The Mutt Next Generation E-Mail ClientAndreasKrennmairak@synflood.atMichaelElkinsme@cs.hmc.eduversion devel-r473
Michael Elinks on mutt, circa 1995:
``All mail clients suck. This one just sucks less.''
Sven Guckes on mutt, ca. 2003: ``But it still sucks!''
Introduction Overview Mutt-ng is a small but very
powerful text-based MIME mail client. Mutt-ng is highly
configurable, and is well suited to the mail power user with
advanced features like key bindings, keyboard macros, mail
threading, regular expression searches and a powerful pattern
matching language for selecting groups of messages.
This documentation additionally contains documentation to
Mutt-NG ,a fork from Mutt
with the goal to fix all the little annoyances of Mutt, to
integrate all the Mutt patches that are floating around in the
web, and to add other new features. Features specific to Mutt-ng
will be discussed in an extra section. Don't be confused when
most of the documentation talk about Mutt and not Mutt-ng,
Mutt-ng contains all Mutt features, plus many more.
Mutt-ng Home Page http://www.muttng.orgMailing Lists mutt-ng-users@lists.berlios.de: This is
where the mutt-ng user support happens.
mutt-ng-devel@lists.berlios.de: The
development mailing list for mutt-ng
Software Distribution Sites
So far, there are no official releases of Mutt-ng, but you can
download daily snapshots from http://mutt-ng.berlios.de/snapshots/IRC
Visit channel #muttng on irc.freenode.net
(www.freenode.net) to chat with other people
interested in Mutt-ng.
Weblog
If you want to read fresh news about the latest development in
Mutt-ng, and get informed about stuff like interesting,
Mutt-ng-related articles and packages for your favorite
distribution, you can read and/or subscribe to our Mutt-ng development
weblog.
Copyright
Mutt is Copyright (C) 1996-2000 Michael R. Elkins
<me@cs.hmc.edu> and others
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111, USA.
Getting Started Basic Concepts Screens and Menus
mutt-ng offers different screens of which every has its special
purpose:
The index displays the contents of the
currently opened
mailbox.
The pager is responsible for displaying
messages, that
is, the header, the body and all attached parts.
The file browser offers operations on and
displays
information of all folders mutt-ng should watch for mail.
The sidebar offers a permanent view of
which mailboxes
contain how many total, new and/or flagged mails.
The help screen lists for all currently
available
commands how to invoke them as well as a short description.
The compose menu is a comfortable
interface take last
actions before sending mail: change subjects, attach files,
remove
attachements, etc.
The attachement menu gives a summary and
the tree
structure of the attachements of the current message.
The alias menu lists all or a fraction of
the aliases
a user has defined.
The key menu used in connection with
encryption lets
users choose the right key to encrypt with.
When mutt-ng is started without any further options, it'll open
the users default mailbox and display the index.
Configuration
Mutt-ng does not feature an internal
configuration
interface or menu due to the simple fact that this would be too
complex to handle (currently there are several hundred
variables which fine-tune the behaviour.)
Mutt-ng is configured using configuration files which allow
users to add comments or manage them via version control systems
to ease maintenance.
Also, mutt-ng comes with a shell script named grml-muttng
kindly contributed by users which really helps and eases the
creation of a user's configuration file. When downloading the
source code via a snapshot or via subversion, it can be found in
the contrib directory.
Functions
Mutt-ng offers great flexibility due to the use of functions:
internally, every action a user can make mutt-ng perform is named
``function.'' Those functions are assigned to keys (or even key
sequences) and may be completely adjusted to user's needs. The
basic idea is that the impatient users get a very intuitive
interface to start off with and advanced users virtually get no
limits to adjustments.
Interaction
Mutt-ng has two basic concepts of user interaction:
There is one dedicated line on the screen used to query
the user for input, issue any command, query variables and
display error and informational messages. As for every type of
user input, this requires manual action leading to the need of
input.
The automatized interface for interaction are the so
called hooks. Hooks specify actions the
user wants to be
performed at well-defined situations: what to do when entering
which folder, what to do when displaying or replying to what
kind of message, etc. These are optional, i.e. a user doesn't
need to specify them but can do so.
Modularization
Although mutt-ng has many functionality built-in, many
features can be delegated to external tools to increase
flexibility: users can define programs to filter a message through
before displaying, users can use any program they want for
displaying a message, message types (such as PDF or PostScript)
for which mutt-ng doesn't have a built-in filter can be rendered
by arbitrary tools and so forth. Although mutt-ng has an alias
mechanism built-in, it features using external tools to query for
nearly every type of addresses from sources like LDAP, databases
or just the list of locally known users.
Patterns
Mutt-ng has a built-in pattern matching ``language'' which is
as widely used as possible to present a consistent interface to
users. The same ``pattern terms'' can be used for searching,
scoring, message selection and much more.
Screens and Menus Index
The index is the screen that you usually see first when you
start mutt-ng. It gives an overview over your emails in the
currently opened mailbox. By default, this is your system mailbox.
The information you see in the index is a list of emails, each with
its number on the left, its flags (new email, important email,
email that has been forwarded or replied to, tagged email, ...),
the date when email was sent, its sender, the email size, and the
subject. Additionally, the index also shows thread hierarchies:
when you reply to an email, and the other person replies back, you
can see the other's person email in a "sub-tree" below. This is
especially useful for personal email between a group of people or
when you've subscribed to mailing lists.
Pager
The pager is responsible for showing the email content. On the
top of the pager you have an overview over the most important email
headers like the sender, the recipient, the subject, and much more
information. How much information you actually see depends on your
configuration, which we'll describe below.
Below the headers, you see the email body which usually contains
the message. If the email contains any attachments, you will see
more information about them below the email body, or, if the
attachments are text files, you can view them directly in the
pager.
To give the user a good overview, it is possible to configure
mutt-ng to show different things in the pager with different
colors. Virtually everything that can be described with a regular
expression can be colored, e.g. URLs, email addresses or smileys.
File Browser
The file browser is the interface to the local or remote
file system. When selecting a mailbox to open, the browser allows
custom sorting of items, limiting the items shown by a regular
expression and a freely adjustable format of what to display in
which way. It also allows for easy navigation through the
file system when selecting file(s) to attach to a message, select
multiple files to attach and many more.
Sidebar
The sidebar comes in handy to manage mails which are spread
over different folders. All folders users setup mutt-ng to watch
for new mail will be listed. The listing includes not only the
name but also the number of total messages, the number of new and
flagged messages. Items with new mail may be colored different
from those with flagged mail, items may be shortened or compress
if they're they to long to be printed in full form so that by
abbreviated names, user still now what the name stands for.
Help
The help screen is meant to offer a quick help to the user. It
lists the current configuration of key bindings and their
associated commands including a short description, and currently
unbound functions that still need to be associated with a key
binding (or alternatively, they can be called via the mutt-ng
command prompt).
Compose Menu
The compose menu features a split screen containing the
information which really matter before actually sending a
message by mail or posting an article to a newsgroup: who gets
the message as what (recipient, newsgroup, who gets what kind of
copy). Additionally, users may set security options like
deciding whether to sign, encrypt or sign and encrypt a message
with/for what keys.
Also, it's used to attach messages, news articles or files to
a message, to re-edit any attachment including the message
itself.
Alias Menu
The alias menu is used to help users finding the recipients
of messages. For users who need to contact many people, there's
no need to remember addresses or names completely because it
allows for searching, too. The alias mechanism and thus the
alias menu also features grouping several addresses by a shorter
nickname, the actual alias, so that users don't have to select
each single recipient manually.
Attachment Menu
As will be later discussed in detail, mutt-ng features a good
and stable MIME implementation, that is, is greatly supports
sending and receiving messages of arbitrary type. The
attachment menu displays a message's structure in detail: what
content parts are attached to which parent part (which gives a
true tree structure), which type is of what type and what size.
Single parts may saved, deleted or modified to offer great and
easy access to message's internals.
Key Menu FIXMEMoving Around in Menus
Information is presented in menus, very similar to ELM. Here is a
tableshowing the common keys used to navigate menus in Mutt-ng.
Default Menu Movement KeysKeyFunctionDescriptionj or Downnext-entrymove to the next entryk or Upprevious-entrymove to the previous entryz or PageDnpage-downgo to the next pageZ or PageUppage-upgo to the previous page= or Homefirst-entryjump to the first entry* or Endlast-entryjump to the last entryqquitexit the current menu?helplist all key bindings for the current menu
Editing Input Fields
Mutt-ng has a builtin line editor which is used as the primary way to
input
textual data such as email addresses or filenames. The keys used to
move
around while editing are very similar to those of Emacs.
Built-In Editor FunctionsKeyFunctionDescription^A or <Home> bol move to the start of the line^B or <Left> backward-char move back one charEsc B backward-word move back one word^D or <Delete> delete-char delete the char under the cursor^E or <End> eol move to the end of the line^F or <Right> forward-char move forward one charEsc F forward-word move forward one word<Tab> complete complete filename or alias^T complete-query complete address with query^K kill-eol delete to the end of the lineESC d kill-eow delete to the end of the word^W kill-word kill the word in front of the cursor^U kill-line delete entire line^V quote-char quote the next typed key<Up> history-up recall previous string from history<Down> history-down recall next string from history<BackSpace> backspace kill the char in front of the cursorEsc u upcase-word convert word to upper caseEsc l downcase-word convert word to lower caseEsc c capitalize-word capitalize the word^G n/a abort<Return> n/a finish editing
You can remap the editor functions using the
bind
command. For example, to make the Delete key
delete the character in
front of the cursor rather than under, you could use
bind editor <delete> backspaceReading Mail - The Index and Pager
Similar to many other mail clients, there are two modes in which mail
isread in Mutt-ng. The first is the index of messages in the mailbox,
which is
called the ``index'' in Mutt-ng. The second mode is the display of the
message contents. This is called the ``pager.''
The next few sections describe the functions provided in each of these
modes.
The Message Index
Default Index Menu BindingsKeyFunctionDescriptionc change to a different mailboxESC c change to a folder in read-only modeC copy the current message to another mailboxESC C decode a message and copy it to a folderESC s decode a message and save it to a folderD delete messages matching a patternd delete the current messageF mark as importantl show messages matching a patternN mark message as newo change the current sort methodO reverse sort the mailboxq save changes and exits save-messageT tag messages matching a patternt toggle the tag on a messageESC t toggle tag on entire message threadU undelete messages matching a patternu undelete-messagev view-attachmentsx abort changes and exit<Return> display-message<Tab> jump to the next new or unread message@ show the author's full e-mail address$ save changes to mailbox/ searchESC / search-reverse^L clear and redraw the screen^T untag messages matching a pattern
Status Flags
In addition to who sent the message and the subject, a short
summary of
the disposition of each message is printed beside the message
number.
Zero or more of the following ``flags'' may appear, which mean:
D
message is deleted (is marked for deletion)
d
message have attachments marked for deletion
K
contains a PGP public key
N
message is new
O
message is old
P
message is PGP encrypted
r
message has been replied to
S
message is signed, and the signature is succesfully
verified
s
message is signed
!
message is flagged
*
message is tagged
Some of the status flags can be turned on or off using
set-flag (default: w)
clear-flag (default: W)
Furthermore, the following flags reflect who the message is
addressed
to. They can be customized with the
$to_chars variable.
+
message is to you and you only
T
message is to you, but also to or cc'ed to others
C
message is cc'ed to you
F
message is from you
L
message is sent to a subscribed mailing list
The Pager
By default, Mutt-ng uses its builtin pager to display the body of
messages.
The pager is very similar to the Unix program less though not nearly as
featureful.
Default Pager Menu BindingsKeyFunctionDescription<Return> go down one line<Space> display the next page (or next message if at the end of a message)- go back to the previous pagen search for next matchS skip beyond quoted textT toggle display of quoted text? show key bindings/ search for a regular expression (pattern)ESC / search backwards for a regular expression\ toggle search pattern coloring^ jump to the top of the message
In addition, many of the functions from the index are available in
the pager, such as delete-message or
copy-message
(this is one
advantage over using an external pager to view messages).
Also, the internal pager supports a couple other advanced features.
For
one, it will accept and translate the ``standard'' nroff sequences
forbold and underline. These sequences are a series of either the
letter,
backspace (ˆH), the letter again for bold or the letter,
backspace,
``_'' for denoting underline. Mutt-ng will attempt to display
these
in bold and underline respectively if your terminal supports them. If
not, you can use the bold and underline color
objects to specify a color or mono attribute for them.
Additionally, the internal pager supports the ANSI escape
sequences for character attributes. Mutt-ng translates them
into the correct color and character settings. The sequences
Mutt-ng supports are: ESC [ Ps;Ps;Ps;...;Ps
m (see table below for possible values for
Ps).
ANSI Escape SequencesValueAttribute0 All Attributes Off1 Bold on4 Underline on5 Blink on7 Reverse video on3x Foreground color is x (see table below)4x Background color is x (see table below)
ANSI ColorsNumberColor0 black1 red2 green3 yellow4 blue5 magenta6 cyan7 white
Mutt-ng uses these attributes for handling text/enriched messages,
and they
can also be used by an external autoview
script for highlighting purposes. Note: If you change the colors for your
display, for example by changing the color associated with color2 for
your xterm, then that color will be used instead of green.
Threaded Mode
When the mailbox is sorted by
threads
,there are
a few additional functions available in the index and
pager
modes.
Default Thread Function BindingsKeyFunctionDescription^D delete-thread delete all messages in the current thread^U undelete-thread undelete all messages in the current thread^N next-thread jump to the start of the next thread^P previous-thread jump to the start of the previous thread^R read-thread mark the current thread as readESC d delete-subthread delete all messages in the current subthreadESC u undelete-subthread undelete all messages in the current subthreadESC n next-subthread jump to the start of the next subthreadESC p previous-subthread jump to the start of the previous subthreadESC r read-subthread mark the current subthread as read ESC t tag-thread toggle the tag on the current threadESC v collapse-thread toggle collapse for the current threadESC V collapse-all toggle collapse for all threadsP parent-message jump to parent message in thread
Note: Collapsing a thread displays
only the first message
in the thread and hides the others. This is useful when threads
contain so many messages that you can only see a handful of threads
onthe screen. See %M in
index-format
.
For example, you could use
"%?M?(#%03M)&(%4l)?" in
index-format
to optionally
display the number of hidden messages if the thread is collapsed.
See also: strict-threads.
Miscellaneous Functionscreate-alias
(default: a)
Creates a new alias based upon the current message (or prompts for a
new one). Once editing is complete, an alias
command is added to the file specified by the
alias-file
variable for future use. Note:
Specifying an alias-file
does not add the aliases specified there-in, you must also
source
the file.
check-traditional-pgp
(default: ESC P)
This function will search the current message for content signed or
encrypted with PGP the "traditional" way, that is, without proper
MIME tagging. Technically, this function will temporarily change
the MIME content types of the body parts containing PGP data; this
is similar to the edit-type
function's
effect.
display-toggle-weed
(default: h)
Toggles the weeding of message header fields specified by
ignore
commands.
edit
(default: e)
This command (available in the ``index'' and ``pager'') allows you to
edit the raw current message as it's present in the mail folder.
After you have finished editing, the changed message will be
appended to the current folder, and the original message will be
marked for deletion.
edit-type
(default: ˆE on the attachment menu, and in the pager and index
menus; ˆT on the
compose menu)
This command is used to temporarily edit an attachment's content
type to fix, for instance, bogus character set parameters. When
invoked from the index or from the pager, you'll have the
opportunity to edit the top-level attachment's content type. On the
attach-menu, you can change any
attachment's content type. These changes are not persistent, and get
lost upon changing folders.
Note that this command is also available on the
compose-menu
.There, it's used to
fine-tune the properties of attachments you are going to send.
enter-command
(default: ``:'')
This command is used to execute any command you would normally put in
a
configuration file. A common use is to check the settings of
variables, or
in conjunction with macro to change
settings on the
fly.
extract-keys
(default: ˆK)
This command extracts PGP public keys from the current or tagged
message(s) and adds them to your PGP public key ring.
forget-passphrase
(default:
ˆF)
This command wipes the passphrase(s) from memory. It is useful, if
you misspelled the passphrase.
list-reply
(default: L)
Reply to the current or tagged message(s) by extracting any addresses
which
match the regular expressions given by the
lists
commands, but also honor any Mail-Followup-To
header(s) if the
honor-followup-to
configuration variable is set. Using this when replying to messages
posted
to mailing lists helps avoid duplicate copies being sent to the
author of
the message you are replying to.
pipe-message
(default: |)
Asks for an external Unix command and pipes the current or
tagged message(s) to it. The variables
pipe-decode
,pipe-split,
pipe-sep
and wait-key control the exact
behavior of this
function.
resend-message
(default: ESC e)
With resend-message, mutt takes the current message as a template for
a
new message. This function is best described as "recall from
arbitrary
folders". It can conveniently be used to forward MIME messages while
preserving the original mail structure. Note that the amount of
headers
included here depends on the value of the weed
variable.
This function is also available from the attachment menu. You can use
this
to easily resend a message which was included with a bounce message
as a message/rfc822 body part.
shell-escape
(default: !)
