <em/In-Reply-To:/ field from
956 the header field, Mutt-ng will not generate a <em/References:/ field, which
957 allows you to create a new message thread.
959 Also see <ref id="edit_headers" name="edit_headers">.
963 <sect1>Using Mutt-ng with PGP <!--{{{-->
966 If you want to use PGP, you can specify
968 <tt/Pgp:/ [ <tt/E/ | <tt/S/ | <tt/S/<em/<id>/ ] <newline>
970 ``E'' encrypts, ``S'' signs and
971 ``S<id>'' signs with the given key, setting <ref
972 id="pgp_sign_as" name="$pgp_sign_as"> permanently.
974 If you have told mutt to PGP encrypt a message, it will guide you
975 through a key selection process when you try to send the message.
976 Mutt-ng will not ask you any questions about keys which have a
977 certified user ID matching one of the message recipients' mail
978 addresses. However, there may be situations in which there are
979 several keys, weakly certified user ID fields, or where no matching
982 In these cases, you are dropped into a menu with a list of keys from
983 which you can select one. When you quit this menu, or mutt can't
984 find any matching keys, you are prompted for a user ID. You can, as
985 usually, abort this prompt using <tt/^G/. When you do so, mutt will
986 return to the compose screen.
988 Once you have successfully finished the key selection, the message
989 will be encrypted using the selected public keys, and sent out.
991 Most fields of the entries in the key selection menu (see also <ref
992 id="pgp_entry_format" name="$pgp_entry_format">)
993 have obvious meanings. But some explanations on the capabilities, flags,
994 and validity fields are in order.
996 The flags sequence (%f) will expand to one of the following flags:
998 R The key has been revoked and can't be used.
999 X The key is expired and can't be used.
1000 d You have marked the key as disabled.
1001 c There are unknown critical self-signature
1005 The capabilities field (%c) expands to a two-character sequence
1006 representing a key's capabilities. The first character gives
1007 the key's encryption capabilities: A minus sign (<bf/-/) means
1008 that the key cannot be used for encryption. A dot (<bf/./) means that
1009 it's marked as a signature key in one of the user IDs, but may
1010 also be used for encryption. The letter <bf/e/ indicates that
1011 this key can be used for encryption.
1013 The second character indicates the key's signing capabilities. Once
1014 again, a ``<bf/-/'' implies ``not for signing'', ``<bf/./'' implies
1015 that the key is marked as an encryption key in one of the user-ids, and
1016 ``<bf/s/'' denotes a key which can be used for signing.
1018 Finally, the validity field (%t) indicates how well-certified a user-id
1019 is. A question mark (<bf/?/) indicates undefined validity, a minus
1020 character (<bf/-/) marks an untrusted association, a space character
1021 means a partially trusted association, and a plus character (<bf/+/)
1022 indicates complete validity.
1026 <sect1>Sending anonymous messages via mixmaster <!--{{{-->
1029 You may also have configured mutt to co-operate with Mixmaster, an
1030 anonymous remailer. Mixmaster permits you to send your messages
1031 anonymously using a chain of remailers. Mixmaster support in mutt is for
1032 mixmaster version 2.04 (beta 45 appears to be the latest) and 2.03.
1033 It does not support earlier versions or the later so-called version 3 betas,
1034 of which the latest appears to be called 2.9b23.
1036 To use it, you'll have to obey certain restrictions. Most
1037 important, you cannot use the <tt/Cc/ and <tt/Bcc/ headers. To tell
1038 Mutt-ng to use mixmaster, you have to select a remailer chain, using
1039 the mix function on the compose menu.
1041 The chain selection screen is divided into two parts. In the
1042 (larger) upper part, you get a list of remailers you may use. In
1043 the lower part, you see the currently selected chain of remailers.
1045 You can navigate in the chain using the <tt/chain-prev/ and
1046 <tt/chain-next/ functions, which are by default bound to the left
1047 and right arrows and to the <tt/h/ and <tt/l/ keys (think vi
1048 keyboard bindings). To insert a remailer at the current chain
1049 position, use the <tt/insert/ function. To append a remailer behind
1050 the current chain position, use <tt/select-entry/ or <tt/append/.
1051 You can also delete entries from the chain, using the corresponding
1052 function. Finally, to abandon your changes, leave the menu, or
1053 <tt/accept/ them pressing (by default) the <tt/Return/ key.
1055 Note that different remailers do have different capabilities,
1056 indicated in the %c entry of the remailer menu lines (see
1057 <ref id="mix_entry_format"
1058 name="$mix_entry_format">). Most important is
1059 the ``middleman'' capability, indicated by a capital ``M'': This
1060 means that the remailer in question cannot be used as the final
1061 element of a chain, but will only forward messages to other
1062 mixmaster remailers. For details on the other capabilities, please
1063 have a look at the mixmaster documentation.
1069 <sect>Forwarding and Bouncing Mail<label id="forwarding_mail"> <!--{{{-->
1071 <p>Often, it is necessary to forward mails to other people.
1072 Therefore, mutt-ng supports forwarding messages in two different
1075 <p>The first one is regular forwarding, as you probably know it from
1076 other mail clients. You simply press <tt/f/, enter the recipient
1077 email address, the subject of the forwarded email, and then you can
1078 edit the message to be forwarded in the editor. The forwarded
1079 message is separated from the rest of the message via the two
1083 ----- Forwarded message from Lucas User <luser@example.com> -----
1085 From: Lucas User <luser@example.com>
1086 Date: Thu, 02 Dec 2004 03:08:34 +0100
1087 To: Michael Random <mrandom@example.com>
1088 Subject: Re: blackmail
1090 Pay me EUR 50,000.- cash or your favorite stuffed animal will die
1094 ----- End forwarded message -----</verb>
1096 <p>When you're done with editing the mail, save and quit the editor,
1097 and you will return to the compose menu, the same menu you also
1098 encounter when composing or replying to mails.
1100 <p>The second mode of forwarding emails with mutt-ng is the
1101 so-called <em/bouncing/: when you bounce an email to another
1102 address, it will be sent in practically the same format you send it
1103 (except for headers that are created during transporting the
1104 message). To bounce a message, press <tt/b/ and enter the recipient
1105 email address. By default, you are then asked whether you really
1106 want to bounce the message to the specified recipient. If you answer
1107 with yes, the message will then be bounced.
1109 <p>To the recipient, the bounced email will look as if he got it
1110 like a regular email where he was <tt/Bcc:/ recipient. The only
1111 possibility to find out whether it was a bounced email is to
1112 carefully study the email headers and to find out which host really
1117 <sect>Postponing Mail<label id="postponing_mail"> <!--{{{-->
1120 At times it is desirable to delay sending a message that you have
1121 already begun to compose. When the <em/postpone-message/ function is
1122 used in the <em/compose/ menu, the body of your message and attachments
1123 are stored in the mailbox specified by the <ref id="postponed"
1124 name="$postponed"> variable. This means that you can recall the
1125 message even if you exit Mutt-ng and then restart it at a later time.
1127 Once a message is postponed, there are several ways to resume it. From the
1128 command line you can use the ``-p'' option, or if you <em/compose/ a new
1129 message from the <em/index/ or <em/pager/ you will be prompted if postponed
1130 messages exist. If multiple messages are currently postponed, the
1131 <em/postponed/ menu will pop up and you can select which message you would
1134 <bf/Note:/ If you postpone a reply to a message, the reply setting of
1135 the message is only updated when you actually finish the message and
1136 send it. Also, you must be in the same folder with the message you
1137 replied to for the status of the message to be updated.
1139 See also the <ref id="postpone" name="$postpone"> quad-option.
1145 <chapt>Configuration <!--{{{-->
1147 <sect>Locations of Configuration Files <!--{{{-->
1148 <p>While the default configuration (or ``preferences'') make Mutt-ng usable right out
1149 of the box, it is often desirable to tailor Mutt-ng to suit your own tastes. When
1150 Mutt-ng is first invoked, it will attempt to read the ``system'' configuration
1151 file (defaults set by your local system administrator), unless the ``-n'' <ref
1152 id="commandline" name="command line"> option is specified. This file is
1153 typically <tt>/usr/local/share/muttng/Muttngrc</tt> or <tt>/etc/Muttngrc</tt>,
1154 Mutt-ng users will find this file in <tt>/usr/local/share/muttng/Muttrc</tt> or
1155 <tt>/etc/Muttngrc</tt>. Mutt will next look for a file named <tt>.muttrc</tt>
1156 in your home directory, Mutt-ng will look for <tt>.muttngrc</tt>. If this file
1157 does not exist and your home directory has a subdirectory named <tt/.mutt/,
1158 mutt try to load a file named <tt>.muttng/muttngrc</tt>.
1160 <tt>.muttrc</tt> (or <tt>.muttngrc</tt> for Mutt-ng) is the file where you will
1161 usually place your <ref id="commands" name="commands"> to configure Mutt-ng.
1165 <sect>Basic Syntax of Initialization Files<label id="muttrc-syntax"> <!--{{{-->
1168 An initialization file consists of a series of <ref id="commands"
1169 name="commands">. Each line of the file may contain one or more commands.
1170 When multiple commands are used, they must be separated by a semicolon (;).
1172 set realname='Mutt-ng user' ; ignore x-
1174 The hash mark, or pound sign
1175 (``#''), is used as a ``comment'' character. You can use it to
1176 annotate your initialization file. All text after the comment character
1177 to the end of the line is ignored. For example,
1180 my_hdr X-Disclaimer: Why are you listening to me? # This is a comment
1183 Single quotes (') and double quotes (&dquot;) can be used to quote strings
1184 which contain spaces or other special characters. The difference between
1185 the two types of quotes is similar to that of many popular shell programs,
1186 namely that a single quote is used to specify a literal string (one that is
1187 not interpreted for shell variables or quoting with a backslash [see
1188 next paragraph]), while double quotes indicate a string for which
1189 should be evaluated. For example, backtics are evaluated inside of double
1190 quotes, but <bf/not/ for single quotes.
1192 \ quotes the next character, just as in shells such as bash and zsh.
1193 For example, if want to put quotes ``&dquot;'' inside of a string, you can use
1194 ``\'' to force the next character to be a literal instead of interpreted
1197 set realname="Michael \"MuttDude\" Elkins"
1200 ``\\'' means to insert a literal ``\'' into the line.
1201 ``\n'' and ``\r'' have their usual C meanings of linefeed and
1202 carriage-return, respectively.
1204 A \ at the end of a line can be used to split commands over
1205 multiple lines, provided that the split points don't appear in the
1206 middle of command names.
1208 Please note that, unlike the various shells, mutt-ng interprets a ``\''
1209 at the end of a line also in comments. This allows you to disable a command
1210 split over multiple lines with only one ``#''.
1214 set realname="Michael \"MuttDude\" Elkins"
1217 When testing your config files, beware the following caveat. The backslash
1218 at the end of the commented line extends the current line with the next line
1219 - then referred to as a ``continuation line''. As the first line is
1220 commented with a hash (#) all following continuation lines are also
1221 part of a comment and therefore are ignored, too. So take care of comments
1222 when continuation lines are involved within your setup files!
1234 line1 ``continues'' until line4. however, the part after the # is a
1235 comment which includes line3 and line4. line5 is a new line of its own and
1236 thus is interpreted again.
1238 The commands understood by mutt are explained in the next paragraphs.
1239 For a complete list, see the <ref id="commands" name="command reference">.
1243 <sect>Variable Expansion <!--{{{-->
1245 <sect1>Commands' Output
1247 <p>It is possible to substitute the output of a Unix command in an
1248 initialization file. This is accomplished by enclosing the command
1249 in backquotes (``) as in, for example:
1252 my_hdr X-Operating-System: `uname -a`
1255 <p>The output of the Unix command ``uname -a'' will be substituted
1256 before the line is parsed. Note that since initialization files are
1257 line oriented, only the first line of output from the Unix command
1258 will be substituted.
1260 <sect1>Environment Variables
1262 <p>UNIX environments can be accessed like the way it is done in
1263 shells like sh and bash: Prepend the name of the environment by a
1264 ``$'' sign. For example,
1267 set record=+sent_on_$HOSTNAME
1270 <p>sets the <ref id="record" name="$record"> variable to the
1271 string <em/+sent_on_/ and appends the value of the evironment
1272 variable <tt>$HOSTNAME</tt>.
1274 <p><bf/Note:/ There will be no warning if an environment variable
1275 is not defined. The result will of the expansion will then be empty.
1277 <sect1>Configuration Variables
1279 <p>As for environment variables, the values of all configuration
1280 variables as string can be used in the same way, too. For example,
1283 set imap_home_namespace = $folder
1286 <p>would set the value of <ref id="imap_home_namespace"
1287 name="$imap_home_namespace"> to the value to
1288 which <ref id="folder" name="$folder"> is <em/currently/ set
1291 <p><bf/Note:/ There're no logical links established in such cases so
1292 that the the value for <ref id="imap_home_namespace"
1293 name="$imap_home_namespace"> won't change even
1294 if <ref id="folder" name="$folder"> gets changed.
1296 <p><bf/Note:/ There will be no warning if a configuration variable
1297 is not defined or is empty. The result will of the expansion will
1300 <sect1>Self-Defined Variables
1302 <p>Mutt-ng flexibly allows users to define their own variables. To
1303 avoid conflicts with the standard set and to prevent misleading
1304 error messages, there's a reserved namespace for them: all
1305 user-defined variables must be prefixed with <tt/user_/ and can be
1306 used just like any ordinary configuration or environment
1309 <p>For example, to view the manual, users can either define three
1310 macros like the following
1313 macro generic <F1> "!less -r /path/to/manual" "Show manual"
1314 macro pager <F1> "!less -r /path/to/manual" "Show manual"
1315 macro index <F1> "!less -r /path/to/manual" "Show manual"
1318 <p>for <tt/generic/, <tt/pager/ and <tt/index/. The alternative is to
1319 define a custom variable like so:
1322 set user_manualcmd = '!less -r /path/to_manual"
1323 macro generic <F1> "$user_manualcmd<enter>" "Show manual"
1324 macro pager <F1> "$user_manualcmd<enter>" "Show manual"
1325 macro index <F1> "$user_manualcmd<enter>" "Show manual"
1328 <p>Using this feature, arbitrary sequences can be defined once and
1329 recalled and reused where necessary. More advanced scenarios could
1330 include to save a variable's value at the beginning of macro
1331 sequence and restore it at end.
1333 <p>When the variable is first defined, the first value it gets
1334 assigned is also the initial value to which it can be reset using
1335 the <tt/reset/ command.
1337 <p>The complete removal is done via the <tt/unset/ keyword.
1339 <p>After the following sequence:
1346 <p>the variable <tt>$user_foo</tt> has a current value of 666 and an
1347 initial of 42. The query
1353 <p>will show 666. After doing the reset via
1359 <p>a following query will give 42 as the result. After unsetting it
1366 <p>any query or operation (except the noted expansion within other
1367 statements) will lead to an error message.
1369 <sect1>Type Conversions
1371 <p>A note about variable's types during conversion: internally
1372 values are stored in internal types but for any dump/query or set
1373 operation they're converted to and from string. That means that
1374 there's no need to worry about types when referencing any variable.
1375 As an example, the following can be used without harm (besides
1376 makeing muttng very likely behave strange):
1380 set folder = $read_inc
1381 set read_inc = $folder
1382 set user_magic_number = 42
1383 set folder = $user_magic_number
1388 <sect>Defining/Using aliases<label id="alias"> <!--{{{-->
1391 Usage: <tt/alias/ <em/key/ <em/address/ [ , <em/address/, ... ]
1393 It's usually very cumbersome to remember or type out the address of someone
1394 you are communicating with. Mutt-ng allows you to create ``aliases'' which map
1395 a short string to a full address.
1397 <bf/Note:/ if you want to create an alias for a group (by specifying more than
1398 one address), you <bf/must/ separate the addresses with a comma (``,'').
1400 To remove an alias or aliases (``*'' means all aliases):
1402 <tt/unalias/ [ * | <em/key/ <em/.../ ]
1405 alias muttdude me@cs.hmc.edu (Michael Elkins)
1406 alias theguys manny, moe, jack
1409 Unlike other mailers, Mutt-ng doesn't require aliases to be defined
1410 in a special file. The <tt/alias/ command can appear anywhere in
1411 a configuration file, as long as this file is <ref id="source"
1412 name="sourced">. Consequently, you can have multiple alias files, or
1413 you can have all aliases defined in your muttrc.
1415 On the other hand, the <ref id="create-alias" name="create-alias">
1416 function can use only one file, the one pointed to by the <ref
1417 id="alias_file" name="$alias_file"> variable (which is
1418 <tt>˜/.muttrc</tt> by default). This file is not special either,
1419 in the sense that Mutt-ng will happily append aliases to any file, but in
1420 order for the new aliases to take effect you need to explicitly <ref
1421 id="source" name="source"> this file too.
1426 source /usr/local/share/Mutt-ng.aliases
1427 source ~/.mail_aliases
1428 set alias_file=~/.mail_aliases
1431 To use aliases, you merely use the alias at any place in mutt where mutt
1432 prompts for addresses, such as the <em/To:/ or <em/Cc:/ prompt. You can
1433 also enter aliases in your editor at the appropriate headers if you have the
1434 <ref id="edit_headers" name="$edit_headers"> variable set.
1436 In addition, at the various address prompts, you can use the tab character
1437 to expand a partial alias to the full alias. If there are multiple matches,
1438 mutt will bring up a menu with the matching aliases. In order to be
1439 presented with the full list of aliases, you must hit tab with out a partial
1440 alias, such as at the beginning of the prompt or after a comma denoting
1443 In the alias menu, you can select as many aliases as you want with the
1444 <em/select-entry/ key (default: RET), and use the <em/exit/ key
1445 (default: q) to return to the address prompt.
1449 <sect>Changing the default key bindings<label id="bind"> <!--{{{-->
1451 Usage: <tt/bind/ <em/map/ <em/key/ <em/function/
1453 This command allows you to change the default key bindings (operation
1454 invoked when pressing a key).
1456 <em/map/ specifies in which menu the binding belongs. Multiple maps may
1457 be specified by separating them with commas (no additional whitespace is
1458 allowed). The currently defined maps are:
1463 This is not a real menu, but is used as a fallback for all of the other
1464 menus except for the pager and editor modes. If a key is not defined in
1465 another menu, Mutt-ng will look for a binding to use in this menu. This allows
1466 you to bind a key to a certain function in multiple menus instead of having
1467 multiple bind statements to accomplish the same task.
1469 The alias menu is the list of your personal aliases as defined in your
1470 muttrc. It is the mapping from a short alias name to the full email
1471 address(es) of the recipient(s).
1473 The attachment menu is used to access the attachments on received messages.
1475 The browser is used for both browsing the local directory structure, and for
1476 listing all of your incoming mailboxes.
1478 The editor is the line-based editor the user enters text data.
1480 The index is the list of messages contained in a mailbox.
1482 The compose menu is the screen used when sending a new message.
1484 The pager is the mode used to display message/attachment data, and help
1487 The pgp menu is used to select the OpenPGP keys used for encrypting outgoing
1490 The postpone menu is similar to the index menu, except is used when
1491 recalling a message the user was composing, but saved until later.