Asks for an external Unix command and executes it. The
wait-key
can be used to control
whether Mutt-ng will wait for a key to be pressed when the command
returns
(presumably to let the user read the output of the command), based on
the return status of the named command.
toggle-quoted
(default: T)
The pager uses the
quote-regexp
variable to detect quoted text when
displaying the body of the message. This function toggles the
displayof the quoted material in the message. It is particularly
useful when
are interested in just the response and there is a large amount of
quoted text in the way.
skip-quoted
(default: S)
This function will go to the next line of non-quoted text which come
after a line of quoted text in the internal pager.
Sending Mail
The following bindings are available in the index
for sending
messages.
Default Mail Composition BindingsKeyFunctionDescriptionm compose compose a new messager reply reply to senderg group-reply reply to all recipientsL list-reply reply to mailing list addressf forward forward messageb bounce bounce (remail) messageESC k mail-key mail a PGP public key to someone
Bouncing a message sends the message as is to the recipient you
specify. Forwarding a message allows you to add comments or
modify the message you are forwarding. These items are discussed
in greater detail in the next chapter
forwarding-mail
.
Composing new messages
When you want to send an email using mutt-ng, simply press m on
your keyboard. Then, mutt-ng asks for the recipient via a prompt in
the last line:
To:
After you've finished entering the recipient(s), press return. If you
want to send an email to more than one recipient, separate the email
addresses using the comma ",". Mutt-ng then asks
you for the email
subject. Again, press return after you've entered it. After that,
mutt-ng
got the most important information from you, and starts up an editor
where you can then enter your email.
The editor that is called is selected in the following way: you
can e.g. set it in the mutt-ng configuration:
set editor = "vim +/^$/ -c ':set tw=72'"
set editor = "nano"
set editor = "emacs"
If you don't set your preferred editor in your configuration, mutt-ng
first looks whether the environment variable $VISUAL is set, and if
so, it takes its value as editor command. Otherwise, it has a look
at $EDITOR and takes its value if it is set. If no
editor command
can be found, mutt-ng simply assumes vi to be the
default editor,
since it's the most widespread editor in the Unix world and it's
pretty
safe to assume that it is installed and available.
When you've finished entering your message, save it and quit your
editor. Mutt-ng will then present you with a summary screen, the
compose menu.
On the top, you see a summary of the most important available key
commands.
Below that, you see the sender, the recipient(s), Cc and/or Bcc
recipient(s), the subject, the reply-to address, and optionally
information where the sent email will be stored and whether it should
be digitally signed and/or encrypted.
Below that, you see a list of "attachments". The mail you've just
entered before is also an attachment, but due to its special type
(it's plain text), it will be displayed as the normal message on
the receiver's side.
At this point, you can add more attachments, pressing a, you
can edit the recipient addresses, pressing t for
the "To:" field,
c for the "Cc:" field, and b
for the "Bcc: field. You can
also edit the subject the subject by simply pressing s or the
email message that you've entered before by pressing e. You will
then again return to the editor. You can even edit the sender, by
pressing
<esc>f, but this shall only be used with
caution.
Alternatively, you can configure mutt-ng in a way that most of the
above settings can be edited using the editor. Therefore, you only
need to add the following to your configuration:
set edit_headers
Once you have finished editing the body of your mail message, you are
returned to the compose menu. The following
options are available:
Default Compose Menu BindingsKeyFunctionDescriptiona attach-file attach a fileA attach-message attach message(s) to the messageESC k attach-key attach a PGP public keyd edit-description edit description on attachmentD detach-file detach a filet edit-to edit the To fieldESC f edit-from edit the From fieldr edit-reply-to edit the Reply-To fieldc edit-cc edit the Cc fieldb edit-bcc edit the Bcc fieldy send-message send the messages edit-subject edit the SubjectS smime-menu select S/MIME optionsf edit-fcc specify an ``Fcc'' mailboxp pgp-menu select PGP optionsP postpone-message postpone this message until laterq quit quit (abort) sending the messagew write-fcc write the message to a folderi ispell check spelling (if available on your system)^F forget-passphrase wipe passphrase(s) from memory
Note: The attach-message function
will prompt you for a folder to
attach messages from. You can now tag messages in that folder and
theywill be attached to the message you are sending. Note that
certainoperations like composing a new mail, replying, forwarding,
etc. are
not permitted when you are in that folder. The %r in
status-format
will change to
a 'A' to indicate that you are in attach-message mode.
Replying Simple Replies
When you want to reply to an email message, select it in the index
menu and then press r. Mutt-ng's behaviour is
then similar to the
behaviour when you compose a message: first, you will be asked for
the recipient, then for the subject, and then, mutt-ng will start
the editor with the quote attribution and the quoted message. This
can e.g. look like the example below.
On Mon, Mar 07, 2005 at 05:02:12PM +0100, Michael Svensson wrote:
> Bill, can you please send last month's progress report to Mr.
> Morgan? We also urgently need the cost estimation for the new
> production server that we want to set up before our customer's
> project will go live.
You can start editing the email message. It is strongly
recommended to put your answer below the
quoted text and to
only quote what is really necessary and that you refer to. Putting
your answer on top of the quoted message, is, although very
widespread, very often not considered to be a polite way to answer
emails.
The quote attribution is configurable, by default it is set to
set attribution = "On %d, %n wrote:"
It can also be set to something more compact, e.g.
set attribution = "attribution="* %n <%a> [%(%y-%m-%d %H:%M)]:"
The example above results in the following attribution:
* Michael Svensson <svensson@foobar.com> [05-03-06 17:02]:
> Bill, can you please send last month's progress report to Mr.
> Morgan? We also urgently need the cost estimation for the new
> production server that we want to set up before our customer's
> project will go live.
Generally, try to keep your attribution short yet
information-rich. It is not the right place
for witty quotes,
long "attribution" novels or anything like that: the right place
for such things is - if at all - the email signature at the very
bottom of the message.
When you're done with writing your message, save and quit the
editor. As before, you will return to the compose menu, which is
used in the same way as before.
Group Replies
In the situation where a group of people uses email as a
discussion, most of the emails will have one or more recipients,
and probably several "Cc:" recipients. The group reply
functionalityensures that when you press g
instead of r to do a reply,
each and every recipient that is contained in the original message
will receive a copy of the message, either as normal recipient or
as "Cc:" recipient.
List Replies
When you use mailing lists, it's generally better to send your
reply to a message only to the list instead of the list and the
original author. To make this easy to use, mutt-ng features list
replies.
To do a list reply, simply press L. If the email
contains
a Mail-Followup-To: header, its value will be
used as reply
address. Otherwise, mutt-ng searches through all mail addresses in
the original message and tries to match them a list of regular
expressions which can be specified using the lists command.
If any of the regular expression matches, a mailing
list address has been found, and it will be used as reply address.
lists linuxevent@luga\.at vuln-dev@ mutt-ng-users@
Nowadays, most mailing list software like GNU Mailman adds a
Mail-Followup-To: header to their emails anyway,
so setting
lists is hardly ever necessary in practice.
Editing the message header
When editing the header of your outgoing message, there are a couple
of
special features available.
If you specify
Fcc:filename
Mutt-ng will pick up filename
just as if you had used the edit-fcc function in
the compose menu.
You can also attach files to your message by specifying
Attach:filename [
description
]
where filename is the file to attach and
description
is an
optional string to use as the description of the attached file.
When replying to messages, if you remove the In-Reply-To: field from
the header field, Mutt-ng will not generate a References: field, which
allows you to create a new message thread.
Also see edit-headers.
Using Mutt-ng with PGP
If you want to use PGP, you can specify
Pgp: [ E |
S
| S<id> ]
``E'' encrypts, ``S'' signs and
``S<id>'' signs with the given key, setting
pgp-sign-as
permanently.
If you have told mutt to PGP encrypt a message, it will guide you
through a key selection process when you try to send the message.
Mutt-ng will not ask you any questions about keys which have a
certified user ID matching one of the message recipients' mail
addresses. However, there may be situations in which there are
several keys, weakly certified user ID fields, or where no matching
keys can be found.
In these cases, you are dropped into a menu with a list of keys from
which you can select one. When you quit this menu, or mutt can't
find any matching keys, you are prompted for a user ID. You can, as
usually, abort this prompt using ˆG. When
you do so, mutt will
return to the compose screen.
Once you have successfully finished the key selection, the message
will be encrypted using the selected public keys, and sent out.
Most fields of the entries in the key selection menu (see also
pgp-entry-format
)
have obvious meanings. But some explanations on the capabilities,
flags,
and validity fields are in order.
The flags sequence (%f) will expand to one of the following
flags:
PGP Key Menu FlagsFlagDescriptionR The key has been revoked and can't be used.X The key is expired and can't be used.d You have marked the key as disabled.c There are unknown critical self-signature packets.
The capabilities field (%c) expands to a two-character
sequencerepresenting a key's capabilities. The first character gives
the key's encryption capabilities: A minus sign (
-
)means
that the key cannot be used for encryption. A dot (
.
)means that
it's marked as a signature key in one of the user IDs, but may
also be used for encryption. The letter e indicates that
this key can be used for encryption.
The second character indicates the key's signing capabilities. Once
again, a ``-'' implies ``not for
signing'', ``.'' implies
that the key is marked as an encryption key in one of the user-ids,
and
``s'' denotes a key which can be
used for signing.
Finally, the validity field (%t) indicates how well-certified
a user-id
is. A question mark (?) indicates
undefined validity, a minus
character (-) marks an untrusted
association, a space character
means a partially trusted association, and a plus character (
+
)
indicates complete validity.
Sending anonymous messages via mixmaster
You may also have configured mutt to co-operate with Mixmaster, an
anonymous remailer. Mixmaster permits you to send your messages
anonymously using a chain of remailers. Mixmaster support in mutt is
for
mixmaster version 2.04 (beta 45 appears to be the latest) and 2.03.
It does not support earlier versions or the later so-called version 3
betas,
of which the latest appears to be called 2.9b23.
To use it, you'll have to obey certain restrictions. Most
important, you cannot use the Cc and Bcc headers. To tell
Mutt-ng to use mixmaster, you have to select a remailer chain, using
the mix function on the compose menu.
The chain selection screen is divided into two parts. In the
(larger) upper part, you get a list of remailers you may use. In
the lower part, you see the currently selected chain of remailers.
You can navigate in the chain using the chain-prev
and
chain-next functions, which are by default bound
to the left
and right arrows and to the h and l keys (think vi
keyboard bindings). To insert a remailer at the current chain
position, use the insert function. To append a
remailer behind
the current chain position, use select-entry or
append
.
You can also delete entries from the chain, using the corresponding
function. Finally, to abandon your changes, leave the menu, or
accept them pressing (by default) the
Return
key.
Note that different remailers do have different capabilities,
indicated in the %c entry of the remailer menu lines (see
mix-entry-format). Most
important is
the ``middleman'' capability, indicated by a capital ``M'': This
means that the remailer in question cannot be used as the final
element of a chain, but will only forward messages to other
mixmaster remailers. For details on the other capabilities, please
have a look at the mixmaster documentation.
Forwarding and Bouncing Mail
Often, it is necessary to forward mails to other people.
Therefore, mutt-ng supports forwarding messages in two different
ways.
The first one is regular forwarding, as you probably know it from
other mail clients. You simply press f, enter the
recipient
email address, the subject of the forwarded email, and then you can
edit the message to be forwarded in the editor. The forwarded
message is separated from the rest of the message via the two
following markers:
----- Forwarded message from Lucas User <luser@example.com> -----
From: Lucas User <luser@example.com>
Date: Thu, 02 Dec 2004 03:08:34 +0100
To: Michael Random <mrandom@example.com>
Subject: Re: blackmail
Pay me EUR 50,000.- cash or your favorite stuffed animal will die
a horrible death.
----- End forwarded message -----
When you're done with editing the mail, save and quit the editor,
and you will return to the compose menu, the same menu you also
encounter when composing or replying to mails.
The second mode of forwarding emails with mutt-ng is the
so-called bouncing: when you bounce an email to
another
address, it will be sent in practically the same format you send it
(except for headers that are created during transporting the
message). To bounce a message, press b and enter the
recipient
email address. By default, you are then asked whether you really
want to bounce the message to the specified recipient. If you answer
with yes, the message will then be bounced.
To the recipient, the bounced email will look as if he got it
like a regular email where he was Bcc: recipient.
The only
possibility to find out whether it was a bounced email is to
carefully study the email headers and to find out which host really
sent the email.
Postponing Mail
At times it is desirable to delay sending a message that you have
already begun to compose. When the postpone-message function is
used in the compose menu, the body of your message
and attachments
are stored in the mailbox specified by the
postponed
variable. This means that you can recall the
message even if you exit Mutt-ng and then restart it at a later time.
Once a message is postponed, there are several ways to resume it. From
the
command line you can use the ``-p'' option, or if you compose a new
message from the index or pager you will be prompted if postponed
messages exist. If multiple messages are currently postponed, the
postponed menu will pop up and you can select
which message you would
like to resume.
Note: If you postpone a reply to a
message, the reply setting of
the message is only updated when you actually finish the message and
send it. Also, you must be in the same folder with the message you
replied to for the status of the message to be updated.
See also the postpone quad-option.
Configuration Locations of Configuration Files
While the default configuration (or ``preferences'') make Mutt-ng
usable right out
of the box, it is often desirable to tailor Mutt-ng to suit your own
tastes. When
Mutt-ng is first invoked, it will attempt to read the ``system''
configuration
file (defaults set by your local system administrator), unless the
``-n'' commandline option is
specified. This file is
typically /usr/local/share/muttng/Muttngrc or
/etc/Muttngrc
,
Mutt-ng users will find this file in
/usr/local/share/muttng/Muttrc
or
/etc/Muttngrc. Mutt will next look for a file named
.muttrc
in your home directory, Mutt-ng will look for .muttngrc. If this file
does not exist and your home directory has a subdirectory named
.mutt
,
mutt try to load a file named .muttng/muttngrc.
.muttrc (or .muttngrc for
Mutt-ng) is the file where you will
usually place your commands to
configure Mutt-ng.
Basic Syntax of Initialization Files
An initialization file consists of a series of
commands
.Each line of the file may contain one or more commands.
When multiple commands are used, they must be separated by a semicolon
(;).
set realname='Mutt-ng user' ; ignore x-
The hash mark, or pound sign
(``#''), is used as a ``comment'' character. You can use it to
annotate your initialization file. All text after the comment character
to the end of the line is ignored. For example,
my_hdr X-Disclaimer: Why are you listening to me? # This is a comment
Single quotes (') and double quotes (") can be used to quote
strings
which contain spaces or other special characters. The difference
between
the two types of quotes is similar to that of many popular shell
programs,
namely that a single quote is used to specify a literal string (one
that is
not interpreted for shell variables or quoting with a backslash
[see
next paragraph]), while double quotes indicate a string for which
should be evaluated. For example, backtics are evaluated inside of
double
quotes, but not for single quotes.
\ quotes the next character, just as in shells such as bash and
zsh.
For example, if want to put quotes ``"'' inside of a string, you
can use
``\'' to force the next character to be a literal instead of
interpreted
character.
set realname="Michael \"MuttDude\" Elkins"
``\\'' means to insert a literal ``\'' into the line.
``\n'' and ``\r'' have their usual C meanings of linefeed and
carriage-return, respectively.
A \ at the end of a line can be used to split commands over
multiple lines, provided that the split points don't appear in the
middle of command names.
Please note that, unlike the various shells, mutt-ng interprets a
``\''
at the end of a line also in comments. This allows you to disable a
command
split over multiple lines with only one ``#''.
# folder-hook . \
set realname="Michael \"MuttDude\" Elkins"
When testing your config files, beware the following caveat. The
backslash
at the end of the commented line extends the current line with the next
line
- then referred to as a ``continuation line''. As the first line is
commented with a hash (#) all following continuation lines are also
part of a comment and therefore are ignored, too. So take care of
comments
when continuation lines are involved within your setup files!
Abstract example:
line1\
line2a # line2b\
line3\
line4
line5
line1 ``continues'' until line4. however, the part after the # is a
comment which includes line3 and line4. line5 is a new line of its own
and
thus is interpreted again.
The commands understood by mutt are explained in the next paragraphs.
For a complete list, see the commands.
Expansion within variables
Besides just assign static content to variables, there's plenty of
ways of adding external and more or less dynamic content.
Commands' Output
It is possible to substitute the output of a Unix command in an
initialization file. This is accomplished by enclosing the command
in backquotes (``) as in, for example:
my_hdr X-Operating-System: `uname -a`
The output of the Unix command ``uname -a'' will be substituted
before the line is parsed. Note that since initialization files are
line oriented, only the first line of output from the Unix command
will be substituted.
Environment Variables
UNIX environments can be accessed like the way it is done in
shells like sh and bash: Prepend the name of the environment by a
``$'' sign. For example,
set record=+sent_on_$HOSTNAME
sets the record variable to the
string +sent_on_ and appends the
value of the evironment
variable $HOSTNAME.
Note: There will be no warning if an
environment variable
is not defined. The result will of the expansion will then be empty.
Configuration Variables
As for environment variables, the values of all configuration
variables as string can be used in the same way, too. For example,
set imap_home_namespace = $folder
would set the value of
imap-home-namespace
to the value to
which folder is currently set
to.
Note: There're no logical links
established in such cases so
that the the value for
imap-home-namespace
won't change even
if folder gets changed.
Note: There will be no warning if a
configuration variable
is not defined or is empty. The result will of the expansion will
then be empty.