1494 <em/key/ is the key (or key sequence) you wish to bind. To specify a
1495 control character, use the sequence <em/\Cx/, where <em/x/ is the
1496 letter of the control character (for example, to specify control-A use
1497 ``\Ca''). Note that the case of <em/x/ as well as <em/\C/ is
1498 ignored, so that <em/\CA/, <em/\Ca/, <em/\cA/ and <em/\ca/ are all
1499 equivalent. An alternative form is to specify the key as a three digit
1500 octal number prefixed with a ``\'' (for example <em/\177/ is
1501 equivalent to <em/\c?/).
1503 In addition, <em/key/ may consist of:
1508 <backtab> backtab / shift-tab
1518 <pagedown> Page Down
1519 <backspace> Backspace
1528 <f10> function key 10
1531 <em/key/ does not need to be enclosed in quotes unless it contains a
1534 <em/function/ specifies which action to take when <em/key/ is pressed.
1535 For a complete list of functions, see the <ref id="functions"
1536 name="reference">. The special function <tt/noop/ unbinds the specified key
1541 <sect>Defining aliases for character sets <label id="charset-hook"> <!--{{{-->
1543 Usage: <tt/charset-hook/ <em/alias/ <em/charset/<newline>
1544 Usage: <tt/iconv-hook/ <em/charset/ <em/local-charset/
1546 The <tt/charset-hook/ command defines an alias for a character set.
1547 This is useful to properly display messages which are tagged with a
1548 character set name not known to mutt.
1550 The <tt/iconv-hook/ command defines a system-specific name for a
1551 character set. This is helpful when your systems character
1552 conversion library insists on using strange, system-specific names
1557 <sect>Setting variables based upon mailbox<label id="folder-hook"> <!--{{{-->
1559 Usage: <tt/folder-hook/ [!]<em/regexp/ <em/command/
1561 It is often desirable to change settings based on which mailbox you are
1562 reading. The folder-hook command provides a method by which you can execute
1563 any configuration command. <em/regexp/ is a regular expression specifying
1564 in which mailboxes to execute <em/command/ before loading. If a mailbox
1565 matches multiple folder-hook's, they are executed in the order given in the
1568 <bf/Note:/ if you use the ``!'' shortcut for <ref id="spoolfile"
1569 name="$spoolfile"> at the beginning of the pattern, you must place it
1570 inside of double or single quotes in order to distinguish it from the
1571 logical <em/not/ operator for the expression.
1573 Note that the settings are <em/not/ restored when you leave the mailbox.
1574 For example, a command action to perform is to change the sorting method
1575 based upon the mailbox being read:
1578 folder-hook mutt set sort=threads
1581 However, the sorting method is not restored to its previous value when
1582 reading a different mailbox. To specify a <em/default/ command, use the
1587 folder-hook . set sort=date-sent
1592 <sect>Keyboard macros<label id="macro"> <!--{{{-->
1594 Usage: <tt/macro/ <em/menu/ <em/key/ <em/sequence/ [ <em/description/ ]
1596 Macros are useful when you would like a single key to perform a series of
1597 actions. When you press <em/key/ in menu <em/menu/, Mutt-ng will behave as if
1598 you had typed <em/sequence/. So if you have a common sequence of commands
1599 you type, you can create a macro to execute those commands with a single
1602 <em/menu/ is the <ref id="maps" name="map"> which the macro will be bound.
1603 Multiple maps may be specified by separating multiple menu arguments by
1604 commas. Whitespace may not be used in between the menu arguments and the
1605 commas separating them.
1607 <em/key/ and <em/sequence/ are expanded by the same rules as the <ref
1608 id="bind" name="key bindings">. There are some additions however. The
1609 first is that control characters in <em/sequence/ can also be specified
1610 as <em/ˆx/. In order to get a caret (`ˆ'') you need to use
1611 <em/ˆˆ/. Secondly, to specify a certain key such as <em/up/
1612 or to invoke a function directly, you can use the format
1613 <em/<key name>/ and <em/<function name>/. For a listing of key
1614 names see the section on <ref id="bind" name="key bindings">. Functions
1615 are listed in the <ref id="functions" name="function reference">.
1617 The advantage with using function names directly is that the macros will
1618 work regardless of the current key bindings, so they are not dependent on
1619 the user having particular key definitions. This makes them more robust
1620 and portable, and also facilitates defining of macros in files used by more
1621 than one user (eg. the system Muttngrc).
1623 Optionally you can specify a descriptive text after <em/sequence/,
1624 which is shown in the help screens.
1626 <bf/Note:/ Macro definitions (if any) listed in the help screen(s), are
1627 silently truncated at the screen width, and are not wrapped.
1631 <sect>Using color and mono video attributes<label id="color"> <!--{{{-->
1633 Usage: <tt/color/ <em/object/ <em/foreground/ <em/background/ [ <em/regexp/ ]<newline>
1634 Usage: <tt/color/ index <em/foreground/ <em/background/ <em/pattern/<newline>
1635 Usage: <tt/uncolor/ index <em/pattern/ [ <em/pattern/ ... ]<newline>
1637 If your terminal supports color, you can spice up Mutt-ng by creating your own
1638 color scheme. To define the color of an object (type of information), you
1639 must specify both a foreground color <bf/and/ a background color (it is not
1640 possible to only specify one or the other).
1642 <em/object/ can be one of:
1646 <item>body (match <em/regexp/ in the body of messages)
1647 <item>bold (highlighting bold patterns in the body of messages)
1648 <item>error (error messages printed by Mutt-ng)
1649 <item>header (match <em/regexp/ in the message header)
1650 <item>hdrdefault (default color of the message header in the pager)
1651 <item>index (match <em/pattern/ in the message index)
1652 <item>indicator (arrow or bar used to indicate the current item in a menu)
1653 <item>markers (the ``+'' markers at the beginning of wrapped lines in the pager)
1654 <item>message (informational messages)
1656 <item>quoted (text matching <ref id="quote_regexp"
1657 name="$quote_regexp"> in the body of a message)
1658 <item>quoted1, quoted2, ..., quoted<bf/N/ (higher levels of quoting)
1659 <item>search (highlighting of words in the pager)
1661 <item>status (mode lines used to display info about the mailbox or message)
1662 <item>tilde (the ``˜'' used to pad blank lines in the pager)
1663 <item>tree (thread tree drawn in the message index and attachment menu)
1664 <item>underline (highlighting underlined patterns in the body of messages)
1667 <em/foreground/ and <em/background/ can be one of the following:
1682 <em/foreground/ can optionally be prefixed with the keyword <tt/bright/ to make
1683 the foreground color boldfaced (e.g., <tt/brightred/).
1685 If your terminal supports it, the special keyword <em/default/ can be
1686 used as a transparent color. The value <em/brightdefault/ is also valid.
1687 If Mutt-ng is linked against the <em/S-Lang/ library, you also need to set
1688 the <em/COLORFGBG/ environment variable to the default colors of your
1689 terminal for this to work; for example (for Bourne-like shells):
1692 set COLORFGBG="green;black"
1696 <bf/Note:/ The <em/S-Lang/ library requires you to use the <em/lightgray/
1697 and <em/brown/ keywords instead of <em/white/ and <em/yellow/ when
1698 setting this variable.
1700 <bf/Note:/ The uncolor command can be applied to the index object only. It
1701 removes entries from the list. You <bf/must/ specify the same pattern
1702 specified in the color command for it to be removed. The pattern ``*'' is
1703 a special token which means to clear the color index list of all entries.
1705 Mutt-ng also recognizes the keywords <em/color0/, <em/color1/, …,
1706 <em/color/<bf/N-1/ (<bf/N/ being the number of colors supported
1707 by your terminal). This is useful when you remap the colors for your
1708 display (for example by changing the color associated with <em/color2/
1709 for your xterm), since color names may then lose their normal meaning.
1711 If your terminal does not support color, it is still possible change the video
1712 attributes through the use of the ``mono'' command:
1714 Usage: <tt/mono/ <em/<object> <attribute>/ [ <em/regexp/ ]<newline>
1715 Usage: <tt/mono/ index <em/attribute/ <em/pattern/<newline>
1716 Usage: <tt/unmono/ index <em/pattern/ [ <em/pattern/ ... ]<newline>
1718 where <em/attribute/ is one of the following:
1730 <sect>Ignoring (weeding) unwanted message headers<label id="ignore"> <!--{{{-->
1732 Usage: <tt/[un]ignore/ <em/pattern/ [ <em/pattern/ ... ]
1734 Messages often have many header fields added by automatic processing systems,
1735 or which may not seem useful to display on the screen. This command allows
1736 you to specify header fields which you don't normally want to see.
1738 You do not need to specify the full header field name. For example,
1739 ``ignore content-'' will ignore all header fields that begin with the pattern
1740 ``content-''. ``ignore *'' will ignore all headers.
1742 To remove a previously added token from the list, use the ``unignore'' command.
1743 The ``unignore'' command will make Mutt-ng display headers with the given pattern.
1744 For example, if you do ``ignore x-'' it is possible to ``unignore x-mailer''.
1746 ``unignore *'' will remove all tokens from the ignore list.
1750 # Sven's draconian header weeding
1752 unignore from date subject to cc
1753 unignore organization organisation x-mailer: x-newsreader: x-mailing-list:
1759 <sect>Alternative addresses<label id="alternates"> <!--{{{-->
1761 Usage: <tt/[un]alternates/ <em/regexp/ [ <em/regexp/ ... ]<newline>
1763 With various functions, mutt will treat messages differently,
1764 depending on whether you sent them or whether you received them from
1765 someone else. For instance, when replying to a message that you
1766 sent to a different party, mutt will automatically suggest to send
1767 the response to the original message's recipients -- responding to
1768 yourself won't make much sense in many cases. (See <ref
1769 id="reply_to" name="$reply_to">.)
1771 Many users receive e-mail under a number of different addresses. To
1772 fully use mutt's features here, the program must be able to
1773 recognize what e-mail addresses you receive mail under. That's the
1774 purpose of the <tt/alternates/ command: It takes a list of regular
1775 expressions, each of which can identify an address under which you
1778 The <tt/unalternates/ command can be used to write exceptions to
1779 <tt/alternates/ patterns. If an address matches something in an
1780 <tt/alternates/ command, but you nonetheless do not think it is
1781 from you, you can list a more precise pattern under an <tt/unalternates/
1784 To remove a regular expression from the <tt/alternates/ list, use the
1785 <tt/unalternates/ command with exactly the same <em/regexp/.
1786 Likewise, if the <em/regexp/ for a <tt/alternates/ command matches
1787 an entry on the <tt/unalternates/ list, that <tt/unalternates/
1788 entry will be removed. If the <em/regexp/ for <tt/unalternates/
1789 is ``*'', <em/all entries/ on <tt/alternates/ will be removed.
1793 <sect>Format = Flowed <!--{{{-->
1795 <sect1>Introduction <!--{{{-->
1797 <p>Mutt-ng contains support for so-called <tt/format=flowed/ messages.
1798 In the beginning of email, each message had a fixed line width, and
1799 it was enough for displaying them on fixed-size terminals. But times
1800 changed, and nowadays hardly anybody still uses fixed-size terminals:
1801 more people nowaydays use graphical user interfaces, with dynamically
1802 resizable windows. This led to the demand of a new email format that
1803 makes it possible for the email client to make the email look nice
1804 in a resizable window without breaking quoting levels and creating
1805 an incompatible email format that can also be displayed nicely on
1806 old fixed-size terminals.
1808 <p>For introductory information on <tt/format=flowed/ messages, see
1809 <htmlurl url="http://www.joeclark.org/ffaq.html"
1810 name="<http://www.joeclark.org/ffaq.html>">.
1814 <sect1>Receiving: Display Setup <!--{{{-->
1816 <p>When you receive emails that are marked as <tt/format=flowed/
1817 messages, and is formatted correctly, mutt-ng will try to reformat
1818 the message to optimally fit on your terminal. If you want a fixed
1819 margin on the right side of your terminal, you can set the
1826 <p>The code above makes the line break 10 columns before the right
1827 side of the terminal.
1829 <p>If your terminal is so wide that the lines are embarrassingly long,
1830 you can also set a maximum line length:
1833 set max_line_length = 120
1836 <p>The example above will give you lines not longer than 120
1839 <p>When you view at <tt/format=flowed/ messages, you will often see
1840 the quoting hierarchy like in the following example:
1843 >Bill, can you please send last month's progress report to Mr.
1844 >Morgan? We also urgently need the cost estimation for the new
1845 >production server that we want to set up before our customer's
1846 >project will go live.
1849 <p>This obviously doesn't look very nice, and it makes it very
1850 hard to differentiate between text and quoting character. The
1851 solution is to configure mutt-ng to "stuff" the quoting:
1857 <p>This will lead to a nicer result that is easier to read:
1860 > Bill, can you please send last month's progress report to Mr.
1861 > Morgan? We also urgently need the cost estimation for the new
1862 > production server that we want to set up before our customer's
1863 > project will go live.
1868 <sect1>Sending <!--{{{-->
1870 <p>If you want mutt-ng to send emails with <tt/format=flowed/ set, you
1871 need to explicitly set it:
1877 <p>Additionally, you have to use an editor which supports writing
1878 <tt/format=flowed/-conforming emails. For vim, this is done by
1879 adding <tt/w/ to the formatoptions (see <tt/:h formatoptions/ and
1880 <tt/:h fo-table/) when writing emails.
1882 <p>Also note that <em/format=flowed/ knows about ``space-stuffing'',
1883 that is, when sending messages, some kinds of lines have to be
1884 indented with a single space on the sending side. On the receiving
1885 side, the first space (if any) is removed. As a consequence and in
1886 addition to the above simple setting, please keep this in mind when
1887 making manual formattings within the editor. Also note that mutt-ng
1888 currently violates the standard (RfC 3676) as it does not
1889 space-stuff lines starting with:
1893 <item><tt/>/ This is <em/not/ the quote character but a right
1894 angle used for other reasons
1896 <item><tt/From/ with a trailing space.
1898 <item>just a space for formatting reasons
1902 Please make sure that you manually prepend a space to each of them.
1906 <sect1>Additional Notes <!--{{{-->
1908 <p> For completeness, the <ref id="delete_space"
1909 name="$delete_space"> variable provides the mechanism
1910 to generate a <tt/DelSp=yes/ parameter on <em/outgoing/ messages.
1911 According to the standard, clients receiving a <tt/format=flowed/
1912 messages should delete the last space of a flowed line but still
1913 interpret the line as flowed. Because flowed lines usually contain
1914 only one space at the end, this parameter would make the receiving
1915 client concatenate the last word of the previous with the first of
1916 the current line <em/without/ a space. This makes ordinary text
1917 unreadable and is intended for languages rarely using spaces. So
1918 please use this setting only if you're sure what you're doing.
1924 <sect>Mailing lists<label id="lists"> <!--{{{-->
1926 Usage: <tt/[un]lists/ <em/regexp/ [ <em/regexp/ ... ]<newline>
1927 Usage: <tt/[un]subscribe/ <em/regexp/ [ <em/regexp/ ... ]
1929 Mutt-ng has a few nice features for <ref id="using_lists" name="handling
1930 mailing lists">. In order to take advantage of them, you must
1931 specify which addresses belong to mailing lists, and which mailing
1932 lists you are subscribed to. Once you have done this, the <ref
1933 id="list-reply" name="list-reply"> function will work for all known lists.
1934 Additionally, when you send a message to a subscribed list, mutt will
1935 add a Mail-Followup-To header to tell other users' mail user agents
1936 not to send copies of replies to your personal address. Note that
1937 the Mail-Followup-To header is a non-standard extension which is not
1938 supported by all mail user agents. Adding it is not bullet-proof against
1939 receiving personal CCs of list messages. Also note that the generation
1940 of the Mail-Followup-To header is controlled by the <ref id="followup_to"
1941 name="$followup_to"> configuration variable.
1943 More precisely, Mutt-ng maintains lists of patterns for the addresses
1944 of known and subscribed mailing lists. Every subscribed mailing
1945 list is known. To mark a mailing list as known, use the ``lists''
1946 command. To mark it as subscribed, use ``subscribe''.
1948 You can use regular expressions with both commands. To mark all
1949 messages sent to a specific bug report's address on mutt's bug
1950 tracking system as list mail, for instance, you could say
1951 ``subscribe [0-9]*@bugs.guug.de''. Often, it's sufficient to just
1952 give a portion of the list's e-mail address.
1954 Specify as much of the address as you need to to remove ambiguity. For
1955 example, if you've subscribed to the Mutt-ng mailing list, you will receive mail
1956 addressed to <em/mutt-users@mutt.org/. So, to tell Mutt-ng that this is a
1957 mailing list, you could add ``lists mutt-users'' to your
1958 initialization file. To tell mutt that you are subscribed to it,
1959 add ``subscribe mutt-users'' to your initialization file instead.
1960 If you also happen to get mail from someone whose address is
1961 <em/mutt-users@example.com/, you could use ``lists mutt-users@mutt\\.org''
1962 or ``subscribe mutt-users@mutt\\.org'' to
1963 match only mail from the actual list.
1965 The ``unlists'' command is used to remove a token from the list of
1966 known and subscribed mailing-lists. Use ``unlists *'' to remove all
1969 To remove a mailing list from the list of subscribed mailing lists,
1970 but keep it on the list of known mailing lists, use ``unsubscribe''.
1974 <sect>Using Multiple spool mailboxes<label id="mbox-hook"> <!--{{{-->
1976 Usage: <tt/mbox-hook/ [!]<em/pattern/ <em/mailbox/
1978 This command is used to move read messages from a specified mailbox to a
1979 different mailbox automatically when you quit or change folders.
1980 <em/pattern/ is a regular expression specifying the mailbox to treat as a
1981 ``spool'' mailbox and <em/mailbox/ specifies where mail should be saved when
1984 Unlike some of the other <em/hook/ commands, only the <em/first/ matching
1985 pattern is used (it is not possible to save read mail in more than a single
1990 <sect>Defining mailboxes which receive mail<label id="mailboxes"> <!--{{{-->
1992 Usage: <tt/[un]mailboxes/ [!]<em/filename/ [ <em/filename/ ... ]
1994 This command specifies folders which can receive mail and
1995 which will be checked for new messages. By default, the
1996 main menu status bar displays how many of these folders have
1999 When changing folders, pressing <em/space/ will cycle
2000 through folders with new mail.
2002 Pressing TAB in the directory browser will bring up a menu showing the files
2003 specified by the <tt/mailboxes/ command, and indicate which contain new
2004 messages. Mutt-ng will automatically enter this mode when invoked from the
2005 command line with the <tt/-y/ option.
2007 The ``unmailboxes'' command is used to remove a token from the list
2008 of folders which receive mail. Use ``unmailboxes *'' to remove all
2012 <bf/Note:/ new mail is detected by comparing the last modification time to
2013 the last access time. Utilities like <tt/biff/ or <tt/frm/ or any other
2014 program which accesses the mailbox might cause Mutt-ng to never detect new mail
2015 for that mailbox if they do not properly reset the access time. Backup
2016 tools are another common reason for updated access times.