Self-Defined Variables
Mutt-ng flexibly allows users to define their own variables. To
avoid conflicts with the standard set and to prevent misleading
error messages, there's a reserved namespace for them: all
user-defined variables must be prefixed with user_ and can be
used just like any ordinary configuration or environment
variable.
For example, to view the manual, users can either define two
macros like the following
macro generic <F1> "!less -r /path/to/manual" "Show manual"
macro pager <F1> "!less -r /path/to/manual" "Show manual"
for generic, pager and
index
.The alternative is to
define a custom variable like so:
set user_manualcmd = "!less -r /path/to_manual"
macro generic <F1> "$user_manualcmd<enter>" "Show manual"
macro pager <F1> "$user_manualcmd<enter>" "Show manual"
macro index <F1> "$user_manualcmd<enter>" "Show manual"
to re-use the command sequence as in:
macro index <F2> "$user_manualcmd | grep '\^[ ]\\+~. '" "Show Patterns"
Using this feature, arbitrary sequences can be defined once and
recalled and reused where necessary. More advanced scenarios could
include to save a variable's value at the beginning of macro
sequence and restore it at end.
When the variable is first defined, the first value it gets
assigned is also the initial value to which it can be reset using
the reset command.
The complete removal is done via the unset
keyword.
After the following sequence:
set user_foo = 42
set user_foo = 666
the variable $user_foo has a current value
of 666 and an
initial of 42. The query
set ?user_foo
will show 666. After doing the reset via
reset user_foo
a following query will give 42 as the result. After unsetting it
via
unset user_foo
any query or operation (except the noted expansion within other
statements) will lead to an error message.
Pre-Defined Variables
In order to allow users to share one setup over a number of
different machines without having to change its contents, there's a
number of pre-defined variables. These are prefixed with
muttng_ and are read-only, i.e. they cannot
be set, unset or
reset. The reference chapter lists all available variables.
Please consult the local copy of your manual for their
values as they may differ from different manual sources.
Where
the manual is installed in can be queried (already using such a
variable) by running:
muttng -Q muttng_docdir
To extend the example for viewing the manual via self-defined
variables, it can be made more readable and more portable by
changing the real path in:
set user_manualcmd = '!less -r /path/to_manual'
to:
set user_manualcmd = "!less -r $muttng_docdir/manual.txt"
which works everywhere if a manual is installed.
Please note that by the type of quoting, muttng determines when
to expand these values: when it finds double quotes, the value will
be expanded during reading the setup files but when it finds single
quotes, it'll expand it at runtime as needed.
For example, the statement
folder-hook . "set user_current_folder = $muttng_folder_name"
will be already be translated to the following when reading the
startup files:
folder-hook . "set user_current_folder = some_folder"
with some_folder being the name of the
first folder muttng
opens. On the contrary,
folder-hook . 'set user_current_folder = $muttng_folder_name'
will be executed at runtime because of the single quotes so that
user_current_folder will always have
the value of the currently
opened folder.
A more practical example is:
folder-hook . 'source ~/.mutt/score-$muttng_folder_name'
which can be used to source files containing score commands
depending on the folder the user enters.
Type Conversions
A note about variable's types during conversion: internally
values are stored in internal types but for any dump/query or set
operation they're converted to and from string. That means that
there's no need to worry about types when referencing any variable.
As an example, the following can be used without harm (besides
makeing muttng very likely behave strange):
set read_inc = 100
set folder = $read_inc
set read_inc = $folder
set user_magic_number = 42
set folder = $user_magic_numberDefining/Using aliases
Usage: aliaskeyaddress[ , address, ... ]
It's usually very cumbersome to remember or type out the address of
someone
you are communicating with. Mutt-ng allows you to create ``aliases''
which map
a short string to a full address.
Note: if you want to create an alias
for a group (by specifying more than
one address), you must separate the
addresses with a comma (``,'').
To remove an alias or aliases (``*'' means all aliases):
unalias [ * | key
...
]
alias muttdude me@cs.hmc.edu (Michael Elkins)
alias theguys manny, moe, jack
Unlike other mailers, Mutt-ng doesn't require aliases to be defined
in a special file. The alias command can appear
anywhere in
a configuration file, as long as this file is
source
.Consequently, you can have multiple alias files, or
you can have all aliases defined in your muttrc.
On the other hand, the create-alias
function can use only one file, the one pointed to by the
alias-file
variable (which is
˜/.muttrc by default). This file is not
special either,
in the sense that Mutt-ng will happily append aliases to any file, but
in
order for the new aliases to take effect you need to explicitly
source
this file too.
For example:
source /usr/local/share/Mutt-ng.aliases
source ~/.mail_aliases
set alias_file=~/.mail_aliases
To use aliases, you merely use the alias at any place in mutt where
muttprompts for addresses, such as the To: or
Cc:
prompt. You can
also enter aliases in your editor at the appropriate headers if you
have the
edit-headers variable set.
In addition, at the various address prompts, you can use the tab
character
to expand a partial alias to the full alias. If there are multiple
matches,
mutt will bring up a menu with the matching aliases. In order to be
presented with the full list of aliases, you must hit tab with out a
partial
alias, such as at the beginning of the prompt or after a comma denoting
multiple addresses.
In the alias menu, you can select as many aliases as you want with the
select-entry key (default: RET), and use the
exit
key
(default: q) to return to the address prompt.
Changing the default key bindings
Usage: bindmapkeyfunction
This command allows you to change the default key bindings (operation
invoked when pressing a key).
map specifies in which menu the binding belongs.
Multiple maps may
be specified by separating them with commas (no additional whitespace
isallowed). The currently defined maps are:
generic
This is not a real menu, but is used as a fallback for all of
the other
menus except for the pager and editor modes. If a key is not
defined in
another menu, Mutt-ng will look for a binding to use in this
menu. This allows
you to bind a key to a certain function in multiple menus
instead of having
multiple bind statements to accomplish the same task.
alias
The alias menu is the list of your personal aliases as defined
in your
muttrc. It is the mapping from a short alias name to the full
email
address(es) of the recipient(s).
attach
The attachment menu is used to access the attachments on
received messages.
browser
The browser is used for both browsing the local directory
structure, and for
listing all of your incoming mailboxes.
editor
The editor is the line-based editor the user enters text data.
index
The index is the list of messages contained in a mailbox.
compose
The compose menu is the screen used when sending a new message.
pager
The pager is the mode used to display message/attachment data,
and help
listings.
pgp
The pgp menu is used to select the OpenPGP keys used for
encrypting outgoing
messages.
postpone
The postpone menu is similar to the index menu, except is used
when
recalling a message the user was composing, but saved until
later.
key is the key (or key sequence) you wish to bind.
To specify a
control character, use the sequence \Cx,
where x is the
letter of the control character (for example, to specify control-A use
``\Ca''). Note that the case of x as well as
\C is
ignored, so that \CA, \Ca,
\cA
and \ca are all
equivalent. An alternative form is to specify the key as a three digit
octal number prefixed with a ``\'' (for example
\177
is
equivalent to \c?).
In addition, key may consist of:
Alternative Key NamesSequenceDescription\t tab<tab> tab<backtab> backtab / shift-tab\r carriage return\n newline\e escape<esc> escape<up> up arrow<down> down arrow<left> left arrow<right> right arrow<pageup> Page Up<pagedown> Page Down<backspace> Backspace<delete> Delete<insert> Insert<enter> Enter<return> Return<home> Home<end> End<space> Space bar<f1> function key 1<f10> function key 10
key does not need to be enclosed in quotes unless
it contains a
space (`` '').
function specifies which action to take when
key
is pressed.
For a complete list of functions, see the
functions
.The special function noop unbinds the specified key
sequence.
Defining aliases for character sets
Usage: charset-hookalias charset
Usage: iconv-hookcharset local-charset
The charset-hook command defines an alias for a
character set.
This is useful to properly display messages which are tagged with a
character set name not known to mutt.
The iconv-hook command defines a system-specific
name for a
character set. This is helpful when your systems character
conversion library insists on using strange, system-specific names
for character sets.
Setting variables based upon mailbox
Usage: folder-hook [!]regexpcommand
It is often desirable to change settings based on which mailbox you are
reading. The folder-hook command provides a method by which you can
execute
any configuration command. regexp is a regular
expression specifying
in which mailboxes to execute command before
loading. If a mailbox
matches multiple folder-hook's, they are executed in the order given in
the
muttrc.
Note: if you use the ``!'' shortcut
for spoolfile at the beginning of the
pattern, you must place it
inside of double or single quotes in order to distinguish it from the
logical not operator for the expression.
Note that the settings are not restored when you
leave the mailbox.
For example, a command action to perform is to change the sorting
methodbased upon the mailbox being read:
folder-hook mutt set sort=threads
However, the sorting method is not restored to its previous value when
reading a different mailbox. To specify a default
command, use the
pattern ``.'':
folder-hook . set sort=date-sentKeyboard macros
Usage: macromenukeysequence [ description ]
Macros are useful when you would like a single key to perform a series
of
actions. When you press key in menu
menu
,Mutt-ng will behave as if
you had typed sequence. So if you have a common
sequence of commands
you type, you can create a macro to execute those commands with a
singlekey.
menu is the maps which
the macro will be bound.
Multiple maps may be specified by separating multiple menu arguments by
commas. Whitespace may not be used in between the menu arguments and
thecommas separating them.
key and sequence are expanded
by the same rules as the bind. There are
some additions however. The
first is that control characters in sequence can
also be specified
as ˆx. In order to get a caret (`ˆ'')
you need to use
ˆˆ. Secondly, to specify a certain key
such as up
or to invoke a function directly, you can use the format
<key name> and <function
name>
.For a listing of key
names see the section on bind. Functions
are listed in the functions.
The advantage with using function names directly is that the macros
willwork regardless of the current key bindings, so they are not
dependent on
the user having particular key definitions. This makes them more
robustand portable, and also facilitates defining of macros in files
used by more
than one user (eg. the system Muttngrc).
Optionally you can specify a descriptive text after sequence,
which is shown in the help screens.
Note: Macro definitions (if any)
listed in the help screen(s), are
silently truncated at the screen width, and are not wrapped.
Using color and mono video attributes
Usage: colorobjectforegroundbackground [ regexp]
Usage: color index foregroundbackgroundpattern
Usage: uncolor index pattern[ pattern ... ]
If your terminal supports color, you can spice up Mutt-ng by creating
your own
color scheme. To define the color of an object (type of information),
you
must specify both a foreground color and a background color (it is not
possible to only specify one or the other).
object can be one of:
attachment
body (match regexp in the body of messages)
bold (highlighting bold patterns in the body of messages)
error (error messages printed by Mutt-ng)
header (match regexp in the message header)
hdrdefault (default color of the message header in the pager)
index (match pattern in the message index)
indicator (arrow or bar used to indicate the current item in a
menu)
markers (the ``+'' markers at the beginning of wrapped lines in
the pager)
message (informational messages)
normal
quoted (text matching quote-regexp in the body of a message)
quoted1, quoted2, ..., quotedN
(higher levels of quoting)
search (highlighting of words in the pager)
signature
status (mode lines used to display info about the mailbox or
message)
tilde (the ``˜'' used to pad blank lines in the pager)
tree (thread tree drawn in the message index and attachment menu)
underline (highlighting underlined patterns in the body of
messages)
foreground and background can
be one of the following:
white
black
green
magenta
blue
cyan
yellow
red
default
colorxforeground can optionally be prefixed with the
keyword bright to make
the foreground color boldfaced (e.g., brightred).
If your terminal supports it, the special keyword default can be
used as a transparent color. The value brightdefault is also valid.
If Mutt-ng is linked against the S-Lang library,
you also need to set
the COLORFGBG environment variable to the default
colors of your
terminal for this to work; for example (for Bourne-like shells):
set COLORFGBG="green;black"
export COLORFGBGNote: The S-Lang
library requires you to use the lightgray
and brown keywords instead of white and
yellow
when
setting this variable.
Note: The uncolor command can be
applied to the index object only. It
removes entries from the list. You must specify the same pattern
specified in the color command for it to be removed. The pattern ``*''
is
a special token which means to clear the color index list of all
entries.
Mutt-ng also recognizes the keywords color0,
color1
,…,
colorN-1 (
N
being the number of colors supported
by your terminal). This is useful when you remap the colors for your
display (for example by changing the color associated with
color2
for your xterm), since color names may then lose their normal meaning.
If your terminal does not support color, it is still possible change
the video
attributes through the use of the ``mono'' command:
Usage: mono<object> <attribute>[ regexp ]
Usage: mono index attributepattern
Usage: unmono index pattern[ pattern ... ]
where attribute is one of the following:
none
bold
underline
reverse
standout
Ignoring (weeding) unwanted message headers
Usage: [un]ignorepattern [ pattern... ]
Messages often have many header fields added by automatic processing
systems,
or which may not seem useful to display on the screen. This command
allows
you to specify header fields which you don't normally want to see.
You do not need to specify the full header field name. For example,
``ignore content-'' will ignore all header fields that begin with the
pattern
``content-''. ``ignore *'' will ignore all headers.
To remove a previously added token from the list, use the ``unignore''
command.
The ``unignore'' command will make Mutt-ng display headers with the
given pattern.
For example, if you do ``ignore x-'' it is possible to ``unignore
x-mailer''.
``unignore *'' will remove all tokens from the ignore list.
For example:
# Sven's draconian header weeding
ignore *
unignore from date subject to cc
unignore organization organisation x-mailer: x-newsreader: x-mailing-list:
unignore posted-to:Alternative addresses
Usage: [un]alternatesregexp [
regexp
... ]
With various functions, mutt will treat messages differently,
depending on whether you sent them or whether you received them from
someone else. For instance, when replying to a message that you
sent to a different party, mutt will automatically suggest to send
the response to the original message's recipients -- responding to
yourself won't make much sense in many cases. (See
reply-to
.)
Many users receive e-mail under a number of different addresses. To
fully use mutt's features here, the program must be able to
recognize what e-mail addresses you receive mail under. That's the
purpose of the alternates command: It takes a list
of regular
expressions, each of which can identify an address under which you
receive e-mail.
The unalternates command can be used to write
exceptions to
alternates patterns. If an address matches something
in an
alternates command, but you nonetheless do not think
it is
from you, you can list a more precise pattern under an
unalternates
command.
To remove a regular expression from the alternates
list, use the
unalternates command with exactly the same
regexp
.
Likewise, if the regexp for a alternates command matches
an entry on the unalternates list, that
unalternates
entry will be removed. If the regexp for
unalternates
is ``*'', all entries on alternates will be removed.
Format = Flowed Introduction
Mutt-ng contains support for so-called format=flowed messages.
In the beginning of email, each message had a fixed line width, and
it was enough for displaying them on fixed-size terminals. But times
changed, and nowadays hardly anybody still uses fixed-size terminals:
more people nowaydays use graphical user interfaces, with dynamically
resizable windows. This led to the demand of a new email format that
makes it possible for the email client to make the email look nice
in a resizable window without breaking quoting levels and creating
an incompatible email format that can also be displayed nicely on
old fixed-size terminals.
For introductory information on format=flowed
messages, see
<http://www.joeclark.org/ffaq.html>.
Receiving: Display Setup
When you receive emails that are marked as format=flowed
messages, and is formatted correctly, mutt-ng will try to reformat
the message to optimally fit on your terminal. If you want a fixed
margin on the right side of your terminal, you can set the
following:
set wrapmargin = 10
The code above makes the line break 10 columns before the right
side of the terminal.
If your terminal is so wide that the lines are embarrassingly long,
you can also set a maximum line length:
set max_line_length = 120
The example above will give you lines not longer than 120
characters.
When you view at format=flowed messages, you will
often see
the quoting hierarchy like in the following example:
>Bill, can you please send last month's progress report to Mr.
>Morgan? We also urgently need the cost estimation for the new
>production server that we want to set up before our customer's
>project will go live.
This obviously doesn't look very nice, and it makes it very
hard to differentiate between text and quoting character. The
solution is to configure mutt-ng to "stuff" the quoting:
set stuff_quoted
This will lead to a nicer result that is easier to read:
> Bill, can you please send last month's progress report to Mr.
> Morgan? We also urgently need the cost estimation for the new
> production server that we want to set up before our customer's
> project will go live.Sending
If you want mutt-ng to send emails with format=flowed set, you
need to explicitly set it:
set text_flowed
Additionally, you have to use an editor which supports writing
format=flowed-conforming emails. For vim, this is
done by
adding w to the formatoptions (see :h
formatoptions
and
:h fo-table) when writing emails.
Also note that format=flowed knows about
``space-stuffing'',
that is, when sending messages, some kinds of lines have to be
indented with a single space on the sending side. On the receiving
side, the first space (if any) is removed. As a consequence and in
addition to the above simple setting, please keep this in mind when
making manual formattings within the editor. Also note that mutt-ng
currently violates the standard (RfC 3676) as it does not
space-stuff lines starting with:
> This is not the
quote character but a right
angle used for other reasons
From with a trailing space.
just a space for formatting reasons
Please make sure that you manually prepend a space to each of them.
Additional Notes
For completeness, the delete-space variable provides the mechanism
to generate a DelSp=yes parameter on
outgoing
messages.