2019 <bf/Note:/ the filenames in the <tt/mailboxes/ command are resolved when
2020 the command is executed, so if these names contain <ref id="shortcuts"
2021 name="shortcut characters"> (such as ``='' and ``!''), any variable
2022 definition that affect these characters (like <ref id="folder"
2023 name="$folder"> and <ref id="spoolfile" name="$spoolfile">)
2024 should be executed before the <tt/mailboxes/ command.
2028 <sect>User defined headers<label id="my_hdr"> <!--{{{-->
2031 <tt/my_hdr/ <em/string/<newline>
2032 <tt/unmy_hdr/ <em/field/ [ <em/field/ ... ]
2034 The ``my_hdr'' command allows you to create your own header
2035 fields which will be added to every message you send.
2037 For example, if you would like to add an ``Organization:'' header field to
2038 all of your outgoing messages, you can put the command
2041 my_hdr Organization: A Really Big Company, Anytown, USA
2044 in your <tt/.muttrc/.
2046 <bf/Note:/ space characters are <em/not/ allowed between the keyword and
2047 the colon (``:''). The standard for electronic mail (RFC822) says that
2048 space is illegal there, so Mutt-ng enforces the rule.
2050 If you would like to add a header field to a single message, you should
2051 either set the <ref id="edit_headers" name="edit_headers"> variable,
2052 or use the <em/edit-headers/ function (default: ``E'') in the send-menu so
2053 that you can edit the header of your message along with the body.
2055 To remove user defined header fields, use the ``unmy_hdr''
2056 command. You may specify an asterisk (``*'') to remove all header
2057 fields, or the fields to remove. For example, to remove all ``To'' and
2058 ``Cc'' header fields, you could use:
2066 <sect>Defining the order of headers when viewing messages<label id="hdr_order"> <!--{{{-->
2068 Usage: <tt/hdr_order/ <em/header1/ <em/header2/ <em/header3/
2070 With this command, you can specify an order in which mutt will attempt
2071 to present headers to you when viewing messages.
2073 ``unhdr_order *'' will clear all previous headers from the order list,
2074 thus removing the header order effects set by the system-wide startup
2078 hdr_order From Date: From: To: Cc: Subject:
2083 <sect>Specify default save filename<label id="save-hook"> <!--{{{-->
2085 Usage: <tt/save-hook/ [!]<em/pattern/ <em/filename/
2087 This command is used to override the default filename used when saving
2088 messages. <em/filename/ will be used as the default filename if the message is
2089 <em/From:/ an address matching <em/regexp/ or if you are the author and the
2090 message is addressed <em/to:/ something matching <em/regexp/.
2092 See <ref id="pattern_hook" name="Message Matching in Hooks"> for information on the exact format of <em/pattern/.
2097 save-hook me@(turing\\.)?cs\\.hmc\\.edu$ +elkins
2098 save-hook aol\\.com$ +spam
2101 Also see the <ref id="fcc-save-hook" name="fcc-save-hook"> command.
2105 <sect>Specify default Fcc: mailbox when composing<label id="fcc-hook"> <!--{{{-->
2107 Usage: <tt/fcc-hook/ [!]<em/pattern/ <em/mailbox/
2109 This command is used to save outgoing mail in a mailbox other than
2110 <ref id="record" name="$record">. Mutt-ng searches the initial list of
2111 message recipients for the first matching <em/regexp/ and uses <em/mailbox/
2112 as the default Fcc: mailbox. If no match is found the message will be saved
2113 to <ref id="record" name="$record"> mailbox.
2115 See <ref id="pattern_hook" name="Message Matching in Hooks"> for information on the exact format of <em/pattern/.
2117 Example: <tt/fcc-hook [@.]aol\\.com$ +spammers/
2119 The above will save a copy of all messages going to the aol.com domain to
2120 the `+spammers' mailbox by default. Also see the <ref id="fcc-save-hook"
2121 name="fcc-save-hook"> command.
2125 <sect>Specify default save filename and default Fcc: mailbox at once<label id="fcc-save-hook"> <!--{{{-->
2127 Usage: <tt/fcc-save-hook/ [!]<em/pattern/ <em/mailbox/
2129 This command is a shortcut, equivalent to doing both a <ref id="fcc-hook" name="fcc-hook">
2130 and a <ref id="save-hook" name="save-hook"> with its arguments.
2134 <sect>Change settings based upon message recipients<label id="send-hook"><label id="reply-hook"><label id="send2-hook"> <!--{{{-->
2136 Usage: <tt/reply-hook/ [!]<em/pattern/ <em/command/<newline>
2137 Usage: <tt/send-hook/ [!]<em/pattern/ <em/command/<newline>
2138 Usage: <tt/send2-hook/ [!]<em/pattern/ <em/command/
2140 These commands can be used to execute arbitrary configuration commands based
2141 upon recipients of the message. <em/pattern/ is a regular expression
2142 matching the desired address. <em/command/ is executed when <em/regexp/
2143 matches recipients of the message.
2145 <tt/reply-hook/ is matched against the message you are <em/replying/
2146 <bf/to/, instead of the message you are <em/sending/. <tt/send-hook/ is
2147 matched against all messages, both <em/new/ and <em/replies/. <bf/Note:/
2148 <tt/reply-hook/s are matched <bf/before/ the <tt/send-hook/, <bf/regardless/
2149 of the order specified in the users's configuration file.
2151 <tt/send2-hook/ is matched every time a message is changed, either
2152 by editing it, or by using the compose menu to change its recipients
2153 or subject. <tt/send2-hook/ is executed after <tt/send-hook/, and
2154 can, e.g., be used to set parameters such as the <ref id="sendmail"
2155 name="$sendmail"> variable depending on the message's sender
2158 For each type of <tt/send-hook/ or <tt/reply-hook/, when multiple matches
2159 occur, commands are executed in the order they are specified in the muttrc
2160 (for that type of hook).
2162 See <ref id="pattern_hook" name="Message Matching in Hooks"> for information on the exact format of <em/pattern/.
2164 Example: <tt/send-hook mutt &dquot;set mime_forward signature=''&dquot;/
2166 Another typical use for this command is to change the values of the
2167 <ref id="attribution" name="$attribution">, <ref id="signature"
2168 name="$signature"> and <ref id="locale" name="$locale">
2169 variables in order to change the language of the attributions and
2170 signatures based upon the recipients.
2172 <bf/Note:/ the send-hook's are only executed ONCE after getting the initial
2173 list of recipients. Adding a recipient after replying or editing the
2174 message will NOT cause any send-hook to be executed. Also note that
2175 my_hdr commands which modify recipient headers, or the message's
2176 subject, don't have any effect on the current message when executed
2181 <sect>Change settings before formatting a message<label id="message-hook"> <!--{{{-->
2183 Usage: <tt/message-hook/ [!]<em/pattern/ <em/command/
2185 This command can be used to execute arbitrary configuration commands
2186 before viewing or formatting a message based upon information about the message.
2187 <em/command/ is executed if the <em/pattern/ matches the message to be
2188 displayed. When multiple matches occur, commands are executed in the order
2189 they are specified in the muttrc.
2191 See <ref id="pattern_hook" name="Message Matching in Hooks"> for
2192 information on the exact format of <em/pattern/.
2196 message-hook ~A 'set pager=builtin'
2197 message-hook '~f freshmeat-news' 'set pager="less \"+/^ subject: .*\""'
2202 <sect>Choosing the cryptographic key of the recipient<label id="crypt-hook"> <!--{{{-->
2204 Usage: <tt/crypt-hook/ <em/pattern/ <em/keyid/
2206 When encrypting messages with PGP or OpenSSL, you may want to associate a certain
2207 key with a given e-mail address automatically, either because the
2208 recipient's public key can't be deduced from the destination address,
2209 or because, for some reasons, you need to override the key Mutt-ng would
2210 normally use. The crypt-hook command provides a method by which you can
2211 specify the ID of the public key to be used when encrypting messages to
2212 a certain recipient.
2214 The meaning of "key id" is to be taken broadly in this context: You
2215 can either put a numerical key ID here, an e-mail address, or even
2220 <sect>Adding key sequences to the keyboard buffer<label id="push"> <!--{{{-->
2222 Usage: <tt/push/ <em/string/
2224 This command adds the named string to the keyboard buffer. The string may
2225 contain control characters, key names and function names like the sequence
2226 string in the <ref id="macro" name="macro"> command. You may use it to
2227 automatically run a sequence of commands at startup, or when entering
2232 <sect>Executing functions<label id="exec"> <!--{{{-->
2234 Usage: <tt/exec/ <em/function/ [ <em/function/ ... ]
2236 This command can be used to execute any function. Functions are
2237 listed in the <ref id="functions" name="function reference">.
2238 ``exec function'' is equivalent to ``push <function>''.
2242 <sect>Message Scoring<label id="score-command"> <!--{{{-->
2245 Usage: <tt/score/ <em/pattern/ <em/value/<newline>
2246 Usage: <tt/unscore/ <em/pattern/ [ <em/pattern/ ... ]
2249 In situations where you have to cope with a lot of emails, e.g.
2250 when you read many different mailing lists, and take part in
2251 discussions, it is always useful to have the important messages
2252 marked and the annoying messages or the ones that you aren't
2253 interested in deleted. For this purpose, mutt-ng features a
2254 mechanism called ``scoring''.
2257 When you use scoring, every message has a base score of 0. You
2258 can then use the <tt/score/ command to define patterns and a
2259 positive or negative value associated with it. When a pattern
2260 matches a message, the message's score will be raised or lowered by
2261 the amount of the value associated with the pattern.
2264 score "~f nion@muttng\.org" 50
2265 score "~f @sco\.com" -100</verb>
2267 <p>If the pattern matches, it is also possible to set the score
2268 value of the current message to a certain value and then stop
2272 score "~f santaclaus@northpole\.int" =666</verb>
2274 <p>What is important to note is that negative score values will be
2277 <p>To make scoring actually useful, the score must be applied in
2278 some way. That's what the <em/score thresholds/ are for. Currently,
2279 there are three score thresholds:
2283 <item>flag threshold: when a message has a score value equal or higher
2284 than the flag threshold, it will be flagged.
2286 <item>read threshold: when a message has a score value equal or lower
2287 than the read threshold, it will be marked as read.
2289 <item>delete threshold: when a message has a score value equal or
2290 lower than the delete threshold, it will be marked as deleted.
2294 <p>These three thresholds can be set via the variables <ref
2295 id="score_threshold_flag"
2296 name="$score_threshold_flag">, <ref
2297 id="score_threshold_read"
2298 name="$score_threshold_read">, <ref
2299 id="score_threshold_delete"
2300 name="$score_threshold_delete"> and. By
2301 default, <ref id="score_threshold_read"
2302 name="$score_threshold_read"> and <ref
2303 id="score_threshold_delete"
2304 name="$score_threshold_delete"> are set to
2305 <tt/-1/, which means that in the default threshold configuration no
2306 message will ever get marked as read or deleted.
2308 <p>Scoring gets especially interesting when combined with the <tt/color/ command
2309 and the <tt>˜n</tt> pattern:
2312 color black yellow "~n 10-"
2313 color red yellow "~n 100-"</verb>
2315 <p>The rules above mark all messages with a score between 10 and 99
2316 with black and yellow, and messages with a score greater or equal
2317 100 with red and yellow. This might be unusual to you if you're used
2318 to e.g. slrn's scoring mechanism, but it is more flexible, as it
2319 visually marks different scores.
2323 <sect>Spam detection<label id="spam"> <!--{{{-->
2325 Usage: <tt/spam/ <em/pattern/ <em/format/<newline>
2326 Usage: <tt/nospam/ <em/pattern/
2328 Mutt-ng has generalized support for external spam-scoring filters.
2329 By defining your spam patterns with the <tt/spam/ and <tt/nospam/
2330 commands, you can <em/limit/, <em/search/, and <em/sort/ your
2331 mail based on its spam attributes, as determined by the external
2332 filter. You also can display the spam attributes in your index
2333 display using the <tt/%H/ selector in the <ref id="index_format"
2334 name="$index_format"> variable. (Tip: try <tt/%?H?[%H] ?/
2335 to display spam tags only when they are defined for a given message.)
2337 Your first step is to define your external filter's spam patterns using
2338 the <tt/spam/ command. <em/pattern/ should be a regular expression
2339 that matches a header in a mail message. If any message in the mailbox
2340 matches this regular expression, it will receive a ``spam tag'' or
2341 ``spam attribute'' (unless it also matches a <tt/nospam/ pattern -- see
2342 below.) The appearance of this attribute is entirely up to you, and is
2343 governed by the <em/format/ parameter. <em/format/ can be any static
2344 text, but it also can include back-references from the <em/pattern/
2345 expression. (A regular expression ``back-reference'' refers to a
2346 sub-expression contained within parentheses.) <tt/%1/ is replaced with
2347 the first back-reference in the regex, <tt/%2/ with the second, etc.
2349 If you're using multiple spam filters, a message can have more than
2350 one spam-related header. You can define <tt/spam/ patterns for each
2351 filter you use. If a message matches two or more of these patterns, and
2352 the $spam_separator variable is set to a string, then the
2353 message's spam tag will consist of all the <em/format/ strings joined
2354 together, with the value of $spam_separator separating
2357 For example, suppose I use DCC, SpamAssassin, and PureMessage. I might
2358 define these spam settings:
2360 spam "X-DCC-.*-Metrics:.*(....)=many" "90+/DCC-%1"
2361 spam "X-Spam-Status: Yes" "90+/SA"
2362 spam "X-PerlMX-Spam: .*Probability=([0-9]+)%" "%1/PM"
2363 set spam_separator=", "
2366 If I then received a message that DCC registered with ``many'' hits
2367 under the ``Fuz2'' checksum, and that PureMessage registered with a
2368 97% probability of being spam, that message's spam tag would read
2369 <tt>90+/DCC-Fuz2, 97/PM</tt>. (The four characters before ``=many'' in a
2370 DCC report indicate the checksum used -- in this case, ``Fuz2''.)
2372 If the $spam_separator variable is unset, then each
2373 spam pattern match supersedes the previous one. Instead of getting
2374 joined <em/format/ strings, you'll get only the last one to match.
2376 The spam tag is what will be displayed in the index when you use
2377 <tt/%H/ in the <tt/$index_format/ variable. It's also the
2378 string that the <tt/~H/ pattern-matching expression matches against for
2379 <em/search/ and <em/limit/ functions. And it's what sorting by spam
2380 attribute will use as a sort key.
2382 That's a pretty complicated example, and most people's actual
2383 environments will have only one spam filter. The simpler your
2384 configuration, the more effective mutt can be, especially when it comes
2387 Generally, when you sort by spam tag, mutt will sort <em/lexically/ --
2388 that is, by ordering strings alphnumerically. However, if a spam tag
2389 begins with a number, mutt will sort numerically first, and lexically
2390 only when two numbers are equal in value. (This is like UNIX's
2391 <tt/sort -n/.) A message with no spam attributes at all -- that is, one
2392 that didn't match <em/any/ of your <tt/spam/ patterns -- is sorted at
2393 lowest priority. Numbers are sorted next, beginning with 0 and ranging
2394 upward. Finally, non-numeric strings are sorted, with ``a'' taking lower
2395 priority than ``z''. Clearly, in general, sorting by spam tags is most
2396 effective when you can coerce your filter to give you a raw number. But
2397 in case you can't, mutt can still do something useful.
2399 The <tt/nospam/ command can be used to write exceptions to <tt/spam/
2400 patterns. If a header pattern matches something in a <tt/spam/ command,
2401 but you nonetheless do not want it to receive a spam tag, you can list a
2402 more precise pattern under a <tt/nospam/ command.
2404 If the <em/pattern/ given to <tt/nospam/ is exactly the same as the
2405 <em/pattern/ on an existing <tt/spam/ list entry, the effect will be to
2406 remove the entry from the spam list, instead of adding an exception.
2407 Likewise, if the <em/pattern/ for a <tt/spam/ command matches an entry
2408 on the <tt/nospam/ list, that <tt/nospam/ entry will be removed. If the
2409 <em/pattern/ for <tt/nospam/ is ``*'', <em/all entries on both lists/
2410 will be removed. This might be the default action if you use <tt/spam/
2411 and <tt/nospam/ in conjunction with a <tt/folder-hook/.
2413 You can have as many <tt/spam/ or <tt/nospam/ commands as you like.
2414 You can even do your own primitive spam detection within mutt -- for
2415 example, if you consider all mail from <tt/MAILER-DAEMON/ to be spam,
2416 you can use a <tt/spam/ command like this:
2419 spam "^From: .*MAILER-DAEMON" "999"
2424 <sect>Setting variables<label id="set"> <!--{{{-->
2426 Usage: <tt/set/ [no|inv]<em/variable/[=<em/value/] [ <em/variable/ ... ]<newline>
2427 Usage: <tt/toggle/ <em/variable/ [<em/variable/ ... ]<newline>
2428 Usage: <tt/unset/ <em/variable/ [<em/variable/ ... ]<newline>
2429 Usage: <tt/reset/ <em/variable/ [<em/variable/ ... ]
2431 This command is used to set (and unset) <ref id="variables"
2432 name="configuration variables">. There are four basic types of variables:
2433 boolean, number, string and quadoption. <em/boolean/ variables can be
2434 <em/set/ (true) or <em/unset/ (false). <em/number/ variables can be
2435 assigned a positive integer value.
2437 <em/string/ variables consist of any number of printable characters.
2438 <em/strings/ must be enclosed in quotes if they contain spaces or tabs. You
2439 may also use the ``C'' escape sequences <bf/\n/ and <bf/\t/ for
2440 newline and tab, respectively.
2442 <em/quadoption/ variables are used to control whether or not to be prompted
2443 for certain actions, or to specify a default action. A value of <em/yes/
2444 will cause the action to be carried out automatically as if you had answered
2445 yes to the question. Similarly, a value of <em/no/ will cause the the
2446 action to be carried out as if you had answered ``no.'' A value of
2447 <em/ask-yes/ will cause a prompt with a default answer of ``yes'' and
2448 <em/ask-no/ will provide a default answer of ``no.''
2450 Prefixing a variable with ``no'' will unset it. Example: <tt/set noaskbcc/.
2452 For <em/boolean/ variables, you may optionally prefix the variable name with
2453 <tt/inv/ to toggle the value (on or off). This is useful when writing
2454 macros. Example: <tt/set invsmart_wrap/.
2456 The <tt/toggle/ command automatically prepends the <tt/inv/ prefix to all
2457 specified variables.
2459 The <tt/unset/ command automatically prepends the <tt/no/ prefix to all
2460 specified variables.
2462 Using the enter-command function in the <em/index/ menu, you can query the
2463 value of a variable by prefixing the name of the variable with a question
2470 The question mark is actually only required for boolean and quadoption
2473 The <tt/reset/ command resets all given variables to the compile time
2474 defaults (hopefully mentioned in this manual). If you use the command
2475 <tt/set/ and prefix the variable with ``&'' this has the same
2476 behavior as the reset command.
2478 With the <tt/reset/ command there exists the special variable ``all'',
2479 which allows you to reset all variables to their system defaults.
2483 <sect>Reading initialization commands from another file<label id="source"> <!--{{{-->
2485 Usage: <tt/source/ <em/filename/ [ <em/filename/ ... ]
2487 This command allows the inclusion of initialization commands
2488 from other files. For example, I place all of my aliases in
2489 <tt>˜/.mail_aliases</tt> so that I can make my
2490 <tt>˜/.muttrc</tt> readable and keep my aliases private.
2492 If the filename begins with a tilde (``˜''), it will be expanded to the
2493 path of your home directory.
2495 If the filename ends with a vertical bar (|), then <em/filename/ is
2496 considered to be an executable program from which to read input (eg.
2497 <tt>source ~/bin/myscript|</tt>).
2501 <sect>Removing hooks<label id="unhook"> <!--{{{-->
2503 Usage: <tt/unhook/ [ * | <em/hook-type/ ]
2505 This command permits you to flush hooks you have previously defined.
2506 You can either remove all hooks by giving the ``*'' character as an
2507 argument, or you can remove all hooks of a specific type by saying
2508 something like <tt/unhook send-hook/.
2512 <sect>Sharing Setups<label id="sect:sharingsetups"> <!--{{{-->
2514 <sect1>Character Sets <!--{{{-->
2516 <p>As users may run mutt-ng on different systems, the configuration
2517 must be maintained because it's likely that people want to use the
2518 setup everywhere they use mutt-ng. And mutt-ng tries to help where it
2521 <p>To not produce conflicts with different character sets, mutt-ng
2522 allows users to specify in which character set their configuration
2523 files are encoded. Please note that while reading the configuration
2524 files, this is only respected after the corresponding declaration
2525 appears. It's advised to put the following at the very beginning of a
2529 set config_charset = "..."</verb>
2531 <p>and replacing the dots with the actual character set. To avoid
2532 problems while maintaining the setup, vim user's may want to use
2533 modelines as show in:
2536 # vim:fileencoding=...:</verb>
2538 <p>while, again, replacing the dots with the appropriate name. This
2539 tells vim as which character set to read and save the file.
2543 <sect1>Modularization <!--{{{-->
2545 <p>``Modularization'' means to divide the setup into several files
2546 while sorting the options or commands by topic. Especially for
2547 longer setups (e.g. with many hooks), this helps maintaining it
2548 and solving trouble.
2550 <p>When using separation, setups may be, as a whole or in
2551 fractions, shared over different systems.
2555 <sect1>Conditional parts <!--{{{-->
2557 <p>When using a configuration on different systems, the user may not
2558 always have influence on how mutt-ng is installed and which features
2561 <p>To solve this, mutt-ng contain a feature based on the ``ifdef''
2562 patch written for mutt. Its basic syntax is:
2565 ifdef <item> <command>
2566 ifndef <item> <command></verb>
2568 <p>...whereby <tt/<item>/ can be one of:
2572 <item>a function name
2574 <item>a variable name
2578 <item>a feature name
2582 <p>All available functions, variables and menus are documented
2583 elsewhere in this manual but ``features'' is specific to these two
2584 commands. To test for one, prefix one of the following keywords with
2585 <tt/feature_/:
2588 ncurses, slang, iconv, idn, dotlock, standalone, pop, nntp, imap, ssl,
2589 gnutls, sasl, sasl2, libesmtp, compressed, color, classic_pgp,
2590 classic_smime, gpgme, header_cache</verb>
2592 <p>As an example, one can use the following in
2593 <tt>˜/.muttngrc</tt>:
2596 ifdef feature_imap 'source ~/.mutt-ng/setup-imap'
2597 ifdef feature_pop 'source ~/.mutt-ng/setup-pop'
2598 ifdef feature_nntp 'source ~/.mutt-ng/setup-nntp'</verb>
2600 <p>...to only source <tt>˜/.mutt-ng/setup-imap</tt> if IMAP
2601 support is built in, only source <tt>˜/.mutt-ng/setup-pop</tt>
2602 if POP support is built in and only source
2603 <tt>˜/.mutt-ng/setup-nntp</tt> if NNTP support is built in.
2605 <p>An example for testing for variable names can be used if users
2606 use different revisions of mutt-ng whereby the older one may not
2607 have a certain variable. To test for the availability of <ref
2608 id="imap_mail_check" name="$imap_mail_check">,
2612 ifdef imap_mail_check 'set imap_mail_check = 300'</verb>
2614 <p>Provided for completeness is the test for menu names. To set <ref
2615 id="pager_index_lines"
2616 name="$pager_index_lines"> only if the pager
2617 menu is available, use:
2620 ifdef pager 'set pager_index_lines = 10'</verb>
2622 <p>For completeness, too, the opposite of <tt/ifdef/ is provided:
2623 <tt/ifndef/ which only executes the command if the test fails. For
2624 example, the following two examples are equivalent:
2627 ifdef feature_ncurses 'source ~/.mutt-ng/setup-ncurses'
2628 ifndef feature_ncurses 'source ~/.mutt-ng/setup-slang'</verb>
2633 ifdef feature_slang 'source ~/.mutt-ng/setup-slang'
2634 ifndef feature_slang 'source ~/.mutt-ng/setup-ncurses'</verb>
2641 <sect>Obsolete Variables <!--{{{-->
2643 <p>In the process of ensuring and creating more consistency, many
2644 variables have been renamed and some of the old names were already
2645 removed. Please see <ref id="sect_obsolete" name="Obsolete Variables">
2646 for a complete list.
2652 <chapt>Advanced Usage <!--{{{-->
2654 <sect>Regular Expressions<label id="regexp"> <!--{{{-->
2656 All string patterns in Mutt-ng including those in more complex
2657 <ref id="patterns" name="patterns"> must be specified
2658 using regular expressions (regexp) in the ``POSIX extended'' syntax (which
2659 is more or less the syntax used by egrep and GNU awk). For your
2660 convenience, we have included below a brief description of this syntax.
2662 The search is case sensitive if the pattern contains at least one upper
2663 case letter, and case insensitive otherwise. Note that ``\''
2664 must be quoted if used for a regular expression in an initialization
2665 command: ``\\''.
2667 A regular expression is a pattern that describes a set of strings.
2668 Regular expressions are constructed analogously to arithmetic
2669 expressions, by using various operators to combine smaller expressions.
2671 Note that the regular expression can be enclosed/delimited by either &dquot;
2672 or ' which is useful if the regular expression includes a white-space
2673 character. See <ref id="muttrc-syntax" name="Syntax of Initialization Files">
2674 for more information on &dquot; and ' delimiter processing. To match a
2675 literal &dquot; or ' you must preface it with \ (backslash).
2677 The fundamental building blocks are the regular expressions that match
2678 a single character. Most characters, including all letters and digits,
2679 are regular expressions that match themselves. Any metacharacter with
2680 special meaning may be quoted by preceding it with a backslash.
2682 The period ``.'' matches any single character. The caret ``ˆ'' and
2683 the dollar sign ``&dollar'' are metacharacters that respectively match
2684 the empty string at the beginning and end of a line.
2686 A list of characters enclosed by ``['' and ``]'' matches any
2687 single character in that list; if the first character of the list
2688 is a caret ``ˆ'' then it matches any character <bf/not/ in the
2689 list. For example, the regular expression <bf/[0123456789]/
2690 matches any single digit. A range of ASCII characters may be specified
2691 by giving the first and last characters, separated by a hyphen
2692 ``-''. Most metacharacters lose their special meaning inside
2693 lists. To include a literal ``]'' place it first in the list.
2694 Similarly, to include a literal ``ˆ'' place it anywhere but first.
2695 Finally, to include a literal hyphen ``-'' place it last.
2697 Certain named classes of characters are predefined. Character classes
2698 consist of ``[:'', a keyword denoting the class, and ``:]''.
2699 The following classes are defined by the POSIX standard:
2702 <tag/[:alnum:]/
2703 Alphanumeric characters.
2704 <tag/[:alpha:]/
2705 Alphabetic characters.
2706 <tag/[:blank:]/
2707 Space or tab characters.
2708 <tag/[:cntrl:]/
2710 <tag/[:digit:]/
2712 <tag/[:graph:]/
2713 Characters that are both printable and visible. (A space is printable,
2714 but not visible, while an ``a'' is both.)
2715 <tag/[:lower:]/
2716 Lower-case alphabetic characters.
2717 <tag/[:print:]/
2718 Printable characters (characters that are not control characters.)
2719 <tag/[:punct:]/
2720 Punctuation characters (characters that are not letter, digits, control
2721 characters, or space characters).
2722 <tag/[:space:]/
2723 Space characters (such as space, tab and formfeed, to name a few).
2724 <tag/[:upper:]/
2725 Upper-case alphabetic characters.
2726 <tag/[:xdigit:]/
2727 Characters that are hexadecimal digits.
2730 A character class is only valid in a regular expression inside the
2731 brackets of a character list. Note that the brackets in these
2732 class names are part of the symbolic names, and must be included
2733 in addition to the brackets delimiting the bracket list. For
2734 example, <bf/[[:digit:]]/ is equivalent to
2735 <bf/[0-9]/.
2737 Two additional special sequences can appear in character lists. These
2738 apply to non-ASCII character sets, which can have single symbols (called
2739 collating elements) that are represented with more than one character,
2740 as well as several characters that are equivalent for collating or
2744 <tag/Collating Symbols/
2745 A collating symbol is a multi-character collating element enclosed in
2746 ``[.'' and ``.]''. For example, if ``ch'' is a collating
2747 element, then <bf/[[.ch.]]/ is a regexp that matches
2748 this collating element, while <bf/[ch]/ is a regexp that
2749 matches either ``c'' or ``h''.
2750 <tag/Equivalence Classes/
2751 An equivalence class is a locale-specific name for a list of
2752 characters that are equivalent. The name is enclosed in ``[=''
2753 and ``=]''. For example, the name ``e'' might be used to
2754 represent all of ``è'' ``é'' and ``e''. In this case,
2755 <bf/[[=e=]]/ is a regexp that matches any of
2756 ``è'', ``é'' and ``e''.
2759 A regular expression matching a single character may be followed by one
2760 of several repetition operators:
2764 The preceding item is optional and matched at most once.
2766 The preceding item will be matched zero or more times.
2768 The preceding item will be matched one or more times.
2770 The preceding item is matched exactly <em/n/ times.
2771 <tag/{n,}/
2772 The preceding item is matched <em/n/ or more times.
2773 <tag/{,m}/
2774 The preceding item is matched at most <em/m/ times.
2775 <tag/{n,m}/
2776 The preceding item is matched at least <em/n/ times, but no more than
2780 Two regular expressions may be concatenated; the resulting regular
2781 expression matches any string formed by concatenating two substrings
2782 that respectively match the concatenated subexpressions.
2784 Two regular expressions may be joined by the infix operator ``|'';
2785 the resulting regular expression matches any string matching either
2788 Repetition takes precedence over concatenation, which in turn takes
2789 precedence over alternation. A whole subexpression may be enclosed in
2790 parentheses to override these precedence rules.
2792 <bf/Note:/ If you compile Mutt-ng with the GNU <em/rx/ package, the
2793 following operators may also be used in regular expressions:
2797 Matches the empty string at either the beginning or the end of a word.
2799 Matches the empty string within a word.
2800 <tag/\\</
2801 Matches the empty string at the beginning of a word.
2802 <tag/\\>/
2803 Matches the empty string at the end of a word.
2805 Matches any word-constituent character (letter, digit, or underscore).
2807 Matches any character that is not word-constituent.
2809 Matches the empty string at the beginning of a buffer (string).
2811 Matches the empty string at the end of a buffer.
2814 Please note however that these operators are not defined by POSIX, so
2815 they may or may not be available in stock libraries on various systems.
2819 <sect>Patterns <!--{{{-->
2821 <p>Mutt-ng's pattern language provides a simple yet effective way to
2822 set up rules to match messages, e.g. for operations like tagging and
2823 scoring. A pattern consists of one or more sub-pattern, which can be
2824 logically grouped, ORed, and negated. For a complete listing of
2825 these patterns, please refer to table <ref id="patterns"
2826 name="Patterns"> in the Reference chapter.
2828 <p>It must be noted that in this table, <tt/EXPR/, <tt/USER/,
2829 <tt/ID/ and <tt/SUBJECT/ are regular expressions. For ranges, the
2830 forms <tt/<[MAX]/, <tt/>>[MIN]/, <tt/[MIN]-/ and <tt/-[MAX]/
2833 <sect1>Complex Patterns
2835 <p>It is possible to combine several sub-patterns to a more complex
2836 pattern. The most simple possibility is to logically AND several
2837 patterns by stringing them together:
2842 <p>The pattern above matches all messages that contain ``SPAM'' in
2843 the subject and are unread.
2845 <p>To logical OR patterns, simply use the <tt/|/ operator. This one
2846 especially useful when using local groups:
2849 ~f ("nion@muttng\.org"|"ak@muttng\.org"|"pdmef@muttng\.org")
2850 (~b mutt-ng|~s Mutt-ng)
2851 !~x '@synflood\.at'</verb>
2853 <p>The first pattern matches all messages that were sent by one of
2854 the mutt-ng maintainers, while the seconds pattern matches all
2855 messages that contain ``mutt-ng'' in the message body or ``Mutt-ng''
2856 in the subject. The third pattern matches all messages that do not
2857 contain ``@synflood\.at'' in the <tt/References:/ header, i.e.
2858 messages that are not an (indirect) reply to one of my messages. A
2859 pattern can be logicall negated using the <tt/!/ operator.
2861 <sect1>Patterns and Dates
2863 <p>When using dates in patterns, the dates must be specified in a
2864 special format, i.e. <tt>DD/MM/YYYY</tt>. If you don't specify
2865 month or year, they default to the current month or year. When using
2866 date ranges, and you specify only the minimum or the maximum, the
2867 specified date will be excluded, e.g. <tt>01/06/2005-</tt> matches
2868 against all messages <em/after/ Juni 1st, 2005.
2870 <p>It is also possible to use so-called ``error margins'' when
2871 specifying date ranges. You simply specify a date, and then the
2872 error margin. This margin needs to contain the information whether
2873 it goes ``forth'' or ``back'' in time, by using <tt/+/ and <tt/-/.
2874 Then follows a number and a unit, i.e. <tt/y/ for years, <tt/m/ for
2875 months, <tt/w/ for weeks and <tt/d/ for days. If you use the special
2876 <tt/*/ sign, it means that the error margin goes to both
2877 ``directions'' in time.
2882 ~d 28/12/2004*1d</verb>
2884 <p>The first pattern matches all dates between January 1st, 2005 and
2885 January 1st 2006. The second pattern matches all dates between
2886 October 18th, 2004 and October 4th 2004 (2 weeks before 18/10/2004),
2887 while the third pattern matches all dates 1 day around December
2888 28th, 2004 (i.e. Dec 27th, 28th and 29th).
2890 <p>Relative dates are also very important, as they make it possible
2891 to specify date ranges between a fixed number of units and the
2892 current date. How this works can be seen in the following example:
2895 ~d >2w # messages older than two weeks
2896 ~d <3d # messages newer than 3 days
2897 ~d =1m # messages that are exactly one month old</verb>
2901 <sect>Format Strings <!--{{{-->
2903 <sect1>Introduction <!--{{{-->
2905 <p>The so called <em/Format Strings/ offer great flexibility when
2906 configuring mutt-ng. In short, they describe what items to print
2907 out how in menus and status messages.
2909 <p>Basically, they work as this: for different menus and bars,
2910 there's a variable specifying the layout. For every item
2911 available, there is a so called <em/expando/.
2913 <p>For example, when running mutt-ng on different machines or
2914 different versions for testing purposes, it may be interesting to
2915 have the following information always printed on screen when one
2920 <item>the current hostname
2922 <item>the current mutt-ng version number
2926 <p>The setting for the status bar of the index is controlled via the
2927 <ref id="status_format" name="$status_format">
2928 variable. For the hostname and version string, there's an expando
2929 for <tt>$status_format</tt>: <tt/%h/ expands to the
2930 hostname and <tt/%v/ to the version string. When just configuring:
2933 set status_format = "%v on %h: ..."</verb>
2935 <p>mutt-ng will replace the sequence <tt/%v/ with the version string
2936 and <tt/%h/ with the host's name. When you are, for example, running
2937 mutt-ng version <tt/1.5.9i/ on host <tt/mailhost/, you'll see the
2938 following when you're in the index:
2941 Mutt-ng 1.5.9i on mailhost: ...</verb>
2943 <p>In the index, there're more useful information one could want to
2948 <item>which mailbox is open
2950 <item>how man new, flagged or postponed messages
2956 <p>To include the mailbox' name is as easy as:
2959 set status_format = "%v on %h: %B: ...</verb>
2961 <p>When the currently opened mailbox is <tt/Inbox/, this will be expanded
2965 Mutt-ng 1.5.9i on mailhost: Inbox: ...</verb>
2967 <p>For the number of certain types of messages, one more feature of the format
2968 strings is extremely useful. If there aren't messages of a certain type, it
2969 may not be desired to print just that there aren't any but instead only
2970 print something if there are any.
2974 <sect1>Conditional Expansion <!--{{{-->
2976 <p>To only print the number of messages if there are new messages in
2977 the current mailbox, further extend
2978 <tt/$status_format/ to:
2981 set status_format = "%v on %h: %B %?n?%n new? ...</verb>
2983 <p>This feature is called <em/nonzero-printing/ and works as this:
2984 some expandos may be optionally printed nonzero, i.e. a portion
2985 of the format string is only evaluated if the value of the expando
2986 is different from zero. The basic syntax is:
2989 %?<item>?<string if nonzero>?</verb>
2991 <p>which tells mutt-ng to only look at <tt><string if
2992 nonzero></tt> if the value of the <tt>%<item%gt;</tt>
2993 expando is different from zero. In our example, we used <tt/n/ as
2994 the expando to check for and <tt/%n new/ as the optional nonzero
2997 <p>But this is not all: this feature only offers one alternative:
2998 ``print something if not zero.'' Mutt-ng does, as you might guess,
2999 also provide a logically complete version: ``if zero, print
3000 something and else print something else.'' This is achieved by the
3001 following syntax for those expandos which may be printed nonzero:
3004 %?<item>?<string if nonzero>&<string if zero>?</verb>
3006 <p>Using this we can make mutt-ng to do the following:
3010 <item> make it print ``<em/n/ new messages'' whereby <em/n/ is the
3011 count but only if there new ones
3013 <item> and make it print ``no new messages'' if there aren't any
3017 <p>The corresponding configuration is:
3020 set status_format = "%v on %h: %B: %?n?%n new messages&no new messages? ...</verb>
3022 <p>This doubles the use of the ``new messages'' string because it'll get
3023 always printed. Thus, it can be shortened to:
3026 set status_format = "%v on %h: %B: %?n?%n&no? new messages ...</verb>
3028 <p>As you might see from this rather simple example, one can create
3029 very complex but fancy status messages. Please see the reference
3030 chapter for expandos and those which may be printed nonzero.