According to the standard, clients receiving a format=flowed
messages should delete the last space of a flowed line but still
interpret the line as flowed. Because flowed lines usually contain
only one space at the end, this parameter would make the receiving
client concatenate the last word of the previous with the first of
the current line without a space. This makes
ordinary text
unreadable and is intended for languages rarely using spaces. So
please use this setting only if you're sure what you're doing.
Mailing lists
Usage: [un]listsregexp [ regexp... ]
Usage: [un]subscriberegexp [ regexp... ]
Mutt-ng has a few nice features for
using-lists
.In order to take advantage of them, you must
specify which addresses belong to mailing lists, and which mailing
lists you are subscribed to. Once you have done this, the
list-reply
function will work for all known lists.
Additionally, when you send a message to a subscribed list, mutt will
add a Mail-Followup-To header to tell other users' mail user agents
not to send copies of replies to your personal address. Note that
the Mail-Followup-To header is a non-standard extension which is not
supported by all mail user agents. Adding it is not bullet-proof
against
receiving personal CCs of list messages. Also note that the generation
of the Mail-Followup-To header is controlled by the
followup-to
configuration variable.
More precisely, Mutt-ng maintains lists of patterns for the addresses
of known and subscribed mailing lists. Every subscribed mailing
list is known. To mark a mailing list as known, use the ``lists''
command. To mark it as subscribed, use ``subscribe''.
You can use regular expressions with both commands. To mark all
messages sent to a specific bug report's address on mutt's bug
tracking system as list mail, for instance, you could say
``subscribe [0-9]*@bugs.guug.de''. Often, it's sufficient to just
give a portion of the list's e-mail address.
Specify as much of the address as you need to to remove ambiguity. For
example, if you've subscribed to the Mutt-ng mailing list, you will
receive mail
addressed to mutt-users@mutt.org. So, to tell
Mutt-ng that this is a
mailing list, you could add ``lists mutt-users'' to your
initialization file. To tell mutt that you are subscribed to it,
add ``subscribe mutt-users'' to your initialization file instead.
If you also happen to get mail from someone whose address is
mutt-users@example.com, you could use ``lists
mutt-users@mutt\\.org''
or ``subscribe mutt-users@mutt\\.org'' to
match only mail from the actual list.
The ``unlists'' command is used to remove a token from the list of
known and subscribed mailing-lists. Use ``unlists *'' to remove all
tokens.
To remove a mailing list from the list of subscribed mailing lists,
but keep it on the list of known mailing lists, use ``unsubscribe''.
Using Multiple spool mailboxes
Usage: mbox-hook [!]patternmailbox
This command is used to move read messages from a specified mailbox to
adifferent mailbox automatically when you quit or change folders.
pattern is a regular expression specifying the
mailbox to treat as a
``spool'' mailbox and mailbox specifies where mail
should be saved when
read.
Unlike some of the other hook commands, only the
first
matching
pattern is used (it is not possible to save read mail in more than a
single
mailbox).
Defining mailboxes which receive mail
Usage: [un]mailboxes [!]filename[ filename ... ]
This command specifies folders which can receive mail and
which will be checked for new messages. By default, the
main menu status bar displays how many of these folders have
new messages.
When changing folders, pressing space will cycle
through folders with new mail.
Pressing TAB in the directory browser will bring up a menu showing the
files
specified by the mailboxes command, and indicate
which contain new
messages. Mutt-ng will automatically enter this mode when invoked from
the
command line with the -y option.
The ``unmailboxes'' command is used to remove a token from the list
of folders which receive mail. Use ``unmailboxes *'' to remove all
tokens.
Note: new mail is detected by
comparing the last modification time to
the last access time. Utilities like biff or
frm
or any other
program which accesses the mailbox might cause Mutt-ng to never detect
new mail
for that mailbox if they do not properly reset the access time. Backup
tools are another common reason for updated access times.
Note: the filenames in the
mailboxes
command are resolved when
the command is executed, so if these names contain
shortcuts
(such as ``='' and ``!''), any variable
definition that affect these characters (like
folder
and spoolfile)
should be executed before the mailboxes command.
User defined headers
Usage: my_hdrstring
Usage: unmy_hdrfield [ field... ]
The ``my_hdr'' command allows you to create your own header
fields which will be added to every message you send.
For example, if you would like to add an ``Organization:'' header field
to
all of your outgoing messages, you can put the command
my_hdr Organization: A Really Big Company, Anytown, USA
in your .muttrc.
Note: space characters are
not
allowed between the keyword and
the colon (``:''). The standard for electronic mail (RFC822) says that
space is illegal there, so Mutt-ng enforces the rule.
If you would like to add a header field to a single message, you should
either set the edit-headers
variable,
or use the edit-headers function (default: ``E'')
in the send-menu so
that you can edit the header of your message along with the body.
To remove user defined header fields, use the ``unmy_hdr''
command. You may specify an asterisk (``*'') to remove all header
fields, or the fields to remove. For example, to remove all ``To'' and
``Cc'' header fields, you could use:
unmy_hdr to ccDefining the order of headers when viewing messages
Usage: hdr_orderheader1header2header3
With this command, you can specify an order in which mutt will attempt
to present headers to you when viewing messages.
``unhdr_order *'' will clear all previous headers from the order
list,
thus removing the header order effects set by the system-wide startup
file.
hdr_order From Date: From: To: Cc: Subject:Specify default save filename
Usage: save-hook [!]patternfilename
This command is used to override the default filename used when saving
messages. filename will be used as the default
filename if the message is
From: an address matching regexp or if you are the author and the
message is addressed to: something matching
regexp
.
See pattern-hook for information on
the exact format of pattern.
Examples:
save-hook me@(turing\\.)?cs\\.hmc\\.edu$ +elkins
save-hook aol\\.com$ +spam
Also see the fcc-save-hook
command.
Specify default Fcc: mailbox when composing
Usage: fcc-hook [!]patternmailbox
This command is used to save outgoing mail in a mailbox other than
record. Mutt-ng searches the initial
list of
message recipients for the first matching regexp
and uses mailbox
as the default Fcc: mailbox. If no match is found the message will be
saved
to record mailbox.
See pattern-hook for information on
the exact format of pattern.
Example: fcc-hook [@.]aol\\.com$
+spammers
The above will save a copy of all messages going to the aol.com domain
to
the `+spammers' mailbox by default. Also see the
fcc-save-hook
command.
Specify default save filename and default Fcc: mailbox at once
Usage: fcc-save-hook [!]patternmailbox
This command is a shortcut, equivalent to doing both a
fcc-hook
and a save-hook with its arguments.
Change settings based upon message recipients
Usage: reply-hook [!]patterncommand
Usage: send-hook [!]patterncommand
Usage: send2-hook [!]patterncommandv
These commands can be used to execute arbitrary configuration commands
based
upon recipients of the message. pattern is a
regular expression
matching the desired address. command is executed
when regexp
matches recipients of the message.
reply-hook is matched against the message you are
replying
to, instead of the message you are
sending
.send-hook is
matched against all messages, both new and
replies
.Note:reply-hooks are matched before the
send-hook
,regardless
of the order specified in the users's configuration file.
send2-hook is matched every time a message is
changed, either
by editing it, or by using the compose menu to change its recipients
or subject. send2-hook is executed after
send-hook
,and
can, e.g., be used to set parameters such as the
sendmail
variable depending on the message's sender
address.
For each type of send-hook or reply-hook, when multiple matches
occur, commands are executed in the order they are specified in the
muttrc
(for that type of hook).
See pattern-hook for information on
the exact format of pattern.
Example: send-hook mutt "set mime_forward
signature=''"
Another typical use for this command is to change the values of the
attribution,
signature
and locale
variables in order to change the language of the attributions and
signatures based upon the recipients.
Note: the send-hook's are only
executed ONCE after getting the initial
list of recipients. Adding a recipient after replying or editing the
message will NOT cause any send-hook to be executed. Also note that
my_hdr commands which modify recipient headers, or the message's
subject, don't have any effect on the current message when executed
from a send-hook.
Change settings before formatting a message
Usage: message-hook [!]patterncommand
This command can be used to execute arbitrary configuration commands
before viewing or formatting a message based upon information about the
message.
command is executed if the pattern matches the message to be
displayed. When multiple matches occur, commands are executed in the
order
they are specified in the muttrc.
See pattern-hook for
information on the exact format of pattern.
Example:
message-hook ~A 'set pager=builtin'
message-hook '~f freshmeat-news' 'set pager="less \"+/^ subject:.*\""'Choosing the cryptographic key of the recipient
Usage: crypt-hookpatternkeyid
When encrypting messages with PGP or OpenSSL, you may want to associate
a certain
key with a given e-mail address automatically, either because the
recipient's public key can't be deduced from the destination address,
or because, for some reasons, you need to override the key Mutt-ng
wouldnormally use. The crypt-hook command provides a method by which
you can
specify the ID of the public key to be used when encrypting messages to
a certain recipient.
The meaning of "key id" is to be taken broadly in this context: You
can either put a numerical key ID here, an e-mail address, or even
just a real name.
Adding key sequences to the keyboard buffer
Usage: pushstring
This command adds the named string to the keyboard buffer. The
string may contain control characters, key names and function
names like the sequence string in the macro command. You may use it to
automatically run a sequence of commands at startup, or when
entering certain folders. For example, the following command
will automatically collapse all threads when entering a folder:
folder-hook . 'push <collapse-all>'
Executing functions
Usage: execfunction [ function ... ]
This command can be used to execute any function. Functions are
listed in the functions.
``exec function'' is equivalent to ``push <function>''.
Message Scoring
Usage: scorepatternvalue
Usage: unscorepattern [ pattern... ]
In situations where you have to cope with a lot of emails, e.g.
when you read many different mailing lists, and take part in
discussions, it is always useful to have the important messages
marked and the annoying messages or the ones that you aren't
interested in deleted. For this purpose, mutt-ng features a
mechanism called ``scoring''.
When you use scoring, every message has a base score of 0. You
can then use the score command to define patterns
and a
positive or negative value associated with it. When a pattern
matches a message, the message's score will be raised or lowered by
the amount of the value associated with the pattern.
score "~f nion@muttng\.org" 50
score "~f @sco\.com" -100
If the pattern matches, it is also possible to set the score
value of the current message to a certain value and then stop
evaluation:
score "~f santaclaus@northpole\.int" =666
What is important to note is that negative score values will be
rounded up to 0.
To make scoring actually useful, the score must be applied in
some way. That's what the score thresholds are
for. Currently,
there are three score thresholds:
flag threshold: when a message has a score value equal or higher
than the flag threshold, it will be flagged.
read threshold: when a message has a score value equal or lower
than the read threshold, it will be marked as read.
delete threshold: when a message has a score value equal or
lower than the delete threshold, it will be marked as deleted.
These three thresholds can be set via the variables
score-threshold-flag
,score-threshold-read,
score-threshold-delete
and. By
default, score-threshold-read and
score-threshold-delete
are set to
-1, which means that in the default threshold
configuration no
message will ever get marked as read or deleted.
Scoring gets especially interesting when combined with the
color
command
and the ˜n pattern:
color index black yellow "~n 10-"
color index red yellow "~n 100-"
The rules above mark all messages with a score between 10 and 99
with black and yellow, and messages with a score greater or equal
100 with red and yellow. This might be unusual to you if you're used
to e.g. slrn's scoring mechanism, but it is more flexible, as it
visually marks different scores.
Spam detection
Usage: spampatternformat
Usage: nospampattern
Mutt-ng has generalized support for external spam-scoring filters.
By defining your spam patterns with the spam and
nospam
commands, you can limit, search, and
sort
your
mail based on its spam attributes, as determined by the external
filter. You also can display the spam attributes in your index
display using the %H selector in the
index-format
variable. (Tip: try %?H?[%H] ?
to display spam tags only when they are defined for a given message.)
Your first step is to define your external filter's spam patterns using
the spam command. pattern
should be a regular expression
that matches a header in a mail message. If any message in the mailbox
matches this regular expression, it will receive a ``spam tag'' or
``spam attribute'' (unless it also matches a nospam
pattern -- see
below.) The appearance of this attribute is entirely up to you, and is
governed by the format parameter. format can be any static
text, but it also can include back-references from the
pattern
expression. (A regular expression ``back-reference'' refers to a
sub-expression contained within parentheses.) %1 is replaced with
the first back-reference in the regex, %2
with the second, etc.
If you're using multiple spam filters, a message can have more than
one spam-related header. You can define spam
patterns for each
filter you use. If a message matches two or more of these patterns, and
the $spam_separator variable is set to a string, then the
message's spam tag will consist of all the format
strings joined
together, with the value of $spam_separator separating
them.
For example, suppose I use DCC, SpamAssassin, and PureMessage. I might
define these spam settings:
spam "X-DCC-.*-Metrics:.*(....)=many" "90+/DCC-%1"
spam "X-Spam-Status: Yes" "90+/SA"
spam "X-PerlMX-Spam: .*Probability=([0-9]+)%" "%1/PM"
set spam_separator=", "
If I then received a message that DCC registered with ``many'' hits
under the ``Fuz2'' checksum, and that PureMessage registered with a
97% probability of being spam, that message's spam tag would
read90+/DCC-Fuz2, 97/PM. (The four characters before
``=many'' in a
DCC report indicate the checksum used -- in this case, ``Fuz2''.)
If the $spam_separator variable is unset, then each
spam pattern match supersedes the previous one. Instead of getting
joined format strings, you'll get only the last
one to match.
The spam tag is what will be displayed in the index when you use
%H in the
$index_format
variable. It's also the
string that the ˜H pattern-matching expression
matches against for
search and limit functions.
And it's what sorting by spam
attribute will use as a sort key.
That's a pretty complicated example, and most people's actual
environments will have only one spam filter. The simpler your
configuration, the more effective mutt can be, especially when it comes
to sorting.
Generally, when you sort by spam tag, mutt will sort
lexically
--
that is, by ordering strings alphnumerically. However, if a spam tag
begins with a number, mutt will sort numerically first, and lexically
only when two numbers are equal in value. (This is like UNIX's
sort -n.) A message with no spam attributes at all
-- that is, one
that didn't match any of your spam patterns -- is sorted at
lowest priority. Numbers are sorted next, beginning with 0 and ranging
upward. Finally, non-numeric strings are sorted, with ``a'' taking
lowerpriority than ``z''. Clearly, in general, sorting by spam tags is
most
effective when you can coerce your filter to give you a raw number. But
in case you can't, mutt can still do something useful.
The nospam command can be used to write exceptions
to spam
patterns. If a header pattern matches something in a spam command,
but you nonetheless do not want it to receive a spam tag, you can list
amore precise pattern under a nospam command.
If the pattern given to nospam
is exactly the same as the
pattern on an existing spam
list entry, the effect will be to
remove the entry from the spam list, instead of adding an exception.
Likewise, if the pattern for a spam command matches an entry
on the nospam list, that nospam
entry will be removed. If the
pattern for nospam is ``*'',
all entries on both lists
will be removed. This might be the default action if you use
spam
and nospam in conjunction with a
folder-hook
.
You can have as many spam or nospam commands as you like.
You can even do your own primitive spam detection within mutt -- for
example, if you consider all mail from MAILER-DAEMON
to be spam,
you can use a spam command like this:
spam "^From: .*MAILER-DAEMON" "999"Setting variables
Usage: set [no|inv]variable[=value] [ variable ... ]
Usage: togglevariable [variable... ]
Usage: unsetvariable [variable... ]
Usage: resetvariable [variable... ]
This command is used to set (and unset)
variables
.There are four basic types of variables:
boolean, number, string and quadoption. boolean
variables can be
set (true) or unset (false).
number variables can be
assigned a positive integer value.
string variables consist of any number of
printable characters.
strings must be enclosed in quotes if they contain
spaces or tabs. You
may also use the ``C'' escape sequences \n and
\t
for
newline and tab, respectively.
quadoption variables are used to control whether
or not to be prompted
for certain actions, or to specify a default action. A value of
yes
will cause the action to be carried out automatically as if you had
answered
yes to the question. Similarly, a value of no
will cause the the
action to be carried out as if you had answered ``no.'' A value of
ask-yes will cause a prompt with a default answer
of ``yes'' and
ask-no will provide a default answer of ``no.''
Prefixing a variable with ``no'' will unset it. Example: set
noaskbcc
.
For boolean variables, you may optionally prefix
the variable name with
inv to toggle the value (on or off). This is useful
when writing
macros. Example: set invsmart_wrap.
The toggle command automatically prepends the
inv
prefix to all
specified variables.
The unset command automatically prepends the
no
prefix to all
specified variables.
Using the enter-command function in the index
menu, you can query the
value of a variable by prefixing the name of the variable with a
question
mark:
set ?allow_8bit
The question mark is actually only required for boolean and quadoption
variables.
The reset command resets all given variables to the
compile time
defaults (hopefully mentioned in this manual). If you use the command
set and prefix the variable with ``&'' this has
the same
behavior as the reset command.
With the reset command there exists the special
variable ``all'',
which allows you to reset all variables to their system defaults.
Reading initialization commands from another file
Usage: sourcefilename [ filename... ]
This command allows the inclusion of initialization commands
from other files. For example, I place all of my aliases in
˜/.mail_aliases so that I can make my
˜/.muttrc readable and keep my aliases
private.
If the filename begins with a tilde (``˜''), it will be expanded
to the
path of your home directory.
If the filename ends with a vertical bar (|), then
filename
is
considered to be an executable program from which to read input (eg.
source ˜/bin/myscript|).