3034 <sect1>Modifications and Padding <!--{{{-->
3036 <p>Besides the information given so far, there're even more features of
3041 <item>When specifying <tt>%_<item></tt> instead of
3042 just <tt>%<item></tt>, mutt-ng will convert all
3043 characters in the expansion of <tt><item></tt> to
3046 <item>When specifying <tt>%:<item></tt> instead of just
3047 <tt>%<item></tt>, mutt-ng will convert all dots in the
3048 expansion of <tt><item></tt> to underscores
3049 (<tt>_</tt>).
3053 <p>Also, there's a feature called <em/Padding/ supplied by the
3054 following two expandos: <tt/%|X/ and <tt/%>X/.
3058 <tag><tt>%|X</tt></tag> When this occurs, mutt-ng will fill the
3059 rest of the line with the character <tt/X/. In our example,
3060 filling the rest of the line with dashes is done by setting:
3063 set status_format = "%v on %h: %B: %?n?%n&no? new messages %|-"</verb>
3065 <tag><tt>%>X</tt></tag> Since the previous expando stops at
3066 the end of line, there must be a way to fill the gap between
3067 two items via the <tt>%>X</tt> expando: it puts as many
3068 characters <tt>X</tt> in between two items so that the rest of
3069 the line will be right-justified. For example, to not put the
3070 version string and hostname of our example on the left but on
3071 the right and fill the gap with spaces, one might use (note
3072 the space after <tt>%></tt>):
3075 set status_format = "%B: %?n?%n&no? new messages %> (%v on %h)"</verb>
3083 <sect>Using Tags <!--{{{-->
3086 Sometimes it is desirable to perform an operation on a group of
3087 messages all at once rather than one at a time. An example might be
3088 to save messages to a mailing list to a separate folder, or to
3089 delete all messages with a given subject. To tag all messages
3090 matching a pattern, use the tag-pattern function, which is bound to
3091 ``shift-T'' by default. Or you can select individual messages by
3092 hand using the ``tag-message'' function, which is bound to ``t'' by
3093 default. See <ref id="patterns" name="patterns"> for Mutt-ng's pattern
3096 Once you have tagged the desired messages, you can use the
3097 ``tag-prefix'' operator, which is the ``;'' (semicolon) key by default.
3098 When the ``tag-prefix'' operator is used, the <bf/next/ operation will
3099 be applied to all tagged messages if that operation can be used in that
3100 manner. If the <ref id="auto_tag" name="$auto_tag">
3101 variable is set, the next operation applies to the tagged messages
3102 automatically, without requiring the ``tag-prefix''.
3104 In <ref id="macro" name="macros"> or <ref id="push" name="push"> commands,
3105 you can use the ``tag-prefix-cond'' operator. If there are no tagged
3106 messages, mutt will "eat" the rest of the macro to abort it's execution.
3107 Mutt-ng will stop "eating" the macro when it encounters the ``end-cond''
3108 operator; after this operator the rest of the macro will be executed as
3113 <sect>Using Hooks<label id="hooks"> <!--{{{-->
3115 A <em/hook/ is a concept borrowed from the EMACS editor which allows you to
3116 execute arbitrary commands before performing some operation. For example,
3117 you may wish to tailor your configuration based upon which mailbox you are
3118 reading, or to whom you are sending mail. In the Mutt-ng world, a <em/hook/
3119 consists of a <ref id="regexp" name="regular expression"> or
3120 <ref id="patterns" name="pattern"> along with a
3121 configuration option/command. See
3123 <item><ref id="folder-hook" name="folder-hook">
3124 <item><ref id="send-hook" name="send-hook">
3125 <item><ref id="message-hook" name="message-hook">
3126 <item><ref id="save-hook" name="save-hook">
3127 <item><ref id="mbox-hook" name="mbox-hook">
3128 <item><ref id="fcc-hook" name="fcc-hook">
3129 <item><ref id="fcc-save-hook" name="fcc-save-hook">
3131 for specific details on each type of <em/hook/ available.
3133 <bf/Note:/ if a hook changes configuration settings, these changes remain
3134 effective until the end of the current mutt session. As this is generally
3135 not desired, a default hook needs to be added before all other hooks to
3136 restore configuration defaults. Here is an example with send-hook and the
3140 send-hook . 'unmy_hdr From:'
3141 send-hook ~C'^b@b\.b$' my_hdr from: c@c.c
3144 <sect1>Message Matching in Hooks<label id="pattern_hook">
3146 Hooks that act upon messages (<tt/send-hook, save-hook, fcc-hook,
3147 message-hook/) are evaluated in a slightly different manner. For the other
3148 types of hooks, a <ref id="regexp" name="regular expression"> is
3149 sufficient. But in dealing with messages a finer grain of control is
3150 needed for matching since for different purposes you want to match
3153 Mutt-ng allows the use of the <ref id="patterns" name="search pattern">
3154 language for matching messages in hook commands. This works in
3155 exactly the same way as it would when <em/limiting/ or
3156 <em/searching/ the mailbox, except that you are restricted to those
3157 operators which match information mutt extracts from the header of
3158 the message (i.e. from, to, cc, date, subject, etc.).
3160 For example, if you wanted to set your return address based upon sending
3161 mail to a specific address, you could do something like:
3163 send-hook '~t ^me@cs\.hmc\.edu$' 'my_hdr From: Mutt-ng User <user@host>'
3165 which would execute the given command when sending mail to
3168 However, it is not required that you write the pattern to match using the
3169 full searching language. You can still specify a simple <em/regular
3170 expression/ like the other hooks, in which case Mutt-ng will translate your
3171 pattern into the full language, using the translation specified by the
3172 <ref id="default_hook" name="$default_hook"> variable. The
3173 pattern is translated at the time the hook is declared, so the value of
3174 <ref id="default_hook" name="$default_hook"> that is in effect
3175 at that time will be used.
3179 <sect>Using the sidebar<label id="sidebar"> <!--{{{-->
3181 The sidebar, a feature specific to Mutt-ng, allows you to use a mailbox listing
3182 which looks very similar to the ones you probably know from GUI mail clients.
3183 The sidebar lists all specified mailboxes, shows the number in each
3184 and highlights the ones with new email
3185 Use the following configuration commands:
3187 set sidebar_visible="yes"
3188 set sidebar_width=25
3191 If you want to specify the mailboxes you can do so with:
3200 You can also specify the colors for mailboxes with new mails by using:
3202 color sidebar_new red black
3203 color sidebar white black
3206 The available functions are:
3208 sidebar-scroll-up Scrolls the mailbox list up 1 page
3209 sidebar-scroll-down Scrolls the mailbox list down 1 page
3210 sidebar-next Highlights the next mailbox
3211 sidebar-next-new Highlights the next mailbox with new mail
3212 sidebar-previous Highlights the previous mailbox
3213 sidebar-open Opens the currently highlighted mailbox
3216 Reasonable key bindings look e.g. like this:
3218 bind index \Cp sidebar-prev
3219 bind index \Cn sidebar-next
3220 bind index \Cb sidebar-open
3221 bind pager \Cp sidebar-prev
3222 bind pager \Cn sidebar-next
3223 bind pager \Cb sidebar-open
3225 macro index B ':toggle sidebar_visible^M'
3226 macro pager B ':toggle sidebar_visible^M'
3229 You can then go up and down by pressing Ctrl-P and Ctrl-N, and
3230 switch on and off the sidebar simply by pressing 'B'.
3234 <sect>External Address Queries<label id="query"> <!--{{{-->
3236 Mutt-ng supports connecting to external directory databases such as LDAP,
3237 ph/qi, bbdb, or NIS through a wrapper script which connects to mutt
3238 using a simple interface. Using the <ref id="query_command"
3239 name="$query_command"> variable, you specify the wrapper
3240 command to use. For example:
3243 set query_command = "mutt_ldap_query.pl '%s'"
3246 The wrapper script should accept the query on the command-line. It
3247 should return a one line message, then each matching response on a
3248 single line, each line containing a tab separated address then name then
3249 some other optional information. On error, or if there are no matching
3250 addresses, return a non-zero exit code and a one line error message.
3252 An example multiple response output:
3254 Searching database ... 20 entries ... 3 matching:
3255 me@cs.hmc.edu Michael Elkins mutt dude
3256 blong@fiction.net Brandon Long mutt and more
3257 roessler@guug.de Thomas Roessler mutt pgp
3260 There are two mechanisms for accessing the query function of mutt. One
3261 is to do a query from the index menu using the query function (default: Q).
3262 This will prompt for a query, then bring up the query menu which will
3263 list the matching responses. From the query menu, you can select
3264 addresses to create aliases, or to mail. You can tag multiple addresses
3265 to mail, start a new query, or have a new query appended to the current
3268 The other mechanism for accessing the query function is for address
3269 completion, similar to the alias completion. In any prompt for address
3270 entry, you can use the complete-query function (default: ^T) to run a
3271 query based on the current address you have typed. Like aliases, mutt
3272 will look for what you have typed back to the last space or comma. If
3273 there is a single response for that query, mutt will expand the address
3274 in place. If there are multiple responses, mutt will activate the query
3275 menu. At the query menu, you can select one or more addresses to be
3276 added to the prompt.
3280 <sect>Mailbox Formats <!--{{{-->
3282 Mutt-ng supports reading and writing of four different mailbox formats:
3283 mbox, MMDF, MH and Maildir. The mailbox type is autodetected, so there
3284 is no need to use a flag for different mailbox types. When creating new
3285 mailboxes, Mutt-ng uses the default specified with the <ref id="mbox_type"
3286 name="$mbox_type"> variable.
3288 <bf/mbox/. This is the most widely used mailbox format for UNIX. All
3289 messages are stored in a single file. Each message has a line of the form:
3292 From me@cs.hmc.edu Fri, 11 Apr 1997 11:44:56 PST
3295 to denote the start of a new message (this is often referred to as the
3296 ``From_'' line).
3298 <bf/MMDF/. This is a variant of the <em/mbox/ format. Each message is
3299 surrounded by lines containing ``^A^A^A^A'' (four control-A's).
3301 <bf/MH/. A radical departure from <em/mbox/ and <em/MMDF/, a mailbox
3302 consists of a directory and each message is stored in a separate file.
3303 The filename indicates the message number (however, this is may not
3304 correspond to the message number Mutt-ng displays). Deleted messages are
3305 renamed with a comma (,) prepended to the filename. <bf/Note:/ Mutt
3306 detects this type of mailbox by looking for either <tt/.mh_sequences/
3307 or <tt/.xmhcache/ (needed to distinguish normal directories from MH
3310 <bf/Maildir/. The newest of the mailbox formats, used by the Qmail MTA (a
3311 replacement for sendmail). Similar to <em/MH/, except that it adds three
3312 subdirectories of the mailbox: <em/tmp/, <em/new/ and <em/cur/. Filenames
3313 for the messages are chosen in such a way they are unique, even when two
3314 programs are writing the mailbox over NFS, which means that no file locking
3319 <sect>Mailbox Shortcuts<label id="shortcuts"> <!--{{{-->
3321 There are a number of built in shortcuts which refer to specific mailboxes.
3322 These shortcuts can be used anywhere you are prompted for a file or mailbox
3326 <item>! -- refers to your <ref id="spoolfile" name="$spoolfile"> (incoming) mailbox
3327 <item>> -- refers to your <ref id="mbox" name="$mbox"> file
3328 <item>< -- refers to your <ref id="record" name="$record"> file
3329 <item>^ -- refers to the current mailbox
3330 <item>- or !! -- refers to the file you've last visited
3331 <item>˜ -- refers to your home directory
3332 <item>= or + -- refers to your <ref id="folder" name="$folder"> directory
3333 <item>@<em/alias/ -- refers to the <ref id="save-hook"
3334 name="default save folder"> as determined by the address of the alias
3339 <sect>Handling Mailing Lists<label id="using_lists"> <!--{{{-->
3342 Mutt-ng has a few configuration options that make dealing with large
3343 amounts of mail easier. The first thing you must do is to let Mutt
3344 know what addresses you consider to be mailing lists (technically
3345 this does not have to be a mailing list, but that is what it is most
3346 often used for), and what lists you are subscribed to. This is
3347 accomplished through the use of the <ref id="lists"
3348 name="lists and subscribe"> commands in your muttrc.
3350 Now that Mutt-ng knows what your mailing lists are, it can do several
3351 things, the first of which is the ability to show the name of a list
3352 through which you received a message (i.e., of a subscribed list) in
3353 the <em/index/ menu display. This is useful to distinguish between
3354 personal and list mail in the same mailbox. In the <ref id="index_format"
3355 name="$index_format"> variable, the escape ``%L''
3356 will return the string ``To <list>'' when ``list'' appears in the
3357 ``To'' field, and ``Cc <list>'' when it appears in the ``Cc''
3358 field (otherwise it returns the name of the author).
3360 Often times the ``To'' and ``Cc'' fields in mailing list messages
3361 tend to get quite large. Most people do not bother to remove the
3362 author of the message they are reply to from the list, resulting in
3363 two or more copies being sent to that person. The ``list-reply''
3364 function, which by default is bound to ``L'' in the <em/index/ menu
3365 and <em/pager/, helps reduce the clutter by only replying to the
3366 known mailing list addresses instead of all recipients (except as
3367 specified by <tt/Mail-Followup-To/, see below).
3369 Mutt-ng also supports the <tt/Mail-Followup-To/ header. When you send
3370 a message to a list of recipients which includes one or several
3371 subscribed mailing lists, and if the <ref id="followup_to"
3372 name="$followup_to"> option is set, mutt will generate
3373 a Mail-Followup-To header which contains all the recipients to whom
3374 you send this message, but not your address. This indicates that
3375 group-replies or list-replies (also known as ``followups'') to this
3376 message should only be sent to the original recipients of the
3377 message, and not separately to you - you'll receive your copy through
3378 one of the mailing lists you are subscribed to.
3380 Conversely, when group-replying or list-replying to a message which
3381 has a <tt/Mail-Followup-To/ header, mutt will respect this header if
3382 the <ref id="honor_followup_to"
3383 name="$honor_followup_to"> configuration
3384 variable is set. Using list-reply will in this case also make sure
3385 that the reply goes to the mailing list, even if it's not specified
3386 in the list of recipients in the <tt/Mail-Followup-To/.
3388 Note that, when header editing is enabled, you can create a
3389 <tt/Mail-Followup-To/ header manually. Mutt-ng will only auto-generate
3390 this header if it doesn't exist when you send the message.
3393 The other method some mailing list admins use is to generate a
3394 ``Reply-To'' field which points back to the mailing list address rather
3395 than the author of the message. This can create problems when trying
3396 to reply directly to the author in private, since most mail clients
3397 will automatically reply to the address given in the ``Reply-To''
3398 field. Mutt-ng uses the <ref id="reply_to" name="$reply_to">
3399 variable to help decide which address to use. If set to <em/ask-yes/ or
3400 <em/ask-no/, you will be
3401 prompted as to whether or not you would like to use the address given in
3402 the ``Reply-To'' field, or reply directly to the address given in the
3403 ``From'' field. When set to <em/yes/, the ``Reply-To'' field will be used when
3406 The ``X-Label:'' header field can be used to further identify mailing
3407 lists or list subject matter (or just to annotate messages
3408 individually). The <ref id="index_format"
3409 name="$index_format"> variable's ``%y'' and
3410 ``%Y'' escapes can be used to expand ``X-Label:'' fields in the
3411 index, and Mutt-ng's pattern-matcher can match regular expressions to
3412 ``X-Label:'' fields with the ``˜y'' selector. ``X-Label:'' is not a
3413 standard message header field, but it can easily be inserted by procmail
3414 and other mail filtering agents.
3416 Lastly, Mutt-ng has the ability to <ref id="sort" name="sort"> the mailbox into
3417 <ref id="threads" name="threads">. A thread is a group of messages which all relate to the same
3418 subject. This is usually organized into a tree-like structure where a
3419 message and all of its replies are represented graphically. If you've ever
3420 used a threaded news client, this is the same concept. It makes dealing
3421 with large volume mailing lists easier because you can easily delete
3422 uninteresting threads and quickly find topics of value.
3426 <sect>Editing threads <!--{{{-->
3428 Mutt-ng has the ability to dynamically restructure threads that are broken
3429 either by misconfigured software or bad behavior from some
3430 correspondents. This allows to clean your mailboxes formats) from these
3431 annoyances which make it hard to follow a discussion.
3433 <sect1>Linking threads
3436 Some mailers tend to "forget" to correctly set the "In-Reply-To:" and
3437 "References:" headers when replying to a message. This results in broken
3438 discussions because Mutt-ng has not enough information to guess the correct
3440 You can fix this by tagging the reply, then moving to the parent message
3441 and using the ``link-threads'' function (bound to & by default). The
3442 reply will then be connected to this "parent" message.
3444 You can also connect multiple children at once, tagging them and using the
3445 tag-prefix command (';') or the auto_tag option.
3447 <sect1>Breaking threads
3450 On mailing lists, some people are in the bad habit of starting a new
3451 discussion by hitting "reply" to any message from the list and changing
3452 the subject to a totally unrelated one.
3453 You can fix such threads by using the ``break-thread'' function (bound
3454 by default to #), which will turn the subthread starting from the
3455 current message into a whole different thread.
3459 <sect>Delivery Status Notification (DSN) Support<label id="dsn"> <!--{{{-->
3462 RFC1894 defines a set of MIME content types for relaying information
3463 about the status of electronic mail messages. These can be thought of as
3464 ``return receipts.''
3466 Users can make use of it in one of the following two ways:
3469 <item>Berkeley sendmail 8.8.x currently has some command line options
3470 in which the mail client can make requests as to what type of status
3471 messages should be returned.
3472 <item>The SMTP support via libESMTP supports it, too.
3475 To support this, there are two variables:
3479 <item><ref id="dsn_notify" name="$dsn_notify"> is used
3480 to request receipts for different results (such as failed message,
3481 message delivered, etc.).
3483 <item><ref id="dsn_return" name="$dsn_return"> requests
3484 how much of your message should be returned with the receipt
3485 (headers or full message).
3489 Please see the reference chapter for possible values.
3493 <sect>POP3 Support (OPTIONAL) <!--{{{-->
3496 If Mutt-ng was compiled with POP3 support (by running the <em/configure/
3497 script with the <em/--enable-pop/ flag), it has the ability to work
3498 with mailboxes located on a remote POP3 server and fetch mail for local
3501 You can access the remote POP3 mailbox by selecting the folder
3502 <tt>pop://popserver/</tt>.
3504 You can select an alternative port by specifying it with the server, i.e.:
3505 <tt>pop://popserver:port/</tt>.
3507 You can also specify different username for each folder, i.e.:
3508 <tt>pop://username@popserver[:port]/</tt>.
3510 Polling for new mail is more expensive over POP3 than locally. For this
3511 reason the frequency at which Mutt-ng will check for mail remotely can be
3513 <ref id="pop_mail_check" name="$pop_mail_check">
3514 variable, which defaults to every 60 seconds.
3516 If Mutt-ng was compiled with SSL support (by running the <em/configure/
3517 script with the <em/--with-ssl/ flag), connections to POP3 servers
3518 can be encrypted. This naturally requires that the server supports
3519 SSL encrypted connections. To access a folder with POP3/SSL, you should
3520 use pops: prefix, ie:
3521 <tt>pops://[username@]popserver[:port]/</tt>.
3523 Another way to access your POP3 mail is the <em/fetch-mail/ function
3524 (default: G). It allows to connect to <ref id="pop_host"
3525 name="pop_host">, fetch all your new mail and place it in the
3526 local <ref id="spoolfile" name="spoolfile">. After this
3527 point, Mutt-ng runs exactly as if the mail had always been local.
3529 <bf/Note:/ If you only need to fetch all messages to local mailbox
3530 you should consider using a specialized program, such as <htmlurl
3531 url="http://www.ccil.org/~esr/fetchmail" name="fetchmail">
3535 <sect>IMAP Support (OPTIONAL) <!--{{{-->
3538 If Mutt-ng was compiled with IMAP support (by running the <em/configure/
3539 script with the <em/--enable-imap/ flag), it has the ability to work
3540 with folders located on a remote IMAP server.
3542 You can access the remote inbox by selecting the folder
3543 <tt>imap://imapserver/INBOX</tt>, where <tt/imapserver/ is the name of the
3544 IMAP server and <tt/INBOX/ is the special name for your spool mailbox on
3545 the IMAP server. If you want to access another mail folder at the IMAP
3546 server, you should use <tt>imap://imapserver/path/to/folder</tt> where
3547 <tt>path/to/folder</tt> is the path of the folder you want to access.
3549 You can select an alternative port by specifying it with the server, i.e.:
3550 <tt>imap://imapserver:port/INBOX</tt>.
3552 You can also specify different username for each folder, i.e.:
3553 <tt>imap://username@imapserver[:port]/INBOX</tt>.
3555 If Mutt-ng was compiled with SSL support (by running the <em/configure/
3556 script with the <em/--with-ssl/ flag), connections to IMAP servers
3557 can be encrypted. This naturally requires that the server supports
3558 SSL encrypted connections. To access a folder with IMAP/SSL, you should
3559 use <tt>imaps://[username@]imapserver[:port]/path/to/folder</tt> as your
3562 Pine-compatible notation is also supported, i.e.
3563 <tt>{[username@]imapserver[:port][/ssl]}path/to/folder</tt>
3565 Note that not all servers use / as the hierarchy separator. Mutt-ng should
3566 correctly notice which separator is being used by the server and convert
3569 When browsing folders on an IMAP server, you can toggle whether to look
3570 at only the folders you are subscribed to, or all folders with the
3571 <em/toggle-subscribed/ command. See also the
3572 <ref id="imap_list_subscribed"
3573 name="$imap_list_subscribed"> variable.
3575 Polling for new mail on an IMAP server can cause noticeable delays. So, you'll
3576 want to carefully tune the
3577 <ref id="imap_mail_check" name="$imap_mail_check">
3579 <ref id="timeout" name="$timeout">
3582 Note that if you are using mbox as the mail store on UW servers prior to
3583 v12.250, the server has been reported to disconnect a client if another client
3584 selects the same folder.
3586 <sect1>The Folder Browser
3589 As of version 1.2, mutt supports browsing mailboxes on an IMAP
3590 server. This is mostly the same as the local file browser, with the
3591 following differences:
3593 <item>Instead of file permissions, mutt displays the string "IMAP",
3594 possibly followed by the symbol "+", indicating
3595 that the entry contains both messages and subfolders. On
3596 Cyrus-like servers folders will often contain both messages and
3598 <item>For the case where an entry can contain both messages and
3599 subfolders, the selection key (bound to <tt>enter</tt> by default)
3600 will choose to descend into the subfolder view. If you wish to view
3601 the messages in that folder, you must use <tt>view-file</tt> instead
3602 (bound to <tt>space</tt> by default).
3603 <item>You can create, delete and rename mailboxes with the
3604 <tt>create-mailbox</tt>, <tt>delete-mailbox</tt>, and
3605 <tt>rename-mailbox</tt> commands (default bindings: <tt>C</tt>,
3606 <tt>d</tt> and <tt>r</tt>, respectively). You may also
3607 <tt>subscribe</tt> and <tt>unsubscribe</tt> to mailboxes (normally
3608 these are bound to <tt>s</tt> and <tt>u</tt>, respectively).
3611 <sect1>Authentication
3614 Mutt-ng supports four authentication methods with IMAP servers: SASL,
3615 GSSAPI, CRAM-MD5, and LOGIN (there is a patch by Grant Edwards to add
3616 NTLM authentication for you poor exchange users out there, but it has
3617 yet to be integrated into the main tree). There is also support for
3618 the pseudo-protocol ANONYMOUS, which allows you to log in to a public
3619 IMAP server without having an account. To use ANONYMOUS, simply make
3620 your username blank or "anonymous".
3622 SASL is a special super-authenticator, which selects among several protocols
3623 (including GSSAPI, CRAM-MD5, ANONYMOUS, and DIGEST-MD5) the most secure
3624 method available on your host and the server. Using some of these methods
3625 (including DIGEST-MD5 and possibly GSSAPI), your entire session will be
3626 encrypted and invisible to those teeming network snoops. It is the best
3627 option if you have it. To use it, you must have the Cyrus SASL library
3628 installed on your system and compile mutt with the <em/--with-sasl/ flag.
3630 Mutt-ng will try whichever methods are compiled in and available on the server,
3631 in the following order: SASL, ANONYMOUS, GSSAPI, CRAM-MD5, LOGIN.
3633 There are a few variables which control authentication:
3635 <item><ref id="imap_user" name="$imap_user"> - controls
3636 the username under which you request authentication on the IMAP server,
3637 for all authenticators. This is overridden by an explicit username in
3638 the mailbox path (i.e. by using a mailbox name of the form
3640 <item><ref id="imap_pass" name="$imap_pass"> - a
3641 password which you may preset, used by all authentication methods where
3642 a password is needed.
3643 <item><ref id="imap_authenticators"
3644 name="$imap_authenticators"> - a colon-delimited list of IMAP
3645 authentication methods to try, in the order you wish to try them. If
3646 specified, this overrides mutt's default (attempt everything, in the order
3652 <sect>NNTP Support (OPTIONAL)<label id="reading_news"> <!--{{{-->
3654 <p>If compiled with ``--enable-nntp'' option, Mutt-ng can read news from
3655 a newsserver via NNTP. You can open a newsgroup with the
3656 ``change-newsgroup'' function from the index/pager which is by default
3659 <p>The Default newsserver can be obtained from the
3660 <tt/$NNTPSERVER/ environment variable. Like other news readers,
3661 info about subscribed newsgroups is saved in a file as specified by the
3662 <ref id="nntp_newsrc" name="$nntp_newsrc"> variable.
3663 Article headers are cached and can be loaded from a file when a
3664 newsgroup is entered instead loading from newsserver; currently, this
3665 caching mechanism still is different from the header caching for
3668 <sect1>Again: Scoring <!--{{{-->
3670 <p>Especially for Usenet, people often ask for advanced filtering
3671 and scoring functionality. Of course, mutt-ng has scoring and
3672 allows a killfile, too. How to use a killfile has been discussed
3673 in <ref id="score-command" name="Message scoring">.
3675 <p>What has not been discusses in detail is mutt-ng's built-in
3676 realname filter. For may newsreaders including those for
3677 ``advanced users'' like <em/slrn/ or <em/tin/, there are frequent
3678 request for such functionality. The solutions offered often are
3679 complicated regular expressions.
3681 <p>In mutt-ng this is as easy as
3687 <p>This tells mutt-ng to apply a score of 42 to all messages whose
3688 sender specified a valid realname and a valid email address. Using
3694 <p>on the contrary applies a score of 42 to all messages <em/not/
3695 matching those criteria which are very strict:
3699 <item>Email addresses must be valid according to RFC 2822, see
3700 <htmlurl url="ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/in-notes/rfc2822.txt"
3701 name="<ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/in-notes/rfc2822.txt>">
3703 <item>the name must consist of at least 2 fields whereby a field
3704 must not end in a dot. This means that ``Joe User'' and ``Joe A.
3705 User'' are valid while ``J. User'' and ``J. A. User'' aren't.
3707 <item>it's assumed that users are interested in reading their
3708 own mail and mail from people who they have defined an alias for
3709 so that those 2 groups of messages are excluded from the strict
3718 <sect>SMTP Support (OPTIONAL) <!--{{{-->
3720 <p>Mutt-ng can be built using a library called ``libESMTP'' which
3721 provides SMTP functionality. When <tt/configure/ was called with
3722 <tt/--with-libesmtp/ or the output <tt>muttng -v</tt> contains
3723 <tt>+USE_LIBESMTP</tt>, this will be or is the case already. The SMTP
3724 support includes support for Delivery Status Notification (see <ref
3725 id="dsn" name="Delivery Status Notification"> section) as well as
3726 handling the <tt/8BITMIME/ flag controlled via <ref id="use_8bitmime"
3727 name="$use_8bitmime">.
3729 <p>To enable sending mail directly via SMTP without an MTA such as
3730 Postfix or SSMTP and the like, simply set the <ref id="smtp_host"
3731 name="$smtp_host"> variable pointing to your SMTP server.
3733 <p>Authentication mechanisms are available via the <ref id="smtp_user"
3734 name="$smtp_user"> and <ref id="smtp_pass"
3735 name="$smtp_pass"> variables.
3737 <p>Transport Encryption via the StartTLS command is also available. For
3738 this to work, first of all Mutt-ng must be built with SSL or GNUTLS.
3739 Secondly, the <ref id="smtp_use_tls"
3740 name="$smtp_use_tls"> variable must be either set
3741 to ``enabled'' or ``required.'' In both cases, StartTLS will be used if
3742 the server supports it: for the second case, the connection will fail if
3743 it doesn't while switching back to unencrypted communication for the
3746 <p>Some mail providers require user's to set a particular envelope
3747 sender, i.e. they allow for only one value which may not be what the
3748 user wants to send as the <tt/From:/ header. In this case, the variable
3749 <ref id="smtp_envelope" name="$smtp_envelope"> may be used
3750 to set the envelope different from the <tt/From:/ header.
3754 <sect>Managing multiple IMAP/POP/NNTP accounts (OPTIONAL)<label id="account-hook"> <!--{{{-->
3757 If you happen to have accounts on multiple IMAP and/or POP servers,
3758 you may find managing all the authentication settings inconvenient and
3759 error-prone. The account-hook command may help. This hook works like
3760 folder-hook but is invoked whenever you access a remote mailbox
3761 (including inside the folder browser), not just when you open the
3767 account-hook . 'unset imap_user; unset imap_pass; unset tunnel'
3768 account-hook imap://host1/ 'set imap_user=me1 imap_pass=foo'
3769 account-hook imap://host2/ 'set tunnel="ssh host2 /usr/libexec/imapd"'
3774 <sect>Start a WWW Browser on URLs (EXTERNAL)<label id="urlview"> <!--{{{-->
3776 If a message contains URLs (<em/unified resource locator/ = address in the
3777 WWW space like <em>http://www.mutt.org/</em>), it is efficient to get
3778 a menu with all the URLs and start a WWW browser on one of them. This
3779 functionality is provided by the external urlview program which can be
3780 retrieved at <htmlurl url="ftp://ftp.mutt.org/mutt/contrib/"
3781 name="ftp://ftp.mutt.org/mutt/contrib/"> and the configuration commands:
3783 macro index \cb |urlview\n
3784 macro pager \cb |urlview\n
3789 <sect>Compressed folders Support (OPTIONAL) <!--{{{-->
3792 If Mutt-ng was compiled with compressed folders support (by running the
3793 <em/configure/ script with the <em/--enable-compressed/ flag), Mutt
3794 can open folders stored in an arbitrary format, provided that the user
3795 has a script to convert from/to this format to one of the accepted.
3797 The most common use is to open compressed archived folders e.g. with
3800 In addition, the user can provide a script that gets a folder in an
3801 accepted format and appends its context to the folder in the
3802 user-defined format, which may be faster than converting the entire
3803 folder to the accepted format, appending to it and converting back to
3804 the user-defined format.
3806 There are three hooks defined (<ref id="open-hook" name="open-hook">,
3807 <ref id="close-hook" name="close-hook"> and <ref id="append-hook"
3808 name="append-hook">) which define commands to uncompress and compress
3809 a folder and to append messages to an existing compressed folder
3815 open-hook \\.gz$ "gzip -cd %f > %t"
3816 close-hook \\.gz$ "gzip -c %t > %f"
3817 append-hook \\.gz$ "gzip -c %t >> %f"
3820 You do not have to specify all of the commands. If you omit <ref
3821 id="append-hook" name="append-hook">, the folder will be open and
3822 closed again each time you will add to it. If you omit <ref
3823 id="close-hook" name="close-hook"> (or give empty command) , the
3824 folder will be open in the mode. If you specify <ref
3825 id="append-hook" name="append-hook"> though you'll be able to append
3828 Note that Mutt-ng will only try to use hooks if the file is not in one of
3829 the accepted formats. In particular, if the file is empty, mutt
3830 supposes it is not compressed. This is important because it allows the
3831 use of programs that do not have well defined extensions. Just use
3832 &dquot;.&dquot; as a regexp. But this may be surprising if your
3833 compressing script produces empty files. In this situation, unset <ref
3834 id="save_empty" name="$save_empty">, so that the compressed file
3835 will be removed if you delete all of the messages.
3837 <sect1>Open a compressed mailbox for reading<label id="open-hook">
3839 Usage: <tt/open-hook/ <em/regexp/ &dquot;<em/command/&dquot;
3841 The <em/command/ is the command that can be used for opening the
3842 folders whose names match <em/regexp/.
3844 The <em/command/ string is the printf-like format string, and it
3845 should accept two parameters: %f, which is replaced with the
3846 (compressed) folder name, and %t which is replaced with the
3847 name of the temporary folder to which to write.
3849 %f and %t can be repeated any number of times in the
3850 command string, and all of the entries are replaced with the
3851 appropriate folder name. In addition, %% is replaced by
3852 %, as in printf, and any other %anything is left as is.
3854 The <em/command/ should <bf/not/ remove the original compressed file.
3855 The <em/command/ should return non-zero exit status if it fails, so
3856 mutt knows something's wrong.
3861 open-hook \\.gz$ "gzip -cd %f > %t"
3864 If the <em/command/ is empty, this operation is disabled for this file
3867 <sect1>Write a compressed mailbox<label id="close-hook">
3869 Usage: <tt/close-hook/ <em/regexp/ &dquot;<em/command/&dquot;
3871 This is used to close the folder that was open with the <ref id="open-hook"
3872 name="open-hook"> command after some changes were made to it.
3874 The <em/command/ string is the command that can be used for closing the
3875 folders whose names match <em/regexp/. It has the same format as in
3876 the <ref id="open-hook" name="open-hook"> command. Temporary folder
3877 in this case is the folder previously produced by the <<ref id="open-hook"
3878 name="open-hook"> command.
3880 The <em/command/ should <bf/not/ remove the decompressed file. The
3881 <em/command/ should return non-zero exit status if it fails, so mutt
3882 knows something's wrong.
3887 close-hook \\.gz$ "gzip -c %t > %f"
3890 If the <em/command/ is empty, this operation is disabled for this file
3891 type, and the file can only be open in the readonly mode.
3893 <ref id="close-hook" name ="close-hook"> is not called when you exit
3894 from the folder if the folder was not changed.
3896 <sect1>Append a message to a compressed mailbox<label id="append-hook">
3898 Usage: <tt/append-hook/ <em/regexp/ &dquot;<em/command/&dquot;
3900 This command is used for saving to an existing compressed folder.
3901 The <em/command/ is the command that can be used for appending to the
3902 folders whose names match <em/regexp/. It has the same format as in
3903 the <ref id="open-hook" name="open-hook"> command.
3904 The temporary folder in this case contains the messages that are being
3907 The <em/command/ should <bf/not/ remove the decompressed file. The
3908 <em/command/ should return non-zero exit status if it fails, so mutt
3909 knows something's wrong.
3914 append-hook \\.gz$ "gzip -c %t >> %f"
3917 When <ref id="append-hook" name="append-hook"> is used, the folder is
3918 not opened, which saves time, but this means that we can not find out
3919 what the folder type is. Thus the default (<ref id="mbox_type"
3920 name="$mbox_type">) type is always supposed (i.e.
3921 this is the format used for the temporary folder).
3923 If the file does not exist when you save to it, <ref id="close-hook"
3924 name="close-hook"> is called, and not <ref id="append-hook"
3925 name="append-hook">. <ref id="append-hook" name="append-hook"> is only
3926 for appending to existing folders.
3928 If the <em/command/ is empty, this operation is disabled for this file
3929 type. In this case, the folder will be open and closed again (using
3930 <ref id="open-hook" name="open-hook"> and <ref id="close-hook"
3931 name="close-hook">respectively) each time you will add to it.
3933 <sect1>Encrypted folders
3935 The compressed folders support can also be used to handle encrypted
3936 folders. If you want to encrypt a folder with PGP, you may want to use
3937 the following hooks:
3940 open-hook \\.pgp$ "pgp -f < %f > %t"
3941 close-hook \\.pgp$ "pgp -fe YourPgpUserIdOrKeyId < %t > %f"
3944 Please note, that PGP does not support appending to an encrypted
3945 folder, so there is no append-hook defined.
3947 <bf/Note:/ the folder is temporary stored decrypted in the /tmp
3948 directory, where it can be read by your system administrator. So think
3949 about the security aspects of this.
3955 <chapt>Mutt-ng's MIME Support <!--{{{-->
3957 Quite a bit of effort has been made to make Mutt-ng the premier text-mode
3958 MIME MUA. Every effort has been made to provide the functionality that
3959 the discerning MIME user requires, and the conformance to the standards
3960 wherever possible. When configuring Mutt-ng for MIME, there are two extra
3961 types of configuration files which Mutt-ng uses. One is the
3962 <tt/mime.types/ file, which contains the mapping of file extensions to
3963 IANA MIME types. The other is the <tt/mailcap/ file, which specifies
3964 the external commands to use for handling specific MIME types.
3966 <sect>Using MIME in Mutt <!--{{{-->
3968 There are three areas/menus in Mutt-ng which deal with MIME, they are the
3969 pager (while viewing a message), the attachment menu and the compose
3972 <sect1>Viewing MIME messages in the pager
3974 When you select a message from the index and view it in the pager, Mutt
3975 decodes the message to a text representation. Mutt-ng internally supports
3976 a number of MIME types, including <tt>text/plain, text/enriched,
3977 message/rfc822, and message/news</tt>. In addition, the export
3978 controlled version of Mutt-ng recognizes a variety of PGP MIME types,
3979 including PGP/MIME and application/pgp.
3981 Mutt-ng will denote attachments with a couple lines describing them.
3982 These lines are of the form:
3984 [-- Attachment #1: Description --]
3985 [-- Type: text/plain, Encoding: 7bit, Size: 10000 --]
3987 Where the <tt/Description/ is the description or filename given for the
3988 attachment, and the <tt/Encoding/ is one of
3989 <tt>7bit/8bit/quoted-printable/base64/binary</tt>.