Removing hooks
Usage: unhook [ * | hook-type ]
This command permits you to flush hooks you have previously defined.
You can either remove all hooks by giving the ``*'' character as an
argument, or you can remove all hooks of a specific type by saying
something like unhook send-hook.
Sharing Setups Character Sets
As users may run mutt-ng on different systems, the configuration
must be maintained because it's likely that people want to use the
setup everywhere they use mutt-ng. And mutt-ng tries to help where it
can.
To not produce conflicts with different character sets, mutt-ng
allows users to specify in which character set their configuration
files are encoded. Please note that while reading the configuration
files, this is only respected after the corresponding declaration
appears. It's advised to put the following at the very beginning of a
users muttngrc:
set config_charset = "..."
and replacing the dots with the actual character set. To avoid
problems while maintaining the setup, vim user's may want to use
modelines as show in:
# vim:fileencoding=...:
while, again, replacing the dots with the appropriate name. This
tells vim as which character set to read and save the file.
Modularization
``Modularization'' means to divide the setup into several files
while sorting the options or commands by topic. Especially for
longer setups (e.g. with many hooks), this helps maintaining it
and solving trouble.
When using separation, setups may be, as a whole or in
fractions, shared over different systems.
Conditional parts
When using a configuration on different systems, the user may not
always have influence on how mutt-ng is installed and which features
it includes.
To solve this, mutt-ng contain a feature based on the ``ifdef''
patch written for mutt. Its basic syntax is:
ifdef <item> <command>
ifndef <item> <command>
...whereby <item> can be one of:
a function name
a variable name
a menu name
a feature name
All available functions, variables and menus are documented
elsewhere in this manual but ``features'' is specific to these
two commands. To test for one, prefix one of the following
keywords with feature_: ncurses,
slang, iconv, idn, dotlock, standalone, pop, nntp, imap, ssl,
gnutls, sasl, sasl2, libesmtp, compressed, color, classic_pgp,
classic_smime, gpgme, header_cache
As an example, one can use the following in
˜/.muttngrc:
ifdef feature_imap 'source ~/.mutt-ng/setup-imap'
ifdef feature_pop 'source ~/.mutt-ng/setup-pop'
ifdef feature_nntp 'source ~/.mutt-ng/setup-nntp'
...to only source ˜/.mutt-ng/setup-imap if
IMAP
support is built in, only source ˜/.mutt-ng/setup-pop
if POP support is built in and only source
˜/.mutt-ng/setup-nntp if NNTP support is
built in.
An example for testing for variable names can be used if users
use different revisions of mutt-ng whereby the older one may not
have a certain variable. To test for the availability of
imap-mail-check
,
use:
ifdef imap_mail_check 'set imap_mail_check = 300'
Provided for completeness is the test for menu names. To set
pager-index-lines
only if the pager
menu is available, use:
ifdef pager 'set pager_index_lines = 10'
For completeness, too, the opposite of ifdef is
provided:
ifndef which only executes the command if the test
fails. For
example, the following two examples are equivalent:
ifdef feature_ncurses 'source ~/.mutt-ng/setup-ncurses'
ifndef feature_ncurses 'source ~/.mutt-ng/setup-slang'
...and...
ifdef feature_slang 'source ~/.mutt-ng/setup-slang'
ifndef feature_slang 'source ~/.mutt-ng/setup-ncurses'Obsolete Variables
In the process of ensuring and creating more consistency, many
variables have been renamed and some of the old names were already
removed. Please see sect-obsolete
for a complete list.
Advanced Usage Regular Expressions
All string patterns in Mutt-ng including those in more complex
patterns must be specified
using regular expressions (regexp) in the ``POSIX extended'' syntax
(which
is more or less the syntax used by egrep and GNU awk). For your
convenience, we have included below a brief description of this syntax.
The search is case sensitive if the pattern contains at least one upper
case letter, and case insensitive otherwise. Note that ``\''
must be quoted if used for a regular expression in an initialization
command: ``\\''.
A regular expression is a pattern that describes a set of strings.
Regular expressions are constructed analogously to arithmetic
expressions, by using various operators to combine smaller expressions.
Note that the regular expression can be enclosed/delimited by either
"
or ' which is useful if the regular expression includes a white-space
character. See muttrc-syntax
for more information on " and ' delimiter processing. To match a
literal " or ' you must preface it with \ (backslash).
The fundamental building blocks are the regular expressions that match
a single character. Most characters, including all letters and digits,
are regular expressions that match themselves. Any metacharacter with
special meaning may be quoted by preceding it with a backslash.
The period ``.'' matches any single character. The caret ``ˆ''
andthe dollar sign ``$'' are metacharacters that respectively
match
the empty string at the beginning and end of a line.
A list of characters enclosed by ``['' and ``]'' matches any
single character in that list; if the first character of the list
is a caret ``ˆ'' then it matches any character
not
in the
list. For example, the regular expression
[0123456789]
matches any single digit. A range of ASCII characters may be specified
by giving the first and last characters, separated by a hyphen
``-''. Most metacharacters lose their special meaning inside
lists. To include a literal ``]'' place it first in the list.
Similarly, to include a literal ``ˆ'' place it anywhere but first.
Finally, to include a literal hyphen ``-'' place it last.
Certain named classes of characters are predefined. Character classes
consist of ``[:'', a keyword denoting the class, and ``:]''.
The following classes are defined by the POSIX standard:
[:alnum:]
Alphanumeric characters.
[:alpha:]
Alphabetic characters.
[:blank:]
Space or tab characters.
[:cntrl:]
Control characters.
[:digit:]
Numeric characters.
[:graph:]
Characters that are both printable and visible. (A space is
printable,
but not visible, while an ``a'' is both.)
[:lower:]
Lower-case alphabetic characters.
[:print:]
Printable characters (characters that are not control
characters.)
[:punct:]
Punctuation characters (characters that are not letter, digits,
control
characters, or space characters).
[:space:]
Space characters (such as space, tab and formfeed, to name a
few).
[:upper:]
Upper-case alphabetic characters.
[:xdigit:]
Characters that are hexadecimal digits.
A character class is only valid in a regular expression inside the
brackets of a character list. Note that the brackets in these
class names are part of the symbolic names, and must be included
in addition to the brackets delimiting the bracket list. For
example, [[:digit:]] is equivalent to
[0-9].
Two additional special sequences can appear in character lists. These
apply to non-ASCII character sets, which can have single symbols
(calledcollating elements) that are represented with more than one
character,
as well as several characters that are equivalent for collating or
sorting purposes:
Collating Symbols
A collating symbol is a multi-character collating element
enclosed in
``[.'' and ``.]''. For example, if ``ch'' is a
collating
element, then
[[.ch.]]
is a regexp that matches
this collating element, while
[ch]
is a regexp that
matches either ``c'' or ``h''.
Equivalence Classes
An equivalence class is a locale-specific name for a list of
characters that are equivalent. The name is enclosed in
``[=''
and ``=]''. For example, the name ``e'' might be used to
represent all of ``è'' ``é'' and ``e''. In this
case,
[[=e=]] is
a regexp that matches any of
``è'', ``é'' and ``e''.
A regular expression matching a single character may be followed by one
of several repetition operators:
?
The preceding item is optional and matched at most once.
*
The preceding item will be matched zero or more times.
+
The preceding item will be matched one or more times.
{n}
The preceding item is matched exactly n
times.
{n,}
The preceding item is matched n or more
times.
{,m}
The preceding item is matched at most m
times.
{n,m}
The preceding item is matched at least n
times, but no more than
m times.
Two regular expressions may be concatenated; the resulting regular
expression matches any string formed by concatenating two substrings
that respectively match the concatenated subexpressions.
Two regular expressions may be joined by the infix operator
``|'';
the resulting regular expression matches any string matching either
subexpression.
Repetition takes precedence over concatenation, which in turn takes
precedence over alternation. A whole subexpression may be enclosed in
parentheses to override these precedence rules.
Note: If you compile Mutt-ng with the
GNU rx package, the
following operators may also be used in regular expressions:
\\y
Matches the empty string at either the beginning or the end of
a word.
\\B
Matches the empty string within a word.
\\<
Matches the empty string at the beginning of a word.
\\>
Matches the empty string at the end of a word.
\\w
Matches any word-constituent character (letter, digit, or
underscore).
\\W
Matches any character that is not word-constituent.
\\`
Matches the empty string at the beginning of a buffer (string).
\\'
Matches the empty string at the end of a buffer.
Please note however that these operators are not defined by POSIX, so
they may or may not be available in stock libraries on various systems.
Patterns
Mutt-ng's pattern language provides a simple yet effective way to
set up rules to match messages, e.g. for operations like tagging and
scoring. A pattern consists of one or more sub-pattern, which can be
logically grouped, ORed, and negated. For a complete listing of
these patterns, please refer to table patterns in the Reference chapter.
It must be noted that in this table, EXPR is
a regular expression. For ranges, the forms
<[MAX], >>[MIN],
[MIN]- and -[MAX] are
also possible.
Complex Patterns
It is possible to combine several sub-patterns to a more complex
pattern. The most simple possibility is to logically AND several
patterns by stringing them together:
~s 'SPAM' ~U
The pattern above matches all messages that contain ``SPAM'' in
the subject and are unread.
To logical OR patterns, simply use the |
operator. This one
especially useful when using local groups:
~f ("nion@muttng\.org"|"ak@muttng\.org"|"pdmef@muttng\.org")
(~b mutt-ng|~s Mutt-ng)
!~x '@synflood\.at'
The first pattern matches all messages that were sent by one of
the mutt-ng maintainers, while the seconds pattern matches all
messages that contain ``mutt-ng'' in the message body or ``Mutt-ng''
in the subject. The third pattern matches all messages that do not
contain ``@synflood\.at'' in the References:
header, i.e.
messages that are not an (indirect) reply to one of my messages. A
pattern can be logicall negated using the !
operator.
Patterns and Dates
When using dates in patterns, the dates must be specified in a
special format, i.e. DD/MM/YYYY. If you don't
specify
month or year, they default to the current month or year. When using
date ranges, and you specify only the minimum or the maximum, the
specified date will be excluded, e.g. 01/06/2005-
matches
against all messages after Juni 1st, 2005.
It is also possible to use so-called ``error margins'' when
specifying date ranges. You simply specify a date, and then the
error margin. This margin needs to contain the information whether
it goes ``forth'' or ``back'' in time, by using +
and -.
Then follows a number and a unit, i.e. y for
years, m for
months, w for weeks and d for
days. If you use the special
* sign, it means that the error margin goes to
both``directions'' in time.
~d 01/01/2005+1y
~d 18/10/2004-2w
~d 28/12/2004*1d
The first pattern matches all dates between January 1st, 2005 and
January 1st 2006. The second pattern matches all dates between
October 18th, 2004 and October 4th 2004 (2 weeks before 18/10/2004),
while the third pattern matches all dates 1 day around December
28th, 2004 (i.e. Dec 27th, 28th and 29th).
Relative dates are also very important, as they make it possible
to specify date ranges between a fixed number of units and the
current date. How this works can be seen in the following example:
~d >2w # messages older than two weeks
~d <3d # messages newer than 3 days
~d =1m # messages that are exactly one month oldFormat Strings Introduction
The so called Format Strings offer great
flexibility when
configuring mutt-ng. In short, they describe what items to print
out how in menus and status messages.
Basically, they work as this: for different menus and bars,
there's a variable specifying the layout. For every item
available, there is a so called expando.
For example, when running mutt-ng on different machines or
different versions for testing purposes, it may be interesting to
have the following information always printed on screen when one
is in the index:
the current hostname
the current mutt-ng version number
The setting for the status bar of the index is controlled via the
status-format
variable. For the hostname and version string, there's an expando
for $status_format:
%h
expands to the
hostname and %v to the version string. When
just configuring:
set status_format = "%v on %h: ..."
mutt-ng will replace the sequence %v with
the version string
and %h with the host's name. When you are,
for example, running
mutt-ng version 1.5.9i on host mailhost, you'll see the
following when you're in the index:
Mutt-ng 1.5.9i on mailhost: ...
In the index, there're more useful information one could want to
see:
which mailbox is open
how man new, flagged or postponed messages
...
To include the mailbox' name is as easy as:
set status_format = "%v on %h: %B: ...
When the currently opened mailbox is Inbox, this
will be expanded
to:
Mutt-ng 1.5.9i on mailhost: Inbox: ...
For the number of certain types of messages, one more feature of the
format
strings is extremely useful. If there aren't messages of a certain
type, it
may not be desired to print just that there aren't any but instead
only
print something if there are any.
Conditional Expansion
To only print the number of messages if there are new messages in
the current mailbox, further extend
$status_format to:
set status_format = "%v on %h: %B %?n?%n new? ...
This feature is called nonzero-printing and
works as this:
some expandos may be optionally printed nonzero, i.e. a portion
of the format string is only evaluated if the value of the expando
is different from zero. The basic syntax is:
%?<item>?<string if nonzero>?
which tells mutt-ng to only look at <string if
nonzero>
if the value of the %<item%gt;
expando is different from zero. In our example, we used n as
the expando to check for and %n new as the
optional nonzero
string.
But this is not all: this feature only offers one alternative:
``print something if not zero.'' Mutt-ng does, as you might guess,
also provide a logically complete version: ``if zero, print
something and else print something else.'' This is achieved by the
following syntax for those expandos which may be printed nonzero:
%?<item>?<string if nonzero>&<string if zero>?
Using this we can make mutt-ng to do the following:
make it print ``n new messages'' whereby
n
is the
count but only if there new ones
and make it print ``no new messages'' if there aren't any
The corresponding configuration is:
set status_format = "%v on %h: %B: %?n?%n new messages&no new messages? ...
This doubles the use of the ``new messages'' string because it'll get
always printed. Thus, it can be shortened to:
set status_format = "%v on %h: %B: %?n?%n&no? new messages ...
As you might see from this rather simple example, one can create
very complex but fancy status messages. Please see the reference
chapter for expandos and those which may be printed nonzero.
Modifications and Padding
Besides the information given so far, there're even more features of
format strings:
When specifying %_<item>
instead of
just %<item>, mutt-ng will
convert all
characters in the expansion of <item>
to
lowercase.
When specifying %:<item>
instead of just
%<item>, mutt-ng will convert
all dots in the
expansion of <item> to underscores
(_).
Also, there's a feature called Padding supplied
by the
following two expandos: %|X and
%>X
.
%|X
When this occurs, mutt-ng will fill the
rest of the line with the character X. In
our example,
filling the rest of the line with dashes is done by setting:
set status_format = "%v on %h: %B: %?n?%n&no? new messages %|-"%>X
Since the previous expando stops at
the end of line, there must be a way to fill the gap between
two items via the %>X expando:
it puts as many
characters X in between two items so that
the rest of
the line will be right-justified. For example, to not put the
version string and hostname of our example on the left but on
the right and fill the gap with spaces, one might use (note
the space after %>):
set status_format = "%B: %?n?%n&no? new messages %> (%v on %h)"Using Tags
Sometimes it is desirable to perform an operation on a group of
messages all at once rather than one at a time. An example might be
to save messages to a mailing list to a separate folder, or to
delete all messages with a given subject. To tag all messages
matching a pattern, use the tag-pattern function, which is bound to
``shift-T'' by default. Or you can select individual messages by
hand using the ``tag-message'' function, which is bound to ``t'' by
default. See patterns for Mutt-ng's
pattern
matching syntax.
Once you have tagged the desired messages, you can use the
``tag-prefix'' operator, which is the ``;'' (semicolon) key by default.
When the ``tag-prefix'' operator is used, the
next
operation will
be applied to all tagged messages if that operation can be used in that
manner. If the auto-tag
variable is set, the next operation applies to the tagged messages
automatically, without requiring the ``tag-prefix''.
In macro or push commands,
you can use the ``tag-prefix-cond'' operator. If there are no tagged
messages, mutt will "eat" the rest of the macro to abort it's
execution.Mutt-ng will stop "eating" the macro when it encounters the
``end-cond''
operator; after this operator the rest of the macro will be executed
asnormal.
Using Hooks
A hook is a concept borrowed from the EMACS editor
which allows you to
execute arbitrary commands before performing some operation. For
example,
you may wish to tailor your configuration based upon which mailbox you
are
reading, or to whom you are sending mail. In the Mutt-ng world, a
hook
consists of a regexp or
patterns along with a
configuration option/command. See
folder-hook
send-hook
message-hook
save-hook
mbox-hook
fcc-hook
fcc-save-hook
for specific details on each type of hook
available.
Note: if a hook changes configuration
settings, these changes remain
effective until the end of the current mutt session. As this is
generally
not desired, a default hook needs to be added before all other hooks to
restore configuration defaults. Here is an example with send-hook and
the
my_hdr directive:
send-hook . 'unmy_hdr From:'
send-hook ~C'^b@b\.b$' my_hdr from: c@c.cMessage Matching in Hooks
Hooks that act upon messages (send-hook, save-hook,
fcc-hook,message-hook
)are evaluated in a slightly different manner. For the other
types of hooks, a regexp is
sufficient. But in dealing with messages a finer grain of control is
needed for matching since for different purposes you want to match
different criteria.