3991 If Mutt-ng cannot deal with a MIME type, it will display a message like:
3993 [-- image/gif is unsupported (use 'v' to view this part) --]
3996 <sect1>The Attachment Menu<label id="attach_menu">
3998 The default binding for <tt/view-attachments/ is `v', which displays the
3999 attachment menu for a message. The attachment menu displays a list of
4000 the attachments in a message. From the attachment menu, you can save,
4001 print, pipe, delete, and view attachments. You can apply these
4002 operations to a group of attachments at once, by tagging the attachments
4003 and by using the ``tag-prefix'' operator. You can also reply to the
4004 current message from this menu, and only the current attachment (or the
4005 attachments tagged) will be quoted in your reply. You can view
4006 attachments as text, or view them using the mailcap viewer definition.
4008 Finally, you can apply the usual message-related functions (like
4009 <ref id="resend-message" name="resend-message">, and the reply
4010 and forward functions) to attachments of type <tt>message/rfc822</tt>.
4012 See the help on the attachment menu for more information.
4014 <sect1>The Compose Menu<label id="compose_menu">
4016 The compose menu is the menu you see before you send a message. It
4017 allows you to edit the recipient list, the subject, and other aspects
4018 of your message. It also contains a list of the attachments of your
4019 message, including the main body. From this menu, you can print, copy,
4020 filter, pipe, edit, compose, review, and rename an attachment or a
4021 list of tagged attachments. You can also modifying the attachment
4022 information, notably the type, encoding and description.
4024 Attachments appear as follows:
4026 - 1 [text/plain, 7bit, 1K] /tmp/mutt-euler-8082-0 <no description>
4027 2 [applica/x-gunzip, base64, 422K] ~/src/mutt-0.85.tar.gz <no description>
4030 The '-' denotes that Mutt-ng will delete the file after sending (or
4031 postponing, or canceling) the message. It can be toggled with the
4032 <tt/toggle-unlink/ command (default: u). The next field is the MIME
4033 content-type, and can be changed with the <tt/edit-type/ command
4034 (default: ^T). The next field is the encoding for the attachment,
4035 which allows a binary message to be encoded for transmission on 7bit
4036 links. It can be changed with the <tt/edit-encoding/ command
4037 (default: ^E). The next field is the size of the attachment,
4038 rounded to kilobytes or megabytes. The next field is the filename,
4039 which can be changed with the <tt/rename-file/ command (default: R).
4040 The final field is the description of the attachment, and can be
4041 changed with the <tt/edit-description/ command (default: d).
4045 <sect>MIME Type configuration with <tt/mime.types/ <!--{{{-->
4047 When you add an attachment to your mail message, Mutt-ng searches your
4048 personal mime.types file at <tt>${HOME}/.mime.types</tt>, and then
4049 the system mime.types file at <tt>/usr/local/share/mutt/mime.types</tt> or
4050 <tt>/etc/mime.types</tt>
4052 The mime.types file consist of lines containing a MIME type and a space
4053 separated list of extensions. For example:
4055 application/postscript ps eps
4057 audio/x-aiff aif aifc aiff
4059 A sample <tt/mime.types/ file comes with the Mutt-ng distribution, and
4060 should contain most of the MIME types you are likely to use.
4062 If Mutt-ng can not determine the mime type by the extension of the file you
4063 attach, it will look at the file. If the file is free of binary
4064 information, Mutt-ng will assume that the file is plain text, and mark it
4065 as <tt>text/plain</tt>. If the file contains binary information, then Mutt-ng will
4066 mark it as <tt>application/octet-stream</tt>. You can change the MIME
4067 type that Mutt-ng assigns to an attachment by using the <tt/edit-type/
4068 command from the compose menu (default: ^T). The MIME type is actually a
4069 major mime type followed by the sub-type, separated by a '/'. 6 major
4070 types: application, text, image, video, audio, and model have been approved
4071 after various internet discussions. Mutt-ng recognises all of these if the
4072 appropriate entry is found in the mime.types file. It also recognises other
4073 major mime types, such as the chemical type that is widely used in the
4074 molecular modelling community to pass molecular data in various forms to
4075 various molecular viewers. Non-recognised mime types should only be used
4076 if the recipient of the message is likely to be expecting such attachments.
4080 <sect>MIME Viewer configuration with <tt/mailcap/ <!--{{{-->
4082 Mutt-ng supports RFC 1524 MIME Configuration, in particular the Unix
4083 specific format specified in Appendix A of RFC 1524. This file format
4084 is commonly referred to as the mailcap format. Many MIME compliant
4085 programs utilize the mailcap format, allowing you to specify handling
4086 for all MIME types in one place for all programs. Programs known to
4087 use this format include Netscape, XMosaic, lynx and metamail.
4089 In order to handle various MIME types that Mutt-ng can not handle
4090 internally, Mutt-ng parses a series of external configuration files to
4091 find an external handler. The default search string for these files
4092 is a colon delimited list set to
4094 ${HOME}/.mailcap:/usr/local/share/mutt/mailcap:/etc/mailcap:/etc/mailcap:/usr/etc/mailcap:/usr/local/etc/mailcap
4096 where <tt/$HOME/ is your home directory.
4098 In particular, the metamail distribution will install a mailcap file,
4099 usually as <tt>/usr/local/etc/mailcap</tt>, which contains some baseline
4102 <sect1>The Basics of the mailcap file
4104 A mailcap file consists of a series of lines which are comments, blank,
4107 A comment line consists of a # character followed by anything you want.
4109 A blank line is blank.
4111 A definition line consists of a content type, a view command, and any
4112 number of optional fields. Each field of a definition line is divided
4113 by a semicolon ';' character.
4115 The content type is specified in the MIME standard type/subtype method.
4117 <tt>text/plain, text/html, image/gif, </tt>
4118 etc. In addition, the mailcap format includes two formats for
4119 wildcards, one using the special '*' subtype, the other is the implicit
4120 wild, where you only include the major type. For example, <tt>image/*</tt>, or
4121 <tt>video,</tt> will match all image types and video types,
4124 The view command is a Unix command for viewing the type specified. There
4125 are two different types of commands supported. The default is to send
4126 the body of the MIME message to the command on stdin. You can change
4127 this behavior by using %s as a parameter to your view command.
4128 This will cause Mutt-ng to save the body of the MIME message to a temporary
4129 file, and then call the view command with the %s replaced by
4130 the name of the temporary file. In both cases, Mutt-ng will turn over the
4131 terminal to the view program until the program quits, at which time Mutt
4132 will remove the temporary file if it exists.
4134 So, in the simplest form, you can send a text/plain message to the
4135 external pager more on stdin:
4139 Or, you could send the message as a file:
4143 Perhaps you would like to use lynx to interactively view a text/html
4148 In this case, lynx does not support viewing a file from stdin, so you
4149 must use the %s syntax.
4150 <bf/Note:/ <em>Some older versions of lynx contain a bug where they
4151 will check the mailcap file for a viewer for text/html. They will find
4152 the line which calls lynx, and run it. This causes lynx to continuously
4153 spawn itself to view the object.</em>
4155 On the other hand, maybe you don't want to use lynx interactively, you
4156 just want to have it convert the text/html to text/plain, then you can
4159 text/html; lynx -dump %s | more
4162 Perhaps you wish to use lynx to view text/html files, and a pager on
4163 all other text formats, then you would use the following:
4168 This is the simplest form of a mailcap file.
4170 <sect1>Secure use of mailcap
4172 The interpretation of shell meta-characters embedded in MIME parameters
4173 can lead to security problems in general. Mutt-ng tries to quote parameters
4174 in expansion of %s syntaxes properly, and avoids risky characters by
4175 substituting them, see the <ref id="mailcap_sanitize"
4176 name="mailcap_sanitize"> variable.
4178 Although mutt's procedures to invoke programs with mailcap seem to be
4179 safe, there are other applications parsing mailcap, maybe taking less care
4180 of it. Therefore you should pay attention to the following rules:
4182 <em/Keep the %-expandos away from shell quoting./
4183 Don't quote them with single or double quotes. Mutt-ng does this for
4184 you, the right way, as should any other program which interprets
4185 mailcap. Don't put them into backtick expansions. Be highly careful
4186 with eval statements, and avoid them if possible at all. Trying to fix
4187 broken behaviour with quotes introduces new leaks - there is no
4188 alternative to correct quoting in the first place.
4190 If you have to use the %-expandos' values in context where you need
4191 quoting or backtick expansions, put that value into a shell variable
4192 and reference the shell variable where necessary, as in the following
4193 example (using <tt/$charset/ inside the backtick expansion is safe,
4194 since it is not itself subject to any further expansion):
4197 text/test-mailcap-bug; cat %s; copiousoutput; test=charset=%{charset} \
4198 && test "`echo $charset | tr '[A-Z]' '[a-z]'`" != iso-8859-1
4201 <sect1>Advanced mailcap Usage
4204 <sect2>Optional Fields
4206 In addition to the required content-type and view command fields, you
4207 can add semi-colon ';' separated fields to set flags and other options.
4208 Mutt-ng recognizes the following optional fields:
4211 This flag tells Mutt-ng that the command passes possibly large amounts of
4212 text on stdout. This causes Mutt-ng to invoke a pager (either the internal
4213 pager or the external pager defined by the pager variable) on the output
4214 of the view command. Without this flag, Mutt-ng assumes that the command
4215 is interactive. One could use this to replace the pipe to <tt>more</tt>
4216 in the <tt>lynx -dump</tt> example in the Basic section:
4218 text/html; lynx -dump %s ; copiousoutput
4220 This will cause lynx to format the text/html output as text/plain
4221 and Mutt-ng will use your standard pager to display the results.
4223 Mutt-ng uses this flag when viewing attachments with <ref id="auto_view"
4224 name="autoview">, in order to decide whether it should honor the setting
4225 of the <ref id="wait_key" name="$wait_key"> variable or
4226 not. When an attachment is viewed using an interactive program, and the
4227 corresponding mailcap entry has a <em/needsterminal/ flag, Mutt-ng will use
4228 <ref id="wait_key" name="$wait_key"> and the exit status
4229 of the program to decide if it will ask you to press a key after the
4230 external program has exited. In all other situations it will not prompt
4232 <tag>compose=<command></tag>
4233 This flag specifies the command to use to create a new attachment of a
4234 specific MIME type. Mutt-ng supports this from the compose menu.
4235 <tag>composetyped=<command></tag>
4236 This flag specifies the command to use to create a new attachment of a
4237 specific MIME type. This command differs from the compose command in
4238 that mutt will expect standard MIME headers on the data. This can be
4239 used to specify parameters, filename, description, etc. for a new
4240 attachment. Mutt-ng supports this from the compose menu.
4241 <tag>print=<command></tag>
4242 This flag specifies the command to use to print a specific MIME type.
4243 Mutt-ng supports this from the attachment and compose menus.
4244 <tag>edit=<command></tag>
4245 This flag specifies the command to use to edit a specific MIME type.
4246 Mutt-ng supports this from the compose menu, and also uses it to compose
4247 new attachments. Mutt-ng will default to the defined editor for text
4249 <tag>nametemplate=<template></tag>
4250 This field specifies the format for the file denoted by %s in the
4251 command fields. Certain programs will require a certain file extension,
4252 for instance, to correctly view a file. For instance, lynx will only
4253 interpret a file as <tt>text/html</tt> if the file ends in <tt/.html/.
4254 So, you would specify lynx as a <tt>text/html</tt> viewer with a line in
4255 the mailcap file like:
4257 text/html; lynx %s; nametemplate=%s.html
4259 <tag>test=<command></tag>
4260 This field specifies a command to run to test whether this mailcap
4261 entry should be used. The command is defined with the command expansion
4262 rules defined in the next section. If the command returns 0, then the
4263 test passed, and Mutt-ng uses this entry. If the command returns non-zero,
4264 then the test failed, and Mutt-ng continues searching for the right entry.
4265 <bf/Note:/ <em>the content-type must match before Mutt-ng performs the test.</em>
4268 text/html; netscape -remote 'openURL(%s)' ; test=RunningX
4271 In this example, Mutt-ng will run the program RunningX which will return 0
4272 if the X Window manager is running, and non-zero if it isn't. If
4273 RunningX returns 0, then Mutt-ng will call netscape to display the
4274 text/html object. If RunningX doesn't return 0, then Mutt-ng will go on
4275 to the next entry and use lynx to display the text/html object.
4280 When searching for an entry in the mailcap file, Mutt-ng will search for
4281 the most useful entry for its purpose. For instance, if you are
4282 attempting to print an <tt>image/gif</tt>, and you have the following
4283 entries in your mailcap file, Mutt-ng will search for an entry with the
4287 image/gif; ; print= anytopnm %s | pnmtops | lpr; \
4290 Mutt-ng will skip the <tt>image/*</tt> entry and use the <tt>image/gif</tt>
4291 entry with the print command.
4293 In addition, you can use this with <ref id="auto_view" name="Autoview">
4294 to denote two commands for viewing an attachment, one to be viewed
4295 automatically, the other to be viewed interactively from the attachment
4296 menu. In addition, you can then use the test feature to determine which
4297 viewer to use interactively depending on your environment.
4299 text/html; netscape -remote 'openURL(%s)' ; test=RunningX
4300 text/html; lynx %s; nametemplate=%s.html
4301 text/html; lynx -dump %s; nametemplate=%s.html; copiousoutput
4303 For <ref id="auto_view" name="Autoview">, Mutt-ng will choose the third
4304 entry because of the copiousoutput tag. For interactive viewing, Mutt
4305 will run the program RunningX to determine if it should use the first
4306 entry. If the program returns non-zero, Mutt-ng will use the second entry
4307 for interactive viewing.
4309 <sect2>Command Expansion
4311 The various commands defined in the mailcap files are passed to the
4312 <tt>/bin/sh</tt> shell using the system() function. Before the
4313 command is passed to <tt>/bin/sh -c</tt>, it is parsed to expand
4314 various special parameters with information from Mutt-ng. The keywords
4315 Mutt-ng expands are:
4318 As seen in the basic mailcap section, this variable is expanded
4319 to a filename specified by the calling program. This file contains
4320 the body of the message to view/print/edit or where the composing
4321 program should place the results of composition. In addition, the
4322 use of this keyword causes Mutt-ng to not pass the body of the message
4323 to the view/print/edit program on stdin.
4325 Mutt-ng will expand %t to the text representation of the content
4326 type of the message in the same form as the first parameter of the
4327 mailcap definition line, ie <tt>text/html</tt> or
4329 <tag>%{<parameter>}</tag>
4330 Mutt-ng will expand this to the value of the specified parameter
4331 from the Content-Type: line of the mail message. For instance, if
4332 Your mail message contains:
4334 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
4336 then Mutt-ng will expand %{charset} to iso-8859-1. The default metamail
4337 mailcap file uses this feature to test the charset to spawn an xterm
4338 using the right charset to view the message.
4339 <tag>\%</tag>
4340 This will be replaced by a %
4342 Mutt-ng does not currently support the %F and %n keywords
4343 specified in RFC 1524. The main purpose of these parameters is for
4344 multipart messages, which is handled internally by Mutt-ng.
4346 <sect1>Example mailcap files
4348 This mailcap file is fairly simple and standard:
4350 # I'm always running X :)
4351 video/*; xanim %s > /dev/null
4352 image/*; xv %s > /dev/null
4354 # I'm always running netscape (if my computer had more memory, maybe)
4355 text/html; netscape -remote 'openURL(%s)'
4358 This mailcap file shows quite a number of examples:
4361 # Use xanim to view all videos Xanim produces a header on startup,
4362 # send that to /dev/null so I don't see it
4363 video/*; xanim %s > /dev/null
4365 # Send html to a running netscape by remote
4366 text/html; netscape -remote 'openURL(%s)'; test=RunningNetscape
4368 # If I'm not running netscape but I am running X, start netscape on the
4370 text/html; netscape %s; test=RunningX
4372 # Else use lynx to view it as text
4375 # This version would convert the text/html to text/plain
4376 text/html; lynx -dump %s; copiousoutput
4378 # I use enscript to print text in two columns to a page
4379 text/*; more %s; print=enscript -2Gr %s
4381 # Netscape adds a flag to tell itself to view jpegs internally
4382 image/jpeg;xv %s; x-mozilla-flags=internal
4384 # Use xv to view images if I'm running X
4385 # In addition, this uses the \ to extend the line and set my editor
4387 image/*;xv %s; test=RunningX; \
4390 # Convert images to text using the netpbm tools
4391 image/*; (anytopnm %s | pnmscale -xysize 80 46 | ppmtopgm | pgmtopbm |
4392 pbmtoascii -1x2 ) 2>&1 ; copiousoutput
4394 # Send excel spreadsheets to my NT box
4395 application/ms-excel; open.pl %s
4400 <sect>MIME Autoview<label id="auto_view"> <!--{{{-->
4402 In addition to explicitly telling Mutt-ng to view an attachment with the
4403 MIME viewer defined in the mailcap file, Mutt-ng has support for
4404 automatically viewing MIME attachments while in the pager.
4406 To work, you must define a viewer in the mailcap file which uses the
4407 <tt/copiousoutput/ option to denote that it is non-interactive.
4408 Usually, you also use the entry to convert the attachment to a text
4409 representation which you can view in the pager.
4411 You then use the <tt/auto_view/ muttrc command to list the
4412 content-types that you wish to view automatically.
4414 For instance, if you set auto_view to:
4416 auto_view text/html application/x-gunzip application/postscript image/gif application/x-tar-gz
4419 Mutt-ng could use the following mailcap entries to automatically view
4420 attachments of these types.
4422 text/html; lynx -dump %s; copiousoutput; nametemplate=%s.html
4423 image/*; anytopnm %s | pnmscale -xsize 80 -ysize 50 | ppmtopgm | pgmtopbm | pbmtoascii ; copiousoutput
4424 application/x-gunzip; gzcat; copiousoutput
4425 application/x-tar-gz; gunzip -c %s | tar -tf - ; copiousoutput
4426 application/postscript; ps2ascii %s; copiousoutput
4429 ``unauto_view'' can be used to remove previous entries from the autoview list.
4430 This can be used with message-hook to autoview messages based on size, etc.
4431 ``unauto_view *'' will remove all previous entries.
4435 <sect>MIME Multipart/Alternative<label id="alternative_order"> <!--{{{-->
4437 Mutt-ng has some heuristics for determining which attachment of a
4438 multipart/alternative type to display. First, mutt will check the
4439 alternative_order list to determine if one of the available types
4440 is preferred. The alternative_order list consists of a number of
4441 MIME types in order, including support for implicit and explicit
4442 wildcards, for example:
4444 alternative_order text/enriched text/plain text application/postscript image/*
4447 Next, mutt will check if any of the types have a defined
4448 <ref id="auto_view" name="auto_view">, and use that. Failing
4449 that, Mutt-ng will look for any text type. As a last attempt, mutt will
4450 look for any type it knows how to handle.