Mutt-ng allows the use of the patterns
language for matching messages in hook commands. This works in
exactly the same way as it would when limiting
orsearching the mailbox, except that you are
restricted to those
operators which match information mutt extracts from the header of
the message (i.e. from, to, cc, date, subject, etc.).
For example, if you wanted to set your return address based upon
sending
mail to a specific address, you could do something like:
send-hook '~t ^me@cs\.hmc\.edu$' 'my_hdr From: Mutt-ng User <user@host>'
which would execute the given command when sending mail to
me@cs.hmc.edu.
However, it is not required that you write the pattern to match using
the
full searching language. You can still specify a simple
regular
expression
like the other hooks, in which case Mutt-ng will translate your
pattern into the full language, using the translation specified by
the
default-hook variable. The
pattern is translated at the time the hook is declared, so the value
of
default-hook that is in effect
at that time will be used.
Using the sidebar
The sidebar, a feature specific to Mutt-ng, allows you to use a mailbox
listing
which looks very similar to the ones you probably know from GUI mail
clients.
The sidebar lists all specified mailboxes, shows the number in each
and highlights the ones with new email
Use the following configuration commands:
set sidebar_visible="yes"
set sidebar_width=25
If you want to specify the mailboxes you can do so with:
set mbox='=INBOX'
mailboxes INBOX \
MBOX1 \
MBOX2 \
...
You can also specify the colors for mailboxes with new mails by using:
color sidebar_new red black
color sidebar white black
The available functions are:
Default Sidebar Function BindingsKeyFunctionDescriptionnonesidebar-scroll-up Scrolls the mailbox list up 1 pagenonesidebar-scroll-down Scrolls the mailbox list down 1 pagenonesidebar-next Highlights the next mailboxnonesidebar-next-new Highlights the next mailbox with new mailnonesidebar-previous Highlights the previous mailboxnonesidebar-open Opens the currently highlighted mailbox
Reasonable key bindings look e.g. like this:
bind index \Cp sidebar-prev
bind index \Cn sidebar-next
bind index \Cb sidebar-open
bind pager \Cp sidebar-prev
bind pager \Cn sidebar-next
bind pager \Cb sidebar-open
macro index B ':toggle sidebar_visible^M'
macro pager B ':toggle sidebar_visible^M'
You can then go up and down by pressing Ctrl-P and Ctrl-N, and
switch on and off the sidebar simply by pressing 'B'.
External Address Queries
Mutt-ng supports connecting to external directory databases such as
LDAP,
ph/qi, bbdb, or NIS through a wrapper script which connects to mutt
using a simple interface. Using the
query-command
variable, you specify the wrapper
command to use. For example:
set query_command = "mutt_ldap_query.pl '%s'"
The wrapper script should accept the query on the command-line. It
should return a one line message, then each matching response on a
single line, each line containing a tab separated address then name
thensome other optional information. On error, or if there are no
matching
addresses, return a non-zero exit code and a one line error message.
An example multiple response output:
Searching database ... 20 entries ... 3 matching:
me@cs.hmc.edu Michael Elkins mutt dude
blong@fiction.net Brandon Long mutt and more
roessler@guug.de Thomas Roessler mutt pgp
There are two mechanisms for accessing the query function of mutt. One
is to do a query from the index menu using the query function (default:
Q).
This will prompt for a query, then bring up the query menu which will
list the matching responses. From the query menu, you can select
addresses to create aliases, or to mail. You can tag multiple
addressesto mail, start a new query, or have a new query appended to
the current
responses.
The other mechanism for accessing the query function is for address
completion, similar to the alias completion. In any prompt for address
entry, you can use the complete-query function (default: ˆT) to
run a
query based on the current address you have typed. Like aliases, mutt
will look for what you have typed back to the last space or comma. If
there is a single response for that query, mutt will expand the address
in place. If there are multiple responses, mutt will activate the
querymenu. At the query menu, you can select one or more addresses to
be
added to the prompt.
Mailbox Formats
Mutt-ng supports reading and writing of four different mailbox formats:
mbox, MMDF, MH and Maildir. The mailbox type is autodetected, so there
is no need to use a flag for different mailbox types. When creating
newmailboxes, Mutt-ng uses the default specified with the
mbox-type
variable.
mbox. This is the most widely used
mailbox format for UNIX. All
messages are stored in a single file. Each message has a line of the
form:
From me@cs.hmc.edu Fri, 11 Apr 1997 11:44:56 PST
to denote the start of a new message (this is often referred to as the
``From_'' line).
MMDF. This is a variant of the
mbox
format. Each message is
surrounded by lines containing ``ˆAˆAˆAˆA'' (four
control-A's).
MH. A radical departure from
mbox
and MMDF, a mailbox
consists of a directory and each message is stored in a separate file.
The filename indicates the message number (however, this is may not
correspond to the message number Mutt-ng displays). Deleted messages
arerenamed with a comma (,) prepended to the filename.
Note:
Mutt
detects this type of mailbox by looking for either
.mh_sequences
or .xmhcache (needed to distinguish normal
directories from MH
mailboxes).
Maildir. The newest of the mailbox
formats, used by the Qmail MTA (a
replacement for sendmail). Similar to MH, except
that it adds three
subdirectories of the mailbox: tmp, new and
cur
.Filenames
for the messages are chosen in such a way they are unique, even when
twoprograms are writing the mailbox over NFS, which means that no file
locking
is needed.
Mailbox Shortcuts
There are a number of built in shortcuts which refer to specific
mailboxes.
These shortcuts can be used anywhere you are prompted for a file or
mailbox
path.
! -- refers to your spoolfile
(incoming) mailbox
> -- refers to your mbox file
< -- refers to your record file
ˆ -- refers to the current mailbox
- or !! -- refers to the file you've last visited
˜ -- refers to your home directory
= or + -- refers to your folder
directory
@alias -- refers to the
save-hook
as determined by the address of the alias
Handling Mailing Lists
Mutt-ng has a few configuration options that make dealing with large
amounts of mail easier. The first thing you must do is to let Mutt
know what addresses you consider to be mailing lists (technically
this does not have to be a mailing list, but that is what it is most
often used for), and what lists you are subscribed to. This is
accomplished through the use of the lists
commands in your muttrc.
Now that Mutt-ng knows what your mailing lists are, it can do several
things, the first of which is the ability to show the name of a list
through which you received a message (i.e., of a subscribed list) in
the index menu display. This is useful to
distinguish between
personal and list mail in the same mailbox. In the
index-format
variable, the escape ``%L''
will return the string ``To <list>'' when ``list'' appears in the
``To'' field, and ``Cc <list>'' when it appears in the ``Cc''
field (otherwise it returns the name of the author).
Often times the ``To'' and ``Cc'' fields in mailing list messages
tend to get quite large. Most people do not bother to remove the
author of the message they are reply to from the list, resulting in
two or more copies being sent to that person. The ``list-reply''
function, which by default is bound to ``L'' in the index menu
and pager, helps reduce the clutter by only
replying to the
known mailing list addresses instead of all recipients (except as
specified by Mail-Followup-To, see below).
Mutt-ng also supports the Mail-Followup-To header.
When you send
a message to a list of recipients which includes one or several
subscribed mailing lists, and if the
followup-to
option is set, mutt will generate
a Mail-Followup-To header which contains all the recipients to whom
you send this message, but not your address. This indicates that
group-replies or list-replies (also known as ``followups'') to this
message should only be sent to the original recipients of the
message, and not separately to you - you'll receive your copy through
one of the mailing lists you are subscribed to.
Conversely, when group-replying or list-replying to a message which
has a Mail-Followup-To header, mutt will respect
this header if
the honor-followup-to
configuration
variable is set. Using list-reply will in this case also make sure
that the reply goes to the mailing list, even if it's not specified
in the list of recipients in the Mail-Followup-To.
Note that, when header editing is enabled, you can create a
Mail-Followup-To header manually. Mutt-ng will only
auto-generate
this header if it doesn't exist when you send the message.
The other method some mailing list admins use is to generate a
``Reply-To'' field which points back to the mailing list address rather
than the author of the message. This can create problems when trying
to reply directly to the author in private, since most mail clients
will automatically reply to the address given in the ``Reply-To''
field. Mutt-ng uses the reply-to
variable to help decide which address to use. If set to
ask-yes
or
ask-no, you will be
prompted as to whether or not you would like to use the address given
inthe ``Reply-To'' field, or reply directly to the address given in the
``From'' field. When set to yes, the ``Reply-To''
field will be used when
present.
The ``X-Label:'' header field can be used to further identify mailing
lists or list subject matter (or just to annotate messages
individually). The index-format
variable's ``%y'' and
``%Y'' escapes can be used to expand ``X-Label:'' fields in the
index, and Mutt-ng's pattern-matcher can match regular expressions to
``X-Label:'' fields with the ``˜y'' selector. ``X-Label:'' is
not a
standard message header field, but it can easily be inserted by
procmailand other mail filtering agents.
Lastly, Mutt-ng has the ability to sort the
mailbox into
threads. A thread is a group of
messages which all relate to the same
subject. This is usually organized into a tree-like structure where a
message and all of its replies are represented graphically. If you've
ever
used a threaded news client, this is the same concept. It makes
dealingwith large volume mailing lists easier because you can easily
delete
uninteresting threads and quickly find topics of value.
Editing threads
Mutt-ng has the ability to dynamically restructure threads that are
broken
either by misconfigured software or bad behavior from some
correspondents. This allows to clean your mailboxes formats) from these
annoyances which make it hard to follow a discussion.
Linking threads
Some mailers tend to "forget" to correctly set the "In-Reply-To:" and
"References:" headers when replying to a message. This results in
broken
discussions because Mutt-ng has not enough information to guess the
correct
threading.
You can fix this by tagging the reply, then moving to the parent
message
and using the ``link-threads'' function (bound to & by default).
The
reply will then be connected to this "parent" message.
You can also connect multiple children at once, tagging them and
using the
tag-prefix command (';') or the auto_tag option.
Breaking threads
On mailing lists, some people are in the bad habit of starting a new
discussion by hitting "reply" to any message from the list and
changing
the subject to a totally unrelated one.
You can fix such threads by using the ``break-thread'' function
(boundby default to #), which will turn the subthread starting
from the
current message into a whole different thread.
Delivery Status Notification (DSN) Support
RFC1894 defines a set of MIME content types for relaying information
about the status of electronic mail messages. These can be thought of
as
``return receipts.''
Users can make use of it in one of the following two ways:
Berkeley sendmail 8.8.x currently has some command line options
in which the mail client can make requests as to what type of
status
messages should be returned.
The SMTP support via libESMTP supports it, too.
To support this, there are two variables:
dsn-notify is used
to request receipts for different results (such as failed
message,message delivered, etc.).
dsn-return requests
how much of your message should be returned with the receipt
(headers or full message).
Please see the reference chapter for possible values.
POP3 Support (OPTIONAL)
If Mutt-ng was compiled with POP3 support (by running the
configure
script with the --enable-pop flag), it has the
ability to work
with mailboxes located on a remote POP3 server and fetch mail for local
browsing.
You can access the remote POP3 mailbox by selecting the folder
pop://popserver/.
You can select an alternative port by specifying it with the server,
i.e.:
pop://popserver:port/.
You can also specify different username for each folder, i.e.:
pop://username@popserver[:port]/.
Polling for new mail is more expensive over POP3 than locally. For this
reason the frequency at which Mutt-ng will check for mail remotely can
be
controlled by the
pop-mail-check
variable, which defaults to every 60 seconds.
If Mutt-ng was compiled with SSL support (by running the
configure
script with the --with-ssl flag), connections to
POP3 servers
can be encrypted. This naturally requires that the server supports
SSL encrypted connections. To access a folder with POP3/SSL, you should
use pops: prefix, ie:
pops://[username@]popserver[:port]/.
Another way to access your POP3 mail is the fetch-mail function
(default: G). It allows to connect to
pop-host
,fetch all your new mail and place it in the
local spoolfile. After this
point, Mutt-ng runs exactly as if the mail had always been local.
Note: If you only need to fetch all
messages to local mailbox
you should consider using a specialized program, such as
fetchmailIMAP Support (OPTIONAL)
If Mutt-ng was compiled with IMAP support (by running the
configure
script with the --enable-imap flag), it has the
ability to work
with folders located on a remote IMAP server.
You can access the remote inbox by selecting the folder
imap://imapserver/INBOX, where imapserver is the name of the
IMAP server and INBOX is the special name for your
spool mailbox on
the IMAP server. If you want to access another mail folder at the IMAP
server, you should use imap://imapserver/path/to/folder where
path/to/folder is the path of the folder you want to
access.
You can select an alternative port by specifying it with the server,
i.e.:
imap://imapserver:port/INBOX.
You can also specify different username for each folder, i.e.:
imap://username@imapserver[:port]/INBOX.
If Mutt-ng was compiled with SSL support (by running the
configure
script with the --with-ssl flag), connections to
IMAP servers
can be encrypted. This naturally requires that the server supports
SSL encrypted connections. To access a folder with IMAP/SSL, you should
use imaps://[username@]imapserver[:port]/path/to/folder as your
folder path.
Pine-compatible notation is also supported, i.e.
{[username@]imapserver[:port][/ssl]}path/to/folder
Note that not all servers use / as the hierarchy separator. Mutt-ng
should
correctly notice which separator is being used by the server and
convertpaths accordingly.
When browsing folders on an IMAP server, you can toggle whether to look
at only the folders you are subscribed to, or all folders with the
toggle-subscribed command. See also the
imap-list-subscribed
variable.
Polling for new mail on an IMAP server can cause noticeable delays. So,
you'll
want to carefully tune the
imap-mail-check
and
timeout
variables.
Note that if you are using mbox as the mail store on UW servers prior
tov12.250, the server has been reported to disconnect a client if
another client
selects the same folder.
The Folder Browser
As of version 1.2, mutt supports browsing mailboxes on an IMAP
server. This is mostly the same as the local file browser, with the
following differences:
Instead of file permissions, mutt displays the string "IMAP",
possibly followed by the symbol "+", indicating
that the entry contains both messages and subfolders. On
Cyrus-like servers folders will often contain both messages and
subfolders.
For the case where an entry can contain both messages and
subfolders, the selection key (bound to enter by default)
will choose to descend into the subfolder view. If you wish to
view
the messages in that folder, you must use view-file instead
(bound to space by default).
You can create, delete and rename mailboxes with the
create-mailbox, delete-mailbox, and
rename-mailbox commands (default bindings:
C
,
d and r, respectively).
You may also
subscribe and unsubscribe
to mailboxes (normally
these are bound to s and u, respectively).
Authentication
Mutt-ng supports four authentication methods with IMAP servers: SASL,
GSSAPI, CRAM-MD5, and LOGIN (there is a patch by Grant Edwards to add
NTLM authentication for you poor exchange users out there, but it has
yet to be integrated into the main tree). There is also support for
the pseudo-protocol ANONYMOUS, which allows you to log in to a public
IMAP server without having an account. To use ANONYMOUS, simply make
your username blank or "anonymous".
SASL is a special super-authenticator, which selects among several
protocols
(including GSSAPI, CRAM-MD5, ANONYMOUS, and DIGEST-MD5) the most
secure
method available on your host and the server. Using some of these
methods
(including DIGEST-MD5 and possibly GSSAPI), your entire session will
be
encrypted and invisible to those teeming network snoops. It is the
best
option if you have it. To use it, you must have the Cyrus SASL
libraryinstalled on your system and compile mutt with the
--with-sasl
flag.
Mutt-ng will try whichever methods are compiled in and available on
the server,
in the following order: SASL, ANONYMOUS, GSSAPI, CRAM-MD5, LOGIN.
There are a few variables which control authentication:
imap-user - controls
the username under which you request authentication on the IMAP
server,
for all authenticators. This is overridden by an explicit
username in
the mailbox path (i.e. by using a mailbox name of the form
{user@host}).
imap-pass - a
password which you may preset, used by all authentication
methods where
a password is needed.
imap-authenticators
- a colon-delimited list of IMAP
authentication methods to try, in the order you wish to try
them. If
specified, this overrides mutt's default (attempt everything,
in the order
listed above).
NNTP Support (OPTIONAL)
If compiled with ``--enable-nntp'' option, Mutt-ng can read news from
a newsserver via NNTP. You can open a newsgroup with the
``change-newsgroup'' function from the index/pager which is by default
bound to i.
The Default newsserver can be obtained from the
$NNTPSERVER environment variable. Like other
news readers,
info about subscribed newsgroups is saved in a file as specified by the
nntp-newsrc variable.
Article headers are cached and can be loaded from a file when a
newsgroup is entered instead loading from newsserver; currently, this
caching mechanism still is different from the header caching for
maildir/IMAP.
Again: Scoring
Especially for Usenet, people often ask for advanced filtering
and scoring functionality. Of course, mutt-ng has scoring and
allows a killfile, too. How to use a killfile has been discussed
in score-command.
What has not been discusses in detail is mutt-ng's built-in
realname filter. For may newsreaders including those for
``advanced users'' like slrn or tin, there are frequent
request for such functionality. The solutions offered often are
complicated regular expressions.
In mutt-ng this is as easy as
score ~* =42
This tells mutt-ng to apply a score of 42 to all messages whose
sender specified a valid realname and a valid email address. Using
score !~* =42
on the contrary applies a score of 42 to all messages not
matching those criteria which are very strict:
Email addresses must be valid according to RFC 2822, see
<ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/in-notes/rfc2822.txt>
the name must consist of at least 2 fields whereby a field
must not end in a dot. This means that ``Joe User'' and ``Joe
A.User'' are valid while ``J. User'' and ``J. A. User'' aren't.
it's assumed that users are interested in reading their
own mail and mail from people who they have defined an alias
forso that those 2 groups of messages are excluded from the
strict
rules.
SMTP Support (OPTIONAL)
Mutt-ng can be built using a library called ``libESMTP'' which
provides SMTP functionality. When configure was
called with
--with-libesmtp or the output muttng -v contains
+USE_LIBESMTP, this will be or is the case
already. The SMTP
support includes support for Delivery Status Notification (see
dsn
section) as well as
handling the 8BITMIME flag controlled via
use-8bitmime
.
To enable sending mail directly via SMTP without an MTA such as
Postfix or SSMTP and the like, simply set the
smtp-host
variable pointing to your SMTP server.
Authentication mechanisms are available via the
smtp-user
and smtp-pass variables.
Transport Encryption via the StartTLS command is also available. For
this to work, first of all Mutt-ng must be built with SSL or GNUTLS.
Secondly, the smtp-use-tls variable
must be either set
to ``enabled'' or ``required.'' In both cases, StartTLS will be used if
the server supports it: for the second case, the connection will fail
ifit doesn't while switching back to unencrypted communication for the
first one.
Some mail providers require user's to set a particular envelope
sender, i.e. they allow for only one value which may not be what the
user wants to send as the From: header. In this
case, the variable
smtp-envelope may be used
to set the envelope different from the From: header.
Managing multiple IMAP/POP/NNTP accounts (OPTIONAL)
If you happen to have accounts on multiple IMAP and/or POP servers,
you may find managing all the authentication settings inconvenient and
error-prone. The account-hook command may help. This hook works like
folder-hook but is invoked whenever you access a remote mailbox
(including inside the folder browser), not just when you open the
mailbox.
Some examples:
account-hook . 'unset imap_user; unset imap_pass; unset tunnel'
account-hook imap://host1/ 'set imap_user=me1 imap_pass=foo'
account-hook imap://host2/ 'set tunnel="ssh host2 /usr/libexec/imapd"'Start a WWW Browser on URLs (EXTERNAL)
If a message contains URLs (unified resource locator = address in the
WWW space like http://www.mutt.org/), it is
efficient to get
a menu with all the URLs and start a WWW browser on one of them. This
functionality is provided by the external urlview program which can be
retrieved at ftp://ftp.mutt.org/mutt/contrib/
>
and the configuration commands:
macro index \cb |urlview\n
macro pager \cb |urlview\nCompressed folders Support (OPTIONAL)
If Mutt-ng was compiled with compressed folders support (by running the
configure script with the
--enable-compressed
flag), Mutt
can open folders stored in an arbitrary format, provided that the user
has a script to convert from/to this format to one of the accepted.
The most common use is to open compressed archived folders e.g. with
gzip.
In addition, the user can provide a script that gets a folder in an
accepted format and appends its context to the folder in the
user-defined format, which may be faster than converting the entire
folder to the accepted format, appending to it and converting back to
the user-defined format.
There are three hooks defined (open-hook,
close-hook and
append-hook
)which define commands to uncompress and compress
a folder and to append messages to an existing compressed folder
respectively.
For example:
open-hook \\.gz$ "gzip -cd %f > %t"
close-hook \\.gz$ "gzip -c %t > %f"
append-hook \\.gz$ "gzip -c %t >> %f"
You do not have to specify all of the commands. If you omit
append-hook
,the folder will be open and
closed again each time you will add to it. If you omit
close-hook
(or give empty command) , the
folder will be open in the mode. If you specify
append-hook
though you'll be able to append
to the folder.
Note that Mutt-ng will only try to use hooks if the file is not in one
of
the accepted formats. In particular, if the file is empty, mutt
supposes it is not compressed. This is important because it allows the
use of programs that do not have well defined extensions. Just use
"." as a regexp. But this may be surprising if your
compressing script produces empty files. In this situation, unset
save-empty
,so that the compressed file
will be removed if you delete all of the messages.
Open a compressed mailbox for reading
Usage: open-hookregexp "command"
The command is the command that can be used for
opening the
folders whose names match regexp.
The command string is the printf-like format
string, and it
should accept two parameters: %f, which is replaced with the
(compressed) folder name, and %t which is replaced with the
name of the temporary folder to which to write.
%f and %t can be repeated any number of times in the
command string, and all of the entries are replaced with the
appropriate folder name. In addition, %% is replaced by
%, as in printf, and any other %anything is left as is.
The command should not remove the original compressed file.
The command should return non-zero exit status
if it fails, so
mutt knows something's wrong.
Example:
open-hook \\.gz$ "gzip -cd %f > %t"
If the command is empty, this operation is
disabled for this file
type.
Write a compressed mailbox
Usage: close-hookregexp"command"
This is used to close the folder that was open with the
open-hook
command after some changes were made to it.
The command string is the command that can be
used for closing the
folders whose names match regexp. It has the
same format as in
the open-hook command. Temporary
folder
in this case is the folder previously produced by the <
open-hook
command.
The command should not remove the decompressed file. The
command should return non-zero exit status if it
fails, so mutt
knows something's wrong.
Example:
close-hook \\.gz$ "gzip -c %t > %f"
If the command is empty, this operation is
disabled for this file
type, and the file can only be open in the readonly mode.
close-hook is not called when you
exit
from the folder if the folder was not changed.
Append a message to a compressed mailbox
Usage: append-hookregexp"command"
This command is used for saving to an existing compressed folder.
The command is the command that can be used for
appending to the
folders whose names match regexp. It has the
same format as in
the open-hook command.
The temporary folder in this case contains the messages that are
beingappended.
The command should not remove the decompressed file. The
command should return non-zero exit status if it
fails, so mutt
knows something's wrong.
Example:
append-hook \\.gz$ "gzip -c %t >> %f"
When append-hook is used, the
folder is
not opened, which saves time, but this means that we can not find out
what the folder type is. Thus the default (
mbox-type
)type is always supposed (i.e.
this is the format used for the temporary folder).
If the file does not exist when you save to it,
close-hook
is called, and not append-hook.
append-hook
is only
for appending to existing folders.
If the command is empty, this operation is
disabled for this file
type. In this case, the folder will be open and closed again (using
open-hook and
close-hook
respectively) each time you will add to it.
Encrypted folders
The compressed folders support can also be used to handle encrypted
folders. If you want to encrypt a folder with PGP, you may want to
usethe following hooks:
open-hook \\.pgp$ "pgp -f < %f > %t"
close-hook \\.pgp$ "pgp -fe YourPgpUserIdOrKeyId < %t > %f"
Please note, that PGP does not support appending to an encrypted
folder, so there is no append-hook defined.
Note: the folder is temporary stored
decrypted in the /tmp
directory, where it can be read by your system administrator. So
thinkabout the security aspects of this.
Mutt-ng's MIME Support
Quite a bit of effort has been made to make Mutt-ng the premier text-mode
MIME MUA. Every effort has been made to provide the functionality that
the discerning MIME user requires, and the conformance to the standards
wherever possible. When configuring Mutt-ng for MIME, there are two
extratypes of configuration files which Mutt-ng uses. One is the
mime.types file, which contains the mapping of file
extensions to
IANA MIME types. The other is the mailcap file, which
specifies
the external commands to use for handling specific MIME types.
Using MIME in Mutt
There are three areas/menus in Mutt-ng which deal with MIME, they are
the
pager (while viewing a message), the attachment menu and the compose
menu.
Viewing MIME messages in the pager
When you select a message from the index and view it in the pager,
Mutt
decodes the message to a text representation. Mutt-ng internally
supports
a number of MIME types, including text/plain, text/enriched,
message/rfc822, and message/news
.In addition, the export
controlled version of Mutt-ng recognizes a variety of PGP MIME types,
including PGP/MIME and application/pgp.
Mutt-ng will denote attachments with a couple lines describing them.
These lines are of the form:
[-- Attachment #1: Description --]
[-- Type: text/plain, Encoding: 7bit, Size: 10000 --]
Where the Description is the description or
filename given for the
attachment, and the Encoding is one of
7bit/8bit/quoted-printable/base64/binary.
If Mutt-ng cannot deal with a MIME type, it will display a message
like:
[-- image/gif is unsupported (use 'v' to view this part) --]The Attachment Menu
The default binding for view-attachments is `v',
which displays the
attachment menu for a message. The attachment menu displays a list
ofthe attachments in a message. From the attachment menu, you can
save,
print, pipe, delete, and view attachments. You can apply these
operations to a group of attachments at once, by tagging the
attachments
and by using the ``tag-prefix'' operator. You can also reply to the
current message from this menu, and only the current attachment (or
the
attachments tagged) will be quoted in your reply. You can view
attachments as text, or view them using the mailcap viewer
definition.
Finally, you can apply the usual message-related functions (like
resend-message, and the reply
and forward functions) to attachments of type message/rfc822.
See the help on the attachment menu for more information.
The Compose Menu
The compose menu is the menu you see before you send a message. It
allows you to edit the recipient list, the subject, and other aspects
of your message. It also contains a list of the attachments of your
message, including the main body. From this menu, you can print,
copy,
filter, pipe, edit, compose, review, and rename an attachment or a
list of tagged attachments. You can also modifying the attachment
information, notably the type, encoding and description.
Attachments appear as follows:
1 [text/plain, 7bit, 1K] /tmp/mutt-euler-8082-0 <no description>
2 [applica/x-gunzip, base64, 422K] ~/src/mutt-0.85.tar.gz <no description>
The '-' denotes that Mutt-ng will delete the file after sending (or
postponing, or canceling) the message. It can be toggled with the
toggle-unlink command (default: u). The next
field is the MIME
content-type, and can be changed with the edit-type command
(default: ˆT). The next field is the encoding for the
attachment,
which allows a binary message to be encoded for transmission on 7bit
links. It can be changed with the edit-encoding
command
(default: ˆE). The next field is the size of the attachment,
rounded to kilobytes or megabytes. The next field is the filename,
which can be changed with the rename-file command
(default: R).
The final field is the description of the attachment, and can be
changed with the edit-description command
(default: d).
MIME Type configuration with mime.types
When you add an attachment to your mail message, Mutt-ng searches your
personal mime.types file at
${HOME}/.mime.types
,and then
the system mime.types file at /usr/local/share/mutt/mime.types or
/etc/mime.types
The mime.types file consist of lines containing a MIME type and a space
separated list of extensions. For example:
application/postscript ps eps
application/pgp pgp
audio/x-aiff aif aifc aiff
A sample mime.types file comes with the Mutt-ng
distribution, and
should contain most of the MIME types you are likely to use.
If Mutt-ng can not determine the mime type by the extension of the file
you
attach, it will look at the file. If the file is free of binary
information, Mutt-ng will assume that the file is plain text, and mark
it
as text/plain. If the file contains binary
information, then Mutt-ng will
mark it as application/octet-stream. You can change
the MIME
type that Mutt-ng assigns to an attachment by using the
edit-type
command from the compose menu (default: ˆT). The MIME type is
actually a
major mime type followed by the sub-type, separated by a '/'. 6 major
types: application, text, image, video, audio, and model have been
approved
after various internet discussions. Mutt-ng recognises all of these if
the
appropriate entry is found in the mime.types file. It also recognises
other
major mime types, such as the chemical type that is widely used in the
molecular modelling community to pass molecular data in various forms
to
various molecular viewers. Non-recognised mime types should only be
used
if the recipient of the message is likely to be expecting such
attachments.
MIME Viewer configuration with mailcap
Mutt-ng supports RFC 1524 MIME Configuration, in particular the Unix
specific format specified in Appendix A of RFC 1524. This file format
is commonly referred to as the mailcap format. Many MIME compliant
programs utilize the mailcap format, allowing you to specify handling
for all MIME types in one place for all programs. Programs known to
use this format include Netscape, XMosaic, lynx and metamail.
In order to handle various MIME types that Mutt-ng can not handle
internally, Mutt-ng parses a series of external configuration files to
find an external handler. The default search string for these files
is a colon delimited list set to
${HOME}/.mailcap:/usr/local/share/mutt/mailcap:/etc/mailcap:/etc/mailcap:/usr/etc/mailcap:/usr/local/etc/mailcap
where $HOME is your home directory.
In particular, the metamail distribution will install a mailcap file,
usually as /usr/local/etc/mailcap, which contains
some baseline
entries.
The Basics of the mailcap file
A mailcap file consists of a series of lines which are comments,
blank,
or definitions.
A comment line consists of a # character followed by anything you
want.
A blank line is blank.
A definition line consists of a content type, a view command, and any
number of optional fields. Each field of a definition line is
dividedby a semicolon ';' character.
The content type is specified in the MIME standard type/subtype
method.
For example,
text/plain, text/html, image/gif,
etc. In addition, the mailcap format includes two formats for
wildcards, one using the special '*' subtype, the other is the
implicit
wild, where you only include the major type. For example,
image/*
,or
video, will match all image types and video types,
respectively.
The view command is a Unix command for viewing the type specified.
There
are two different types of commands supported. The default is to send
the body of the MIME message to the command on stdin. You can change
this behavior by using %s as a parameter to your view command.
This will cause Mutt-ng to save the body of the MIME message to a
temporary
file, and then call the view command with the %s replaced by
the name of the temporary file. In both cases, Mutt-ng will turn over
the
terminal to the view program until the program quits, at which time
Mutt
will remove the temporary file if it exists.
So, in the simplest form, you can send a text/plain message to the
external pager more on stdin:
text/plain; more
Or, you could send the message as a file:
text/plain; more %s
Perhaps you would like to use lynx to interactively view a text/html
message:
text/html; lynx %s
In this case, lynx does not support viewing a file from stdin, so you
must use the %s syntax.
Note:Some older versions
of lynx contain a bug where they
will check the mailcap file for a viewer for text/html. They will
find
the line which calls lynx, and run it. This causes lynx to
continuously
spawn itself to view the object.
On the other hand, maybe you don't want to use lynx interactively,
youjust want to have it convert the text/html to text/plain, then you
can
use:
text/html; lynx -dump %s | more
Perhaps you wish to use lynx to view text/html files, and a pager on
all other text formats, then you would use the following:
text/html; lynx %s
text/*; more
This is the simplest form of a mailcap file.
Secure use of mailcap
The interpretation of shell meta-characters embedded in MIME
parameters
can lead to security problems in general. Mutt-ng tries to quote
parameters
in expansion of %s syntaxes properly, and avoids risky
characters by
substituting them, see the
mailcap-sanitize
variable.
Although mutt's procedures to invoke programs with mailcap seem to be
safe, there are other applications parsing mailcap, maybe taking less
care
of it. Therefore you should pay attention to the following rules:
Keep the %-expandos away from shell quoting.
Don't quote them with single or double quotes. Mutt-ng does this for
you, the right way, as should any other program which interprets
mailcap. Don't put them into backtick expansions. Be highly careful
with eval statements, and avoid them if possible at all. Trying to
fix
broken behaviour with quotes introduces new leaks - there is no
alternative to correct quoting in the first place.
If you have to use the %-expandos' values in context where you
need
quoting or backtick expansions, put that value into a shell variable
and reference the shell variable where necessary, as in the following
example (using $charset inside the backtick
expansion is safe,
since it is not itself subject to any further expansion):
text/test-mailcap-bug; cat %s; copiousoutput; test=charset=%{charset} \
&& test "`echo $charset | tr '[A-Z]' '[a-z]'`" != iso-8859-1Advanced mailcap UsageOptional Fields
In addition to the required content-type and view command fields,
you
can add semi-colon ';' separated fields to set flags and other
options.
Mutt-ng recognizes the following optional fields:
copiousoutput
This flag tells Mutt-ng that the command passes possibly
large amounts of
text on stdout. This causes Mutt-ng to invoke a pager
(either the internal
pager or the external pager defined by the pager variable)
on the output
of the view command. Without this flag, Mutt-ng assumes
that the command
is interactive. One could use this to replace the pipe to
more
in the lynx -dump example in the Basic
section:
text/html; lynx -dump %s ; copiousoutput
This will cause lynx to format the text/html output as
text/plain
and Mutt-ng will use your standard pager to display the
results.
needsterminal
Mutt-ng uses this flag when viewing attachments with
auto-view
,in order to decide whether it should honor the setting
of the wait-key variable or
not. When an attachment is viewed using an interactive
program, and the
corresponding mailcap entry has a needsterminal flag, Mutt-ng will use
wait-key and the exit
statusof the program to decide if it will ask you to press
a key after the
external program has exited. In all other situations it
will not prompt
you for a key.
compose=<command>
This flag specifies the command to use to create a new
attachment of a
specific MIME type. Mutt-ng supports this from the compose
menu.
composetyped=<command>
This flag specifies the command to use to create a new
attachment of a
specific MIME type. This command differs from the compose
command in
that mutt will expect standard MIME headers on the data.
This can be
used to specify parameters, filename, description, etc. for
a new
attachment. Mutt-ng supports this from the compose menu.
print=<command>
This flag specifies the command to use to print a specific
MIME type.
Mutt-ng supports this from the attachment and compose
menus.
edit=<command>
This flag specifies the command to use to edit a specific
MIME type.