4452 To remove a MIME type from the <tt/alternative_order/ list, use the
4453 <tt/unalternative_order/ command.
4457 <sect>MIME Lookup<label id="mime_lookup"> <!--{{{-->
4459 Mutt-ng's mime_lookup list specifies a list of mime-types that should not
4460 be treated according to their mailcap entry. This option is designed to
4461 deal with binary types such as application/octet-stream. When an attachment's
4462 mime-type is listed in mime_lookup, then the extension of the filename will
4463 be compared to the list of extensions in the mime.types file. The mime-type
4464 associated with this extension will then be used to process the attachment
4465 according to the rules in the mailcap file and according to any other configuration
4466 options (such as auto_view) specified. Common usage would be:
4468 mime_lookup application/octet-stream application/X-Lotus-Manuscript
4471 In addition, the unmime_lookup command may be used to disable this feature
4472 for any particular mime-type if it had been set, for example, in a global
4479 <chapt>Security Considerations <!--{{{-->
4481 <p>First of all, mutt-ng contains no security holes included by
4482 intention but may contain unknown security holes. As a consequence,
4483 please run mutt-ng only with as few permissions as possible.
4485 <p>Please do not run mutt-ng as the super user.
4487 <p>When configuring mutt-ng, there're some points to note about secure
4490 <p>In practice, mutt-ng can be easily made as vulnerable as even the
4491 most insecure mail user agents (in their default configuration) just
4492 by changing mutt-ng's configuration files: it then can execute
4493 arbitrary programs and scripts attached to messages, send out private
4494 data on its own, etc. Although this is not believed to the common type
4495 of setup, please read this chapter carefully.
4497 <sect>Passwords <!--{{{-->
4499 <p>Although mutt-ng can be told the various passwords for accounts,
4500 please never store passwords in configuration files. Besides the
4501 fact that the system's operator can always read them, you could
4502 forget to replace the actual password with asterisks when reporting
4503 a bug or asking for help via, for example, a mailing list so that
4504 your mail including your password could be archived by internet
4505 search engines, etc. Please never store passwords on disk.
4509 <sect>Temporary Files <!--{{{-->
4511 <p>Mutt-ng uses many temporary files for viewing messages, verifying
4512 digital signatures, etc. The <ref id="umask" name="$umask">
4513 variable can be used to change the default permissions of these
4514 files. Please only change it if you really know what you are doing.
4515 Also, a different location for these files may be desired which can
4516 be changed via the <ref id="tmpdir" name="$tmpdir"> variable.
4520 <sect>Information Leaks <!--{{{-->
4522 <sect1>Message-ID: headers <!--{{{-->
4524 <p>In the default configuration, mutt-ng will leak some information
4525 to the outside world when sending messages: the generation of
4526 <tt/Message-ID:/ headers includes a step counter which is increased
4527 (and rotated) with every message sent. If you'd like to hide this
4528 information probably telling others how many mail you sent in which
4529 time, you at least need to remove the <tt/%P/ expando from the
4530 default setting of the <ref id="msgid_format"
4531 name="$msgid_format"> variable. Please make sure that
4532 you really know how local parts of these <tt/Message-ID:/ headers
4537 <sect1>mailto:-style links <!--{{{-->
4539 <p>As mutt-ng be can be set up to be the mail client to handle
4540 <tt/mailto:/ style links in websites, there're security
4541 considerations, too. To keep the old behavior by default, mutt-ng
4542 will be strict in interpreting them which means that arbitrary
4543 header fields can be embedded in these links which could override
4544 existing header fields or attach arbitrary files. This may be
4545 problematic if the <ref id="edit_headers"
4546 name="$edit_headers"> variable is <em/unset/, i.e. the
4547 user doesn't want to see header fields while editing the message.
4549 <p>For example, following a link like
4552 mailto:joe@host?Attach=~/.gnupg/secring.gpg</verb>
4554 will send out the user's private gnupg keyring to <tt/joe@host/ if
4555 the user doesn't follow the information on screen carefully
4558 <p>When <em/unsetting/ the <ref id="strict_mailto"
4559 name="$strict_mailto"> variable, mutt-ng will
4563 <item>be less strict when interpreting these links by
4564 prepending a <tt/X-Mailto-/ string to all header fields
4565 embedded in such a link <em/and/
4567 <item>turn on the <ref id="edit_headers"
4568 name="$edit_headers"> variable by
4569 force to let the user see all the headers
4570 (because they still may leak information.)
4578 <sect>External applications <!--{{{-->
4580 <p>Mutt-ng in many places has to rely on external applications or
4581 for convenience supports mechanisms involving external
4584 <sect1>mailcap <!--{{{-->
4586 <p>One of these is the <tt/mailcap/ mechanism as defined by RfC
4587 1524. Mutt-ng can be set up to <em/automatically/ execute any
4588 given utility as listed in one of the mailcap files (see the
4589 <ref id="mailcap_path" name="$mailcap_path">
4590 variable for details.)
4592 These utilities may have a variety of security vulnerabilities,
4593 including overwriting of arbitrary files, information leaks or
4594 other exploitable bugs. These vulnerabilities may go unnoticed by
4595 the user, especially when they are called automatically (and
4596 without interactive prompting) from the mailcap file(s). When
4597 using mutt-ng's autoview mechanism in combination with mailcap
4598 files, please be sure to...
4602 <item>manually select trustworth applications with a reasonable
4605 <item>periodically check the contents of mailcap files,
4606 especially after software installations or upgrades
4608 <item>keep the software packages referenced in the mailcap file up to date
4610 <item>leave the <ref id="mailcap_sanitize"
4611 name="$mailcap_sanitize"> variable in its default
4612 state to restrict mailcap expandos to a safe set of characters
4618 <sect1>Other <!--{{{-->
4620 <p>Besides the mailcap mechanism, mutt-ng uses a number of other
4621 external utilities for operation.
4623 <p>The same security considerations apply for these as for tools
4624 involved via mailcap (for example, mutt-ng is vulnerable to Denial
4625 of Service Attacks with compressed folders support if the
4626 uncompressed mailbox is too large for the disk it is saved to.)
4628 <p>As already noted, most of these problems are not built in but
4629 caused by wrong configuration, so please check your configuration.
4637 <chapt>Reference <!--{{{-->
4639 <sect>Command line options<label id="commandline"> <!--{{{-->
4641 Running <tt/mutt/ with no arguments will make Mutt-ng attempt to read your spool
4642 mailbox. However, it is possible to read other mailboxes and
4643 to send messages from the command line as well.
4647 -a attach a file to a message
4648 -b specify a blind carbon-copy (BCC) address
4649 -c specify a carbon-copy (Cc) address
4650 -e specify a config command to be run after initialization files are read
4651 -f specify a mailbox to load
4652 -F specify an alternate file to read initialization commands
4653 -h print help on command line options
4654 -H specify a draft file from which to read a header and body
4655 -i specify a file to include in a message composition
4656 -m specify a default mailbox type
4657 -n do not read the system Muttngrc
4658 -p recall a postponed message
4659 -Q query a configuration variable
4660 -R open mailbox in read-only mode
4661 -s specify a subject (enclose in quotes if it contains spaces)
4662 -t dump the value of all variables to stdout
4663 -T dump the value of all changed variables to stdout
4664 -v show version number and compile-time definitions
4665 -x simulate the mailx(1) compose mode
4666 -y show a menu containing the files specified by the mailboxes command
4667 -z exit immediately if there are no messages in the mailbox
4668 -Z open the first folder with new message,exit immediately if none
4671 To read messages in a mailbox
4673 <tt/mutt/ [ -nz ] [ -F <em/muttrc/ ] [ -m <em/type/ ] [ -f <em/mailbox/ ]
4675 To compose a new message
4677 <tt/mutt/ [ -n ] [ -F <em/muttrc/ ] [ -a <em/file/ ] [ -c <em/address/ ] [ -i <em/filename/ ] [ -s <em/subject/ ] <em/address/ [ <em/address/ ... ]
4679 Mutt-ng also supports a ``batch'' mode to send prepared messages. Simply redirect
4680 input from the file you wish to send. For example,
4682 <tt>mutt -s &dquot;data set for run #2&dquot; professor@bigschool.edu
4683 < ˜/run2.dat</tt>
4685 This command will send a message to ``professor@bigschool.edu'' with a subject
4686 of ``data set for run #2''. In the body of the message will be the contents
4687 of the file ``˜/run2.dat''.
4691 <sect>Patterns<label id="patterns"> <!--{{{-->
4696 ~b EXPR messages which contain EXPR in the message body
4697 ~B EXPR messages which contain EXPR in the whole message
4698 ~c USER messages carbon-copied to USER
4699 ~C EXPR message is either to: or cc: EXPR
4701 ~d [MIN]-[MAX] messages with ``date-sent'' in a Date range
4703 ~e EXPR message which contains EXPR in the ``Sender'' field
4705 ~f USER messages originating from USER
4706 ~g cryptographically signed messages
4707 ~G cryptographically encrypted messages
4708 ~H EXPR messages with a spam attribute matching EXPR
4709 ~h EXPR messages which contain EXPR in the message header
4710 ~k message contains PGP key material
4711 ~i ID message which match ID in the ``Message-ID'' field
4712 ~L EXPR message is either originated or received by EXPR
4713 ~l message is addressed to a known mailing list
4714 ~m [MIN]-[MAX] message in the range MIN to MAX *)
4715 ~n [MIN]-[MAX] messages with a score in the range MIN to MAX *)
4718 ~p message is addressed to you (consults alternates)
4719 ~P message is from you (consults alternates)
4720 ~Q messages which have been replied to
4722 ~r [MIN]-[MAX] messages with ``date-received'' in a Date range
4723 ~S superseded messages
4724 ~s SUBJECT messages having SUBJECT in the ``Subject'' field.
4726 ~t USER messages addressed to USER
4728 ~v message is part of a collapsed thread.
4729 ~V cryptographically verified messages
4730 ~w EXPR messages which contain EXPR in the `Newsgroups' field
4731 (if compiled with NNTP support)
4732 ~x EXPR messages which contain EXPR in the `References' field
4733 ~y EXPR messages which contain EXPR in the `X-Label' field
4734 ~z [MIN]-[MAX] messages with a size in the range MIN to MAX *)
4735 ~= duplicated messages (see $duplicate_threads)
4736 ~$ unreferenced messages (requires threaded view)
4737 ~* ``From'' contains realname and (syntactically) valid
4738 address (excluded are addresses matching against
4739 alternates or any alias)
4742 Where EXPR, USER, ID, and SUBJECT are
4743 <ref id="regexp" name="regular expressions">. Special attention has to be
4744 made when using regular expressions inside of patterns. Specifically,
4745 Mutt-ng's parser for these patterns will strip one level of backslash (\),
4746 which is normally used for quoting. If it is your intention to use a
4747 backslash in the regular expression, you will need to use two backslashes
4750 *) The forms <tt/<[MAX]/, <tt/>[MIN]/,
4751 <tt/[MIN]-/ and <tt/-[MAX]/
4756 <sect>Configuration Commands<label id="commands"> <!--{{{-->
4758 The following are the commands understood by mutt.
4762 <tt><ref id="account-hook" name="account-hook"></tt> <em/pattern/ <em/command/
4764 <tt><ref id="alias" name="alias"></tt> <em/key/ <em/address/ [ , <em/address/, ... ]
4766 <tt><ref id="alias" name="unalias"></tt> [ * | <em/key/ ... ]
4768 <tt><ref id="alternates" name="alternates"></tt> <em/regexp/ [ <em/regexp/ ... ]
4770 <tt><ref id="alternates" name="unalternates"></tt> [ * | <em/regexp/ ... ]
4772 <tt><ref id="alternative_order" name="alternative_order"></tt> <em/mimetype/ [ <em/mimetype/ ... ]
4774 <tt><ref id="alternative_order" name="unalternative_order"></tt> <em/mimetype/ [ <em/mimetype/ ... ]
4776 <tt><ref id="append-hook" name="append-hook"></tt> <em/regexp/ <em/command/
4778 <tt><ref id="auto_view" name="auto_view"></tt> <em/mimetype/ [ <em/mimetype/ ... ]
4780 <tt><ref id="auto_view" name="unauto_view"></tt> <em/mimetype/ [ <em/mimetype/ ... ]
4782 <tt><ref id="bind" name="bind"></tt> <em/map/ <em/key/ <em/function/
4784 <tt><ref id="charset-hook" name="charset-hook"></tt> <em/alias/ <em/charset/
4786 <tt><ref id="close-hook" name="close-hook"></tt> <em/regexp/ <em/command/
4788 <tt><ref id="color" name="color"></tt> <em/object/ <em/foreground/ <em/background/ [ <em/regexp/ ]
4790 <tt><ref id="color" name="uncolor"></tt> <em/index/ <em/pattern/ [ <em/pattern/ ... ]
4792 <tt><ref id="exec" name="exec"></tt> <em/function/ [ <em/function/ ... ]
4794 <tt><ref id="fcc-hook" name="fcc-hook"></tt> <em/pattern/ <em/mailbox/
4796 <tt><ref id="fcc-save-hook" name="fcc-save-hook"></tt> <em/pattern/ <em/mailbox/
4798 <tt><ref id="folder-hook" name="folder-hook"></tt> <em/pattern/ <em/command/
4800 <tt><ref id="hdr_order" name="hdr_order"></tt> <em/header/ [ <em/header/ ... ]
4802 <tt><ref id="hdr_order" name="unhdr_order"></tt> <em/header/ [ <em/header/ ... ]
4804 <tt><ref id="charset-hook" name="iconv-hook"></tt> <em/charset/ <em/local-charset/
4806 <tt><ref id="ignore" name="ignore"></tt> <em/pattern/ [ <em/pattern/ ... ]
4808 <tt><ref id="ignore" name="unignore"></tt> <em/pattern/ [ <em/pattern/ ... ]
4810 <tt><ref id="lists" name="lists"></tt> <em/regexp/ [ <em/regexp/ ... ]
4812 <tt><ref id="lists" name="unlists"></tt> <em/regexp/ [ <em/regexp/ ... ]
4814 <tt><ref id="macro" name="macro"></tt> <em/menu/ <em/key/ <em/sequence/ [ <em/description/ ]
4816 <tt><ref id="mailboxes" name="mailboxes"></tt> <em/filename/ [ <em/filename/ ... ]
4818 <tt><ref id="mbox-hook" name="mbox-hook"></tt> <em/pattern/ <em/mailbox/
4820 <tt><ref id="message-hook" name="message-hook"></tt> <em/pattern/ <em/command/
4822 <tt><ref id="mime_lookup" name="mime_lookup"></tt> <em/mimetype/ [ <em/mimetype/ ... ]
4824 <tt><ref id="mime_lookup" name="unmime_lookup"></tt> <em/mimetype/ [ <em/mimetype/ ... ]
4826 <tt><ref id="color" name="mono"></tt> <em/object attribute/ [ <em/regexp/ ]
4828 <tt><ref id="color" name="unmono"></tt> <em/index/ <em/pattern/ [ <em/pattern/ ... ]
4830 <tt><ref id="my_hdr" name="my_hdr"></tt> <em/string/
4832 <tt><ref id="my_hdr" name="unmy_hdr"></tt> <em/field/ [ <em/field/ ... ]
4834 <tt><ref id="open-hook" name="open-hook"></tt> <em/regexp/ <em/command/
4836 <tt><ref id="crypt-hook" name="crypt-hook"></tt> <em/pattern/ <em/key-id/
4838 <tt><ref id="push" name="push"></tt> <em/string/
4840 <tt><ref id="set" name="reset"></tt> <em/variable/ [<em/variable/ ... ]
4842 <tt><ref id="save-hook" name="save-hook"></tt> <em/regexp/ <em/filename/
4844 <tt><ref id="score-command" name="score"></tt> <em/pattern/ <em/value/
4846 <tt><ref id="score-command" name="unscore"></tt> <em/pattern/ [ <em/pattern/ ... ]
4848 <tt><ref id="send-hook" name="send-hook"></tt> <em/regexp/ <em/command/
4850 <tt><ref id="reply-hook" name="reply-hook"></tt> <em/regexp/ <em/command/
4852 <tt><ref id="set" name="set"></tt> [no|inv]<em/variable/[=<em/value/] [ <em/variable/ ... ]
4854 <tt><ref id="set" name="unset"></tt> <em/variable/ [<em/variable/ ... ]
4856 <tt><ref id="source" name="source"></tt> <em/filename/
4858 <tt><ref id="spam" name="spam"></tt> <em/pattern/ <em/format/
4860 <tt><ref id="spam" name="nospam"></tt> <em/pattern/
4862 <tt><ref id="lists" name="subscribe"></tt> <em/regexp/ [ <em/regexp/ ... ]
4864 <tt><ref id="lists" name="unsubscribe"></tt> <em/regexp/ [ <em/regexp/ ... ]
4866 <tt><ref id="set" name="toggle"></tt> <em/variable/ [<em/variable/ ... ]
4868 <tt><ref id="unhook" name="unhook"></tt> <em/hook-type/
4871 <sect>Configuration variables<label id="variables">
4873 <p>The following list contains all variables which, in the process of
4874 providing more consistency, have been renamed and are partially even
4875 removed already. The left column contains the old synonym variables,
4876 the right column the full/new name:
4878 <label id="sect_obsolete">
4880 edit_hdrs edit_headers
4881 forw_decode forward_decode
4882 forw_format forward_format
4883 forw_quote forward_quote
4884 hdr_format index_format
4885 indent_str indent_string
4886 mime_fwd mime_forward
4887 msg_format message_format
4888 pgp_autosign crypt_autosign
4889 pgp_autoencrypt crypt_autoencrypt
4890 pgp_replyencrypt crypt_replyencrypt
4891 pgp_replysign crypt_replysign
4892 pgp_replysignencrypted crypt_replysignencrypted
4893 pgp_verify_sig crypt_verify_sig
4894 pgp_create_traditional pgp_autoinline
4895 pgp_auto_traditional pgp_replyinline
4896 forw_decrypt forward_decrypt
4897 smime_sign_as smime_default_key
4898 post_indent_str post_indent_string
4899 print_cmd print_command
4900 shorten_hierarchy sidebar_shorten_hierarchy
4901 ask_followup_to nntp_ask_followup_to
4902 ask_x_comment_to nntp_ask_x_comment_to
4903 catchup_newsgroup nntp_catchup
4904 followup_to_poster nntp_followup_to_poster
4905 group_index_format nntp_group_index_format
4907 mime_subject nntp_mime_subject
4908 news_cache_dir nntp_cache_dir
4909 news_server nntp_host
4911 nntp_poll nntp_mail_check
4912 pop_checkinterval pop_mail_check
4913 post_moderated nntp_post_moderated
4914 save_unsubscribed nntp_save_unsubscribed
4915 show_new_news nntp_show_new_news
4916 show_only_unread nntp_show_only_unread
4917 x_comment_to nntp_x_comment_to
4918 smtp_auth_username smtp_user
4919 smtp_auth_password smtp_pass
4922 The <tt/contrib/ subdirectory contains a script named
4923 <tt/update-config.pl/ which eases migration.
4925 A complete list of current variables follows.