Mutt-ng supports this from the compose menu, and also uses
it to compose
new attachments. Mutt-ng will default to the defined
editor for text
attachments.
nametemplate=<template>
This field specifies the format for the file denoted by
%s in the
command fields. Certain programs will require a certain
file extension,
for instance, to correctly view a file. For instance, lynx
will only
interpret a file as text/html if the
file ends in .html.
So, you would specify lynx as a text/html viewer with a line in
the mailcap file like:
text/html; lynx %s; nametemplate=%s.htmltest=<command>
This field specifies a command to run to test whether this
mailcap
entry should be used. The command is defined with the
command expansion
rules defined in the next section. If the command returns
0, then the
test passed, and Mutt-ng uses this entry. If the command
returns non-zero,
then the test failed, and Mutt-ng continues searching for
the right entry.
Note:the
content-type must match before Mutt-ng performs the test.
For example:
text/html; netscape -remote 'openURL(%s)' ; test=RunningX
text/html; lynx %s
In this example, Mutt-ng will run the program RunningX
which will return 0
if the X Window manager is running, and non-zero if it
isn't. If
RunningX returns 0, then Mutt-ng will call netscape to
display the
text/html object. If RunningX doesn't return 0, then
Mutt-ng will go on
to the next entry and use lynx to display the text/html
object.
Search Order
When searching for an entry in the mailcap file, Mutt-ng will
search for
the most useful entry for its purpose. For instance, if you are
attempting to print an image/gif, and you have
the following
entries in your mailcap file, Mutt-ng will search for an entry with
the
print command:
image/*; xv %s
image/gif; ; print= anytopnm %s | pnmtops | lpr; \
nametemplate=%s.gif
Mutt-ng will skip the image/* entry and use the
image/gif
entry with the print command.
In addition, you can use this with
auto-view
to denote two commands for viewing an attachment, one to be viewed
automatically, the other to be viewed interactively from the
attachment
menu. In addition, you can then use the test feature to determine
which
viewer to use interactively depending on your environment.
text/html; netscape -remote 'openURL(%s)' ; test=RunningX
text/html; lynx %s; nametemplate=%s.html
text/html; lynx -dump %s; nametemplate=%s.html; copiousoutput
For auto-view, Mutt-ng will choose
the third
entry because of the copiousoutput tag. For interactive viewing,
Mutt
will run the program RunningX to determine if it should use the
first
entry. If the program returns non-zero, Mutt-ng will use the
second entry
for interactive viewing.
Command Expansion
The various commands defined in the mailcap files are passed to the
/bin/sh shell using the system() function.
Before the
command is passed to /bin/sh -c, it is parsed to
expand
various special parameters with information from Mutt-ng. The
keywords
Mutt-ng expands are:
%s
As seen in the basic mailcap section, this variable is
expanded
to a filename specified by the calling program. This file
contains
the body of the message to view/print/edit or where the
composing
program should place the results of composition. In
addition, the
use of this keyword causes Mutt-ng to not pass the body of
the message
to the view/print/edit program on stdin.
%t
Mutt-ng will expand %t to the text representation of
the content
type of the message in the same form as the first parameter
of the
mailcap definition line, ie text/html or
image/gif.
%{<parameter>}
Mutt-ng will expand this to the value of the specified
parameter
from the Content-Type: line of the mail message. For
instance, if
Your mail message contains:
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
then Mutt-ng will expand %{charset} to
iso-8859-1. The default metamail
mailcap file uses this feature to test the charset to spawn
an xterm
using the right charset to view the message.
\%
This will be replaced by a %
Mutt-ng does not currently support the %F and %n
keywords
specified in RFC 1524. The main purpose of these parameters is for
multipart messages, which is handled internally by Mutt-ng.
Example mailcap files
This mailcap file is fairly simple and standard:
>
# I'm always running X :)
video/*; xanim %s > /dev/null
image/*; xv %s > /dev/null
# I'm always running netscape (if my computer had more memory, maybe)
text/html; netscape -remote 'openURL(%s)'
This mailcap file shows quite a number of examples:
# Use xanim to view all videos Xanim produces a header on startup,
# send that to /dev/null so I don't see it
video/*; xanim %s > /dev/null
# Send html to a running netscape by remote
text/html; netscape -remote 'openURL(%s)'; test=RunningNetscape
# If I'm not running netscape but I am running X, start netscape on the
# object
text/html; netscape %s; test=RunningX
# Else use lynx to view it as text
text/html; lynx %s
# This version would convert the text/html to text/plain
text/html; lynx -dump %s; copiousoutput
# I use enscript to print text in two columns to a page
text/*; more %s; print=enscript -2Gr %s
# Netscape adds a flag to tell itself to view jpegs internally
image/jpeg;xv %s; x-mozilla-flags=internal
# Use xv to view images if I'm running X
# In addition, this uses the \ to extend the line and set my editor
# for images
image/*;xv %s; test=RunningX; edit=xpaint %s
# Convert images to text using the netpbm tools
image/*; (anytopnm %s | pnmscale -xysize 80 46 | ppmtopgm | pgmtopbm |
pbmtoascii -1x2 ) 2>&1 ; copiousoutput
# Send excel spreadsheets to my NT box
application/ms-excel; open.pl %sMIME Autoview
In addition to explicitly telling Mutt-ng to view an attachment with
theMIME viewer defined in the mailcap file, Mutt-ng has support for
automatically viewing MIME attachments while in the pager.
To work, you must define a viewer in the mailcap file which uses the
copiousoutput option to denote that it is
non-interactive.
Usually, you also use the entry to convert the attachment to a text
representation which you can view in the pager.
You then use the auto_view muttrc command to
list the
content-types that you wish to view automatically.
For instance, if you set auto_view to:
auto_view text/html application/x-gunzip application/postscript
image/gif application/x-tar-gz
Mutt-ng could use the following mailcap entries to automatically view
attachments of these types.
text/html; lynx -dump %s; copiousoutput; nametemplate=%s.html
image/*; anytopnm %s | pnmscale -xsize 80 -ysize 50 | ppmtopgm | pgmtopbm | pbmtoascii ; copiousoutput
application/x-gunzip; gzcat; copiousoutput
application/x-tar-gz; gunzip -c %s | tar -tf - ; copiousoutput
application/postscript; ps2ascii %s; copiousoutput
``unauto_view'' can be used to remove previous entries from the
autoview list.
This can be used with message-hook to autoview messages based on size,
etc.
``unauto_view *'' will remove all previous entries.
MIME Multipart/Alternative
Mutt-ng has some heuristics for determining which attachment of a
multipart/alternative type to display. First, mutt will check the
alternative_order list to determine if one of the available
typesis preferred. The alternative_order list consists of a
number of
MIME types in order, including support for implicit and explicit
wildcards, for example:
alternative_order text/enriched text/plain text
application/postscript image/*
Next, mutt will check if any of the types have a defined
auto-view, and use that. Failing
that, Mutt-ng will look for any text type. As a last attempt, mutt
willlook for any type it knows how to handle.
To remove a MIME type from the alternative_order list, use the
unalternative_order command.
MIME Lookup
Mutt-ng's mime_lookup list specifies a list of mime-types that
should not
be treated according to their mailcap entry. This option is designed
todeal with binary types such as application/octet-stream. When an
attachment's
mime-type is listed in mime_lookup, then the extension of the
filename will
be compared to the list of extensions in the mime.types file. The
mime-type
associated with this extension will then be used to process the
attachment
according to the rules in the mailcap file and according to any other
configuration
options (such as auto_view) specified. Common usage would be:
mime_lookup application/octet-stream application/X-Lotus-Manuscript
In addition, the unmime_lookup command may be used to disable
this feature
for any particular mime-type if it had been set, for example, in a
global
muttrc.
Security Considerations
First of all, mutt-ng contains no security holes included by
intention but may contain unknown security holes. As a consequence,
please run mutt-ng only with as few permissions as possible.
Please do not run mutt-ng as the super user.
When configuring mutt-ng, there're some points to note about secure
setups.
In practice, mutt-ng can be easily made as vulnerable as even the
most insecure mail user agents (in their default configuration) just
by changing mutt-ng's configuration files: it then can execute
arbitrary programs and scripts attached to messages, send out private
data on its own, etc. Although this is not believed to the common type
of setup, please read this chapter carefully.
Passwords
Although mutt-ng can be told the various passwords for accounts,
please never store passwords in configuration files. Besides the
fact that the system's operator can always read them, you could
forget to replace the actual password with asterisks when reporting
a bug or asking for help via, for example, a mailing list so that
your mail including your password could be archived by internet
search engines, etc. Please never store passwords on disk.
Temporary Files
Mutt-ng uses many temporary files for viewing messages, verifying
digital signatures, etc. The umask
variable can be used to change the default permissions of these
files. Please only change it if you really know what you are doing.
Also, a different location for these files may be desired which can
be changed via the tmpdir variable.
Information Leaks Message-ID: headers
In the default configuration, mutt-ng will leak some information
to the outside world when sending messages: the generation of
Message-ID: headers includes a step counter which
is increased
(and rotated) with every message sent. If you'd like to hide this
information probably telling others how many mail you sent in which
time, you at least need to remove the %P
expando from the
default setting of the msgid-format variable. Please make sure that
you really know how local parts of these Message-ID: headers
are composed.
mailto:-style links
As mutt-ng be can be set up to be the mail client to handle
mailto: style links in websites, there're security
considerations, too. To keep the old behavior by default, mutt-ng
will be strict in interpreting them which means that arbitrary
header fields can be embedded in these links which could override
existing header fields or attach arbitrary files. This may be
problematic if the edit-headers
variable is unset, i.e. the
user doesn't want to see header fields while editing the message.
For example, following a link like
mailto:joe@host?Attach=~/.gnupg/secring.gpg
will send out the user's private gnupg keyring to joe@host if
the user doesn't follow the information on screen carefully
enough.
When unsetting the
strict-mailto
variable, mutt-ng will
be less strict when interpreting these links by
prepending a X-Mailto- string to all header
fields
embedded in such a link and
turn on the edit-headers
variable by
force to let the user see all the headers
(because they still may leak information.)
External applications
Mutt-ng in many places has to rely on external applications or
for convenience supports mechanisms involving external
applications.
mailcap
One of these is the mailcap mechanism as defined
by RfC
1524. Mutt-ng can be set up to automatically
execute any
given utility as listed in one of the mailcap files (see the
mailcap-path
variable for details.)
These utilities may have a variety of security vulnerabilities,
including overwriting of arbitrary files, information leaks or
other exploitable bugs. These vulnerabilities may go unnoticed by
the user, especially when they are called automatically (and
without interactive prompting) from the mailcap file(s). When
using mutt-ng's autoview mechanism in combination with mailcap
files, please be sure to...
manually select trustworth applications with a reasonable
calling sequence
periodically check the contents of mailcap files,
especially after software installations or upgrades
keep the software packages referenced in the mailcap file up to
date
leave the mailcap-sanitize variable in its default
state to restrict mailcap expandos to a safe set of characters
Other
Besides the mailcap mechanism, mutt-ng uses a number of other
external utilities for operation.
The same security considerations apply for these as for tools
involved via mailcap (for example, mutt-ng is vulnerable to Denial
of Service Attacks with compressed folders support if the
uncompressed mailbox is too large for the disk it is saved to.)
As already noted, most of these problems are not built in but
caused by wrong configuration, so please check your configuration.
Reference Command line options
Running mutt with no arguments will make Mutt-ng
attempt to read your spool
mailbox. However, it is possible to read other mailboxes and
to send messages from the command line as well.
Mutt-NG Command Line OptionsOptionDescription-A expand an alias-a attach a file to a message-b specify a blind carbon-copy (BCC) address-c specify a carbon-copy (Cc) address-e specify a config command to be run after initialization files are read-f specify a mailbox to load-F specify an alternate file to read initialization commands-h print help on command line options-H specify a draft file from which to read a header and body-i specify a file to include in a message composition-m specify a default mailbox type-n do not read the system Muttngrc-p recall a postponed message-Q query a configuration variable-R open mailbox in read-only mode-s specify a subject (enclose in quotes if it contains spaces)-t dump the value of all variables to stdout-T dump the value of all changed variables to stdout-v show version number and compile-time definitions-x simulate the mailx(1) compose mode-y show a menu containing the files specified by the mailboxes command-z exit immediately if there are no messages in the mailbox-Z open the first folder with new message,exit immediately if none
To read messages in a mailbox
mutt [ -nz ] [ -F muttrc ] [ -m
type
] [ -f mailbox ]
To compose a new message
mutt [ -n ] [ -F muttrc ] [ -a
file
] [ -c address ] [ -i
filename
] [ -s subject ] address [
address
... ]
Mutt-ng also supports a ``batch'' mode to send prepared messages.
Simply redirect
input from the file you wish to send. For example,
mutt -s "data set for run #2"
professor@bigschool.edu
< ˜/run2.dat
This command will send a message to ``professor@bigschool.edu'' with a
subject
of ``data set for run #2''. In the body of the message will be the
contents
of the file ``˜/run2.dat''.
Patterns
PatternsPattern ModifierArgumentDescription~A all messages~b EXPR messages which contain EXPR in the message body~B EXPR messages which contain EXPR in the whole message~c EXPR messages carbon-copied to EXPR~C EXPR message is either to: or cc: EXPR~D deleted messages~d [MIN]-[MAX] messages with ``date-sent'' in a Date range~E expired messages~e EXPR message which contains EXPR in the ``Sender'' field~F flagged messages~f EXPR messages originating from EXPR~g cryptographically signed messages~G cryptographically encrypted messages~H EXPR messages with a spam attribute matching EXPR~h EXPR messages which contain EXPR in the message header~k message contains PGP key material~i EXPR message which match ID in the ``Message-ID'' field~L EXPR message is either originated or received by EXPR~l message is addressed to a known mailing list~m [MIN]-[MAX] message in the range MIN to MAX *)~M multipart messages~n [MIN]-[MAX] messages with a score in the range MIN to MAX *)~N new messages~O old messages~p message is addressed to you (consults alternates)~P message is from you (consults alternates)~Q messages which have been replied to~R read messages~r [MIN]-[MAX] messages with ``date-received'' in a Date range~S superseded messages~s EXPR messages having EXPR in the ``Subject'' field.~T tagged messages~t EXPR messages addressed to EXPR~U unread messages~u message is addressed to a subscribed mailing list~v message is part of a collapsed thread.~V cryptographically verified messages~w EXPR messages which contain EXPR in the `Newsgroups' field (if compiled with NNTP support)~x EXPR messages which contain EXPR in the `References' field~y EXPR messages which contain EXPR in the `X-Label' field~z [MIN]-[MAX] messages with a size in the range MIN to MAX *)~= duplicated messages (see $duplicate_threads)~$ unreferenced messages (requires threaded view)~* ``From'' contains realname and (syntactically) valid address (excluded are addresses matching against alternates or any alias)
Where EXPR are
regexp. Special attention has to be
made when using regular expressions inside of patterns. Specifically,
Mutt-ng's parser for these patterns will strip one level of backslash
(\),
which is normally used for quoting. If it is your intention to use a
backslash in the regular expression, you will need to use two
backslashes
instead (\\).
*) The forms <[MAX],
>[MIN]
,
[MIN]- and -[MAX]
are allowed, too.
Configuration Commands
The following are the commands understood by mutt.
account-hook
patterncommand
alias
keyaddress [ ,
address
,... ]
alias
[ * | key ... ]
alternates
regexp [ regexp
... ]
alternates
[ * | regexp ... ]
alternative-order
mimetype [ mimetype ... ]
alternative-order
mimetype [ mimetype ... ]
append-hook
regexpcommand
auto-view
mimetype [ mimetype ... ]
auto-view
mimetype [ mimetype ... ]
bind
mapkey
function
charset-hook
aliascharset
close-hook
regexpcommand
color
objectforeground
background
[ regexp ]
color
indexpattern [
pattern
... ]
exec
function [ function ... ]
fcc-hook
patternmailbox
fcc-save-hook
patternmailbox
folder-hook
patterncommand
hdr-order
header [ header
... ]
hdr-order
header [ header
... ]
charset-hook
charsetlocal-charset
ignore
pattern [ pattern
... ]
ignore
pattern [ pattern
... ]
lists
regexp [ regexp
... ]
lists
regexp [ regexp
... ]
macro
menukey
sequence
[ description ]
mailboxes
filename [ filename ... ]
mbox-hook
patternmailbox
message-hook
patterncommand
mime-lookup
mimetype [ mimetype ... ]
mime-lookup
mimetype [ mimetype ... ]
color
object attribute [ regexp ]
color
indexpattern [
pattern
... ]
my-hdr
string
my-hdr
field [ field ...
]
open-hook
regexpcommand
crypt-hook
patternkey-id
push
string
set
variable [variable
... ]
save-hook
regexpfilename
score-command
patternvalue
score-command
pattern [ pattern
... ]
send-hook
regexpcommand
reply-hook
regexpcommand
set
[no|inv]variable[=
value
] [ variable ... ]
set
variable [variable
... ]
source
filename
spam
patternformat
spam
pattern
lists
regexp [ regexp
... ]
lists
regexp [ regexp
... ]
set
variable [variable
... ]
unhook
hook-typeConfiguration variables
The following list contains all variables which, in the process of
providing more consistency, have been renamed and are partially even
removed already. The left column contains the old synonym variables,
the right column the full/new name: