3 <!doctype linuxdoc system>
7 <title>The Mutt Next Generation E-Mail Client
8 <author>by Andreas Krennmair <htmlurl url="mailto:ak@synflood.at" name="<ak@synflood.at>"> and others
9 originally based on <em>mutt</em> by Michael Elkins <htmlurl url="mailto:me@cs.hmc.edu" name="<me@cs.hmc.edu>"> and others
10 <date>version @VERSION@
12 Michael Elinks on mutt, circa 1995: ``All mail clients suck.
13 This one just sucks less.'' - Sven Guckes on mutt, ca. 2003: ``But it still sucks!''
18 <chapt>Introduction <!--{{{-->
20 <sect>Overview <!--{{{-->
22 <bf/Mutt-ng/ is a small but very powerful text-based MIME mail client. Mutt-ng is
23 highly configurable, and is well suited to the mail power user with advanced
24 features like key bindings, keyboard macros, mail threading, regular
25 expression searches and a powerful pattern matching language for selecting
28 <p>This documentation additionally contains documentation to <bf/Mutt-NG/, a
29 fork from Mutt with the goal to fix all the little annoyances of Mutt, to
30 integrate all the Mutt patches that are floating around in the web, and to
31 add other new features. Features specific to Mutt-ng will be discussed in
32 an extra section. Don't be confused when most of the documentation talk about
33 Mutt and not Mutt-ng, Mutt-ng contains all Mutt features, plus many more.
37 <sect>Mutt-ng Home Page <!--{{{-->
39 <htmlurl url="http://www.muttng.org/"
40 name="http://www.muttng.org">
44 <sect>Mailing Lists <!--{{{-->
48 <item><htmlurl url="https://lists.berlios.de/mailman/listinfo/mutt-ng-users"
49 name="mutt-ng-users@lists.berlios.de"> -- This is where the mutt-ng user support happens.
50 <item><htmlurl url="https://lists.berlios.de/mailman/listinfo/mutt-ng-devel" name="mutt-ng-devel@lists.berlios.de"> -- The development mailing list for mutt-ng
55 <sect>Software Distribution Sites <!--{{{-->
57 So far, there are no official releases of Mutt-ng, but you can download
58 daily snapshots from <htmlurl url="http://mutt-ng.berlios.de/snapshots/" name="http://mutt-ng.berlios.de/snapshots/">
64 Visit channel <em/#muttng/ on <htmlurl
65 url="http://www.freenode.net/" name="irc.freenode.net
66 (www.freenode.net)"> to chat with other people interested in Mutt-ng.
70 <sect>Weblog <!--{{{-->
72 If you want to read fresh news about the latest development in Mutt-ng, and get informed
73 about stuff like interesting, Mutt-ng-related articles and packages for your favorite
74 distribution, you can read and/or subscribe to our
75 <htmlurl url="http://mutt-ng.supersized.org/" name="Mutt-ng development weblog">.
79 <sect>Copyright <!--{{{-->
81 Mutt is Copyright (C) 1996-2000 Michael R. Elkins
82 <me@cs.hmc.edu> and others
84 This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
85 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
86 the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
87 (at your option) any later version.
89 This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
90 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
91 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
92 GNU General Public License for more details.
94 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
95 along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
96 Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111, USA.
102 <chapt>Getting Started <!--{{{-->
104 <sect>Basic Concepts <!--{{{-->
106 <sect1>Screens and Menus <!--{{{-->
108 <p>mutt-ng offers different screens of which every has its special
113 <item>The <em/index/ displays the contents of the currently opened
116 <item>The <em/pager/ is responsible for displaying messages, that
117 is, the header, the body and all attached parts.
119 <item>The <em/file browser/ offers operations on and displays
120 information of all folders mutt-ng should watch for mail.
122 <item>The <em/sidebar/ offers a permanent view of which mailboxes
123 contain how many total, new and/or flagged mails.
125 <item>The <em/help screen/ lists for all currently available
126 commands how to invoke them as well as a short description.
128 <item>The <em/compose/ menu is a comfortable interface take last
129 actions before sending mail: change subjects, attach files, remove
132 <item>The <em/attachement/ menu gives a summary and the tree
133 structure of the attachements of the current message.
135 <item>The <em/alias/ menu lists all or a fraction of the aliases
138 <item>The <em/key/ menu used in connection with encryption lets
139 users choose the right key to encrypt with.
143 <p>When mutt-ng is started without any further options, it'll open
144 the users default mailbox and display the index.
148 <sect1>Configuration <!--{{{-->
150 <p>Mutt-ng does <em/not/ feature an internal configuration
151 interface or menu due to the simple fact that this would be too
152 complex to handle (currently there are several <em/hundred/
153 variables which fine-tune the behaviour.)
155 <p>Mutt-ng is configured using configuration files which allow
156 users to add comments or manage them via version control systems
159 <p>Also, mutt-ng comes with a shell script named <tt/grml-muttng/
160 kindly contributed by users which really helps and eases the
161 creation of a user's configuration file. When downloading the
162 source code via a snapshot or via subversion, it can be found in
163 the <tt/contrib/ directory.
167 <sect1>Functions <!--{{{-->
169 <p>Mutt-ng offers great flexibility due to the use of functions:
170 internally, every action a user can make mutt-ng perform is named
171 ``function.'' Those functions are assigned to keys (or even key
172 sequences) and may be completely adjusted to user's needs. The
173 basic idea is that the impatient users get a very intuitive
174 interface to start off with and advanced users virtually get no
175 limits to adjustments.
179 <sect1>Interaction <!--{{{-->
181 <p>Mutt-ng has two basic concepts of user interaction:
185 <item>There is one dedicated line on the screen used to query
186 the user for input, issue any command, query variables and
187 display error and informational messages. As for every type of
188 user input, this requires manual action leading to the need of
191 <item>The automatized interface for interaction are the so
192 called <em/hooks/. Hooks specify actions the user wants to be
193 performed at well-defined situations: what to do when entering
194 which folder, what to do when displaying or replying to what
195 kind of message, etc. These are optional, i.e. a user doesn't
196 need to specify them but can do so.
202 <sect1>Modularization <!--{{{-->
204 <p>Although mutt-ng has many functionality built-in, many
205 features can be delegated to external tools to increase
206 flexibility: users can define programs to filter a message through
207 before displaying, users can use any program they want for
208 displaying a message, message types (such as PDF or PostScript)
209 for which mutt-ng doesn't have a built-in filter can be rendered
210 by arbitrary tools and so forth. Although mutt-ng has an alias
211 mechanism built-in, it features using external tools to query for
212 nearly every type of addresses from sources like LDAP, databases
213 or just the list of locally known users.
217 <sect1>Patterns <!--{{{-->
219 <p>Mutt-ng has a built-in pattern matching ``language'' which is
220 as widely used as possible to present a consistent interface to
221 users. The same ``pattern terms'' can be used for searching,
222 scoring, message selection and much more.
228 <sect>Screens and Menus <!--{{{-->
230 <sect1>Index <!--{{{-->
232 <p>The index is the screen that you usually see first when you
233 start mutt-ng. It gives an overview over your emails in the
234 currently opened mailbox. By default, this is your system mailbox.
235 The information you see in the index is a list of emails, each with
236 its number on the left, its flags (new email, important email,
237 email that has been forwarded or replied to, tagged email, ...),
238 the date when email was sent, its sender, the email size, and the
239 subject. Additionally, the index also shows thread hierarchies:
240 when you reply to an email, and the other person replies back, you
241 can see the other's person email in a "sub-tree" below. This is
242 especially useful for personal email between a group of people or
243 when you've subscribed to mailing lists.
247 <sect1>Pager <!--{{{-->
249 <p>The pager is responsible for showing the email content. On the
250 top of the pager you have an overview over the most important email
251 headers like the sender, the recipient, the subject, and much more
252 information. How much information you actually see depends on your
253 configuration, which we'll describe below.
255 <p>Below the headers, you see the email body which usually contains
256 the message. If the email contains any attachments, you will see
257 more information about them below the email body, or, if the
258 attachments are text files, you can view them directly in the
261 <p>To give the user a good overview, it is possible to configure
262 mutt-ng to show different things in the pager with different
263 colors. Virtually everything that can be described with a regular
264 expression can be colored, e.g. URLs, email addresses or smileys.
268 <sect1>File Browser <!--{{{-->
270 <p>The file browser is the interface to the local or remote
271 file system. When selecting a mailbox to open, the browser allows
272 custom sorting of items, limiting the items shown by a regular
273 expression and a freely adjustable format of what to display in
274 which way. It also allows for easy navigation through the
275 file system when selecting file(s) to attach to a message, select
276 multiple files to attach and many more.
280 <sect1>Sidebar <!--{{{-->
282 <p>The sidebar comes in handy to manage mails which are spread
283 over different folders. All folders users setup mutt-ng to watch
284 for new mail will be listed. The listing includes not only the
285 name but also the number of total messages, the number of new and
286 flagged messages. Items with new mail may be colored different
287 from those with flagged mail, items may be shortened or compress
288 if they're they to long to be printed in full form so that by
289 abbreviated names, user still now what the name stands for.
293 <sect1>Help <!--{{{-->
295 <p>The help screen is meant to offer a quick help to the user. It
296 lists the current configuration of key bindings and their
297 associated commands including a short description, and currently
298 unbound functions that still need to be associated with a key
299 binding (or alternatively, they can be called via the mutt-ng
304 <sect1>Compose Menu <!--{{{-->
306 <p>The compose menu features a split screen containing the
307 information which really matter before actually sending a
308 message by mail or posting an article to a newsgroup: who gets
309 the message as what (recipient, newsgroup, who gets what kind of
310 copy). Additionally, users may set security options like
311 deciding whether to sign, encrypt or sign and encrypt a message
314 <p>Also, it's used to attach messages, news articles or files to
315 a message, to re-edit any attachment including the message
320 <sect1>Alias Menu <!--{{{-->
322 <p>The alias menu is used to help users finding the recipients
323 of messages. For users who need to contact many people, there's
324 no need to remember addresses or names completely because it
325 allows for searching, too. The alias mechanism and thus the
326 alias menu also features grouping several addresses by a shorter
327 nickname, the actual alias, so that users don't have to select
328 each single recipient manually.
332 <sect1>Attachment Menu <!--{{{-->
334 <p>As will be later discussed in detail, mutt-ng features a good
335 and stable MIME implementation, that is, is greatly supports
336 sending and receiving messages of arbitrary type. The
337 attachment menu displays a message's structure in detail: what
338 content parts are attached to which parent part (which gives a
339 true tree structure), which type is of what type and what size.
340 Single parts may saved, deleted or modified to offer great and
341 easy access to message's internals.
345 <sect1>Key Menu <!--{{{-->
353 <sect>Moving Around in Menus <!--{{{-->
356 Information is presented in menus, very similar to ELM. Here is a table
357 showing the common keys used to navigate menus in Mutt-ng.
360 j or Down next-entry move to the next entry
361 k or Up previous-entry move to the previous entry
362 z or PageDn page-down go to the next page
363 Z or PageUp page-up go to the previous page
364 = or Home first-entry jump to the first entry
365 * or End last-entry jump to the last entry
366 q quit exit the current menu
367 ? help list all key bindings for the current menu
372 <sect>Editing Input Fields<label id="editing"> <!--{{{-->
374 Mutt-ng has a builtin line editor which is used as the primary way to input
375 textual data such as email addresses or filenames. The keys used to move
376 around while editing are very similar to those of Emacs.
379 ^A or <Home> bol move to the start of the line
380 ^B or <Left> backward-char move back one char
381 Esc B backward-word move back one word
382 ^D or <Delete> delete-char delete the char under the cursor
383 ^E or <End> eol move to the end of the line
384 ^F or <Right> forward-char move forward one char
385 Esc F forward-word move forward one word
386 <Tab> complete complete filename or alias
387 ^T complete-query complete address with query
388 ^K kill-eol delete to the end of the line
389 ESC d kill-eow delete to the end of the word
390 ^W kill-word kill the word in front of the cursor
391 ^U kill-line delete entire line
392 ^V quote-char quote the next typed key
393 <Up> history-up recall previous string from history
394 <Down> history-down recall next string from history
395 <BackSpace> backspace kill the char in front of the cursor
396 Esc u upcase-word convert word to upper case
397 Esc l downcase-word convert word to lower case
398 Esc c capitalize-word capitalize the word
400 <Return> n/a finish editing
403 You can remap the <em/editor/ functions using the <ref id="bind" name="bind">
404 command. For example, to make the <em/Delete/ key delete the character in
405 front of the cursor rather than under, you could use
407 <tt/bind editor <delete> backspace/
411 <sect>Reading Mail - The Index and Pager <!--{{{-->
414 Similar to many other mail clients, there are two modes in which mail is
415 read in Mutt-ng. The first is the index of messages in the mailbox, which is
416 called the ``index'' in Mutt-ng. The second mode is the display of the
417 message contents. This is called the ``pager.''
419 The next few sections describe the functions provided in each of these
422 <sect1>The Message Index
426 c change to a different mailbox
427 ESC c change to a folder in read-only mode
428 C copy the current message to another mailbox
429 ESC C decode a message and copy it to a folder
430 ESC s decode a message and save it to a folder
431 D delete messages matching a pattern
432 d delete the current message
434 l show messages matching a pattern
435 N mark message as new
436 o change the current sort method
437 O reverse sort the mailbox
438 q save changes and exit
440 T tag messages matching a pattern
441 t toggle the tag on a message
442 ESC t toggle tag on entire message thread
443 U undelete messages matching a pattern
446 x abort changes and exit
447 <Return> display-message
448 <Tab> jump to the next new message
449 @ show the author's full e-mail address
450 $ save changes to mailbox
453 ^L clear and redraw the screen
454 ^T untag messages matching a pattern
460 In addition to who sent the message and the subject, a short summary of
461 the disposition of each message is printed beside the message number.
462 Zero or more of the following ``flags'' may appear, which mean:
466 <tag/D/ message is deleted (is marked for deletion)
467 <tag/d/ message have attachments marked for deletion
468 <tag/K/ contains a PGP public key
469 <tag/N/ message is new
470 <tag/O/ message is old
471 <tag/P/ message is PGP encrypted
472 <tag/r/ message has been replied to
473 <tag/S/ message is signed, and the signature is succesfully verified
474 <tag/s/ message is signed
475 <tag/!/ message is flagged
476 <tag/*/ message is tagged
479 Some of the status flags can be turned on or off using
481 <item><bf/set-flag/ (default: w)
482 <item><bf/clear-flag/ (default: W)
486 Furthermore, the following flags reflect who the message is addressed
487 to. They can be customized with the
488 <ref id="to_chars" name="$to_chars"> variable.
492 <tag/+/ message is to you and you only
493 <tag/T/ message is to you, but also to or cc'ed to others
494 <tag/C/ message is cc'ed to you
495 <tag/F/ message is from you
496 <tag/L/ message is sent to a subscribed mailing list
502 By default, Mutt-ng uses its builtin pager to display the body of messages.
503 The pager is very similar to the Unix program <em/less/ though not nearly as
507 <Return> go down one line
508 <Space> display the next page (or next message if at the end of a message)
509 - go back to the previous page
510 n search for next match
511 S skip beyond quoted text
512 T toggle display of quoted text
514 / search for a regular expression (pattern)
515 ESC / search backwards for a regular expression
516 \ toggle search pattern coloring
517 ^ jump to the top of the message
520 In addition, many of the functions from the <em/index/ are available in
521 the pager, such as <em/delete-message/ or <em/copy-message/ (this is one
522 advantage over using an external pager to view messages).
524 Also, the internal pager supports a couple other advanced features. For
525 one, it will accept and translate the ``standard'' nroff sequences for
526 bold and underline. These sequences are a series of either the letter,
527 backspace (^H), the letter again for bold or the letter, backspace,
528 ``_'' for denoting underline. Mutt-ng will attempt to display these
529 in bold and underline respectively if your terminal supports them. If
530 not, you can use the bold and underline <ref id="color" name="color">
531 objects to specify a color or mono attribute for them.
533 Additionally, the internal pager supports the ANSI escape sequences for
534 character attributes. Mutt-ng translates them into the correct color and
535 character settings. The sequences Mutt-ng supports are:
539 ESC [ Ps;Ps;Ps;...;Ps m
546 3x Foreground color is x
547 4x Background color is x
560 Mutt-ng uses these attributes for handling text/enriched messages, and they
561 can also be used by an external <ref id="auto_view" name="autoview">
562 script for highlighting purposes. <bf/Note:/ If you change the colors for your
563 display, for example by changing the color associated with color2 for
564 your xterm, then that color will be used instead of green.
566 <sect1>Threaded Mode<label id="threads">
568 When the mailbox is <ref id="sort" name="sorted"> by <em/threads/, there are
569 a few additional functions available in the <em/index/ and <em/pager/ modes.
572 ^D delete-thread delete all messages in the current thread
573 ^U undelete-thread undelete all messages in the current thread
574 ^N next-thread jump to the start of the next thread
575 ^P previous-thread jump to the start of the previous thread
576 ^R read-thread mark the current thread as read
577 ESC d delete-subthread delete all messages in the current subthread
578 ESC u undelete-subthread undelete all messages in the current subthread
579 ESC n next-subthread jump to the start of the next subthread
580 ESC p previous-subthread jump to the start of the previous subthread
581 ESC r read-subthread mark the current subthread as read
582 ESC t tag-thread toggle the tag on the current thread
583 ESC v collapse-thread toggle collapse for the current thread
584 ESC V collapse-all toggle collapse for all threads
585 P parent-message jump to parent message in thread
588 <bf/Note:/ Collapsing a thread displays only the first message
589 in the thread and hides the others. This is useful when threads
590 contain so many messages that you can only see a handful of threads on
591 the screen. See %M in <ref id="index_format"name="$index_format">.
592 For example, you could use "%?M?(#%03M)&(%4l)?" in <ref
593 id="index_format"name="$index_format"> to optionally
594 display the number of hidden messages if the thread is collapsed.
596 See also: <ref id="strict_threads" name="$strict_threads">.
598 <sect1>Miscellaneous Functions
599 <p><bf/create-alias/<label id="create-alias"> (default: a)<newline>
601 Creates a new alias based upon the current message (or prompts for a
602 new one). Once editing is complete, an <ref id="alias" name="alias">
603 command is added to the file specified by the <ref id="alias_file"
604 name="$alias_file"> variable for future use. <bf/Note:/
605 Specifying an <ref id="alias_file" name="$alias_file">
606 does not add the aliases specified there-in, you must also <ref
607 id="source" name="source"> the file.
609 <p><bf/check-traditional-pgp/<label id="check-traditional-pgp"> (default: ESC P)<newline>
611 This function will search the current message for content signed or
612 encrypted with PGP the "traditional" way, that is, without proper
613 MIME tagging. Technically, this function will temporarily change
614 the MIME content types of the body parts containing PGP data; this
615 is similar to the <ref id="edit-type" name="edit-type"> function's
619 <p><bf/display-toggle-weed/<label id="display-toggle-weed"> (default: h)<newline>
621 Toggles the weeding of message header fields specified by <ref id="ignore"
622 name="ignore"> commands.
624 <p><bf/edit/<label id="edit"> (default: e)<newline>
626 This command (available in the ``index'' and ``pager'') allows you to
627 edit the raw current message as it's present in the mail folder.
628 After you have finished editing, the changed message will be
629 appended to the current folder, and the original message will be
632 <p><bf/edit-type/<label id="edit-type"><newline>
633 (default: ^E on the attachment menu, and in the pager and index menus; ^T on the
636 This command is used to temporarily edit an attachment's content
637 type to fix, for instance, bogus character set parameters. When
638 invoked from the index or from the pager, you'll have the
639 opportunity to edit the top-level attachment's content type. On the
640 <ref id="attach_menu" name="attachment menu">, you can change any
641 attachment's content type. These changes are not persistent, and get
642 lost upon changing folders.
644 Note that this command is also available on the <ref
645 id="compose_menu" name="compose menu">. There, it's used to
646 fine-tune the properties of attachments you are going to send.
648 <p><bf/enter-command/<label id="enter-command"> (default: ``:'')<newline>
650 This command is used to execute any command you would normally put in a
651 configuration file. A common use is to check the settings of variables, or
652 in conjunction with <ref id="macro" name="macros"> to change settings on the
655 <p><bf/extract-keys/<label id="extract-keys"> (default: ^K)<newline>
657 This command extracts PGP public keys from the current or tagged
658 message(s) and adds them to your PGP public key ring.
660 <p><bf/forget-passphrase/<label id="forget-passphrase"> (default:
663 This command wipes the passphrase(s) from memory. It is useful, if
664 you misspelled the passphrase.
666 <p><bf/list-reply/<label id="list-reply"> (default: L)<newline>
668 Reply to the current or tagged message(s) by extracting any addresses which
669 match the regular expressions given by the <ref id="lists" name="lists or subscribe">
670 commands, but also honor any <tt/Mail-Followup-To/ header(s) if the
671 <ref id="honor_followup_to" name="$honor_followup_to">
672 configuration variable is set. Using this when replying to messages posted
673 to mailing lists helps avoid duplicate copies being sent to the author of
674 the message you are replying to.
676 <bf/pipe-message/<label id="pipe-message"> (default: |)<newline>
678 Asks for an external Unix command and pipes the current or
679 tagged message(s) to it. The variables <ref id="pipe_decode"
680 name="$pipe_decode">, <ref id="pipe_split"
681 name="$pipe_split">, <ref id="pipe_sep"
682 name="$pipe_sep"> and <ref id="wait_key"
683 name="$wait_key"> control the exact behavior of this
686 <bf/resend-message/<label id="resend-message"> (default: ESC e)<newline>
688 With resend-message, mutt takes the current message as a template for a
689 new message. This function is best described as "recall from arbitrary
690 folders". It can conveniently be used to forward MIME messages while
691 preserving the original mail structure. Note that the amount of headers
692 included here depends on the value of the <ref id="weed" name="$weed">
695 This function is also available from the attachment menu. You can use this
696 to easily resend a message which was included with a bounce message
697 as a message/rfc822 body part.
699 <bf/shell-escape/<label id="shell-escape"> (default: !)<newline>
701 Asks for an external Unix command and executes it. The <ref
702 id="wait_key" name="$wait_key"> can be used to control
703 whether Mutt-ng will wait for a key to be pressed when the command returns
704 (presumably to let the user read the output of the command), based on
705 the return status of the named command.
707 <bf/toggle-quoted/<label id="toggle-quoted"> (default: T)<newline>
709 The <em/pager/ uses the <ref id="quote_regexp"
710 name="$quote_regexp"> variable to detect quoted text when
711 displaying the body of the message. This function toggles the display
712 of the quoted material in the message. It is particularly useful when
713 are interested in just the response and there is a large amount of
714 quoted text in the way.
716 <bf/skip-quoted/<label id="skip-quoted"> (default: S)<newline>
718 This function will go to the next line of non-quoted text which come
719 after a line of quoted text in the internal pager.
723 <sect>Sending Mail <!--{{{-->
726 The following bindings are available in the <em/index/ for sending
730 m compose compose a new message
731 r reply reply to sender
732 g group-reply reply to all recipients
733 L list-reply reply to mailing list address
734 f forward forward message
735 b bounce bounce (remail) message
736 ESC k mail-key mail a PGP public key to someone
739 Bouncing a message sends the message as is to the recipient you
740 specify. Forwarding a message allows you to add comments or
741 modify the message you are forwarding. These items are discussed
742 in greater detail in the next chapter <ref id="forwarding_mail"
743 name="``Forwarding and Bouncing Mail''">.
745 <sect1>Composing new messages <!--{{{-->
747 <p>When you want to send an email using mutt-ng, simply press <tt/m/ on
748 your keyboard. Then, mutt-ng asks for the recipient via a prompt in
755 <p>After you've finished entering the recipient(s), press return. If you
756 want to send an email to more than one recipient, separate the email
757 addresses using the comma "<tt/,/". Mutt-ng then asks you for the email
758 subject. Again, press return after you've entered it. After that, mutt-ng
759 got the most important information from you, and starts up an editor
760 where you can then enter your email.
762 <p>The editor that is called is selected in the following way: you
763 can e.g. set it in the mutt-ng configuration:
766 set editor = "vim +/^$/ -c ':set tw=72'"
771 <p>If you don't set your preferred editor in your configuration, mutt-ng
772 first looks whether the environment variable <tt/$VISUAL/ is set, and if
773 so, it takes its value as editor command. Otherwise, it has a look
774 at <tt/$EDITOR/ and takes its value if it is set. If no editor command
775 can be found, mutt-ng simply assumes <tt/vi/ to be the default editor,
776 since it's the most widespread editor in the Unix world and it's pretty
777 safe to assume that it is installed and available.
779 <p>When you've finished entering your message, save it and quit your
780 editor. Mutt-ng will then present you with a summary screen, the compose menu.
781 On the top, you see a summary of the most important available key commands.
782 Below that, you see the sender, the recipient(s), Cc and/or Bcc
783 recipient(s), the subject, the reply-to address, and optionally
784 information where the sent email will be stored and whether it should
785 be digitally signed and/or encrypted.
787 <p>Below that, you see a list of "attachments". The mail you've just
788 entered before is also an attachment, but due to its special type
789 (it's plain text), it will be displayed as the normal message on
792 <p>At this point, you can add more attachments, pressing <tt/a/, you
793 can edit the recipient addresses, pressing <tt/t/ for the "To:" field,
794 <tt/c/ for the "Cc:" field, and <tt/b/ for the "Bcc: field. You can
795 also edit the subject the subject by simply pressing <tt/s/ or the
796 email message that you've entered before by pressing <tt/e/. You will
797 then again return to the editor. You can even edit the sender, by pressing
798 <tt/<esc>f/, but this shall only be used with caution.
800 <p>Alternatively, you can configure mutt-ng in a way that most of the
801 above settings can be edited using the editor. Therefore, you only
802 need to add the following to your configuration:
808 <p>Once you have finished editing the body of your mail message, you are
809 returned to the <em/compose/ menu. The following options are available:
812 a attach-file attach a file
813 A attach-message attach message(s) to the message
814 ESC k attach-key attach a PGP public key
815 d edit-description edit description on attachment
816 D detach-file detach a file
817 t edit-to edit the To field
818 ESC f edit-from edit the From field
819 r edit-reply-to edit the Reply-To field
820 c edit-cc edit the Cc field
821 b edit-bcc edit the Bcc field
822 y send-message send the message
823 s edit-subject edit the Subject
824 S smime-menu select S/MIME options
825 f edit-fcc specify an ``Fcc'' mailbox
826 p pgp-menu select PGP options
827 P postpone-message postpone this message until later
828 q quit quit (abort) sending the message
829 w write-fcc write the message to a folder
830 i ispell check spelling (if available on your system)
831 ^F forget-passphrase wipe passphrase(s) from memory
834 <bf/Note:/ The attach-message function will prompt you for a folder to
835 attach messages from. You can now tag messages in that folder and they
836 will be attached to the message you are sending. Note that certain
837 operations like composing a new mail, replying, forwarding, etc. are
838 not permitted when you are in that folder. The %r in <ref
839 id="status_format" name="$status_format"> will change to
840 a 'A' to indicate that you are in attach-message mode.
844 <sect1>Replying <!--{{{-->
846 <sect2>Simple Replies <!--{{{-->
848 <p>When you want to reply to an email message, select it in the index
849 menu and then press <tt/r/. Mutt-ng's behaviour is then similar to the
850 behaviour when you compose a message: first, you will be asked for
851 the recipient, then for the subject, and then, mutt-ng will start
852 the editor with the quote attribution and the quoted message. This
853 can e.g. look like the example below.
856 On Mon, Mar 07, 2005 at 05:02:12PM +0100, Michael Svensson wrote:
857 > Bill, can you please send last month's progress report to Mr.
858 > Morgan? We also urgently need the cost estimation for the new
859 > production server that we want to set up before our customer's
860 > project will go live.
863 <p>You can start editing the email message. It is strongly
864 recommended to put your answer <em/below/ the quoted text and to
865 only quote what is really necessary and that you refer to. Putting
866 your answer on top of the quoted message, is, although very
867 widespread, very often not considered to be a polite way to answer
870 <p>The quote attribution is configurable, by default it is set to
872 set attribution = "On %d, %n wrote:"
875 <p>It can also be set to something more compact, e.g.
877 set attribution = "attribution="* %n <%a> [%(%y-%m-%d %H:%M)]:"
880 <p>The example above results in the following attribution:
882 * Michael Svensson <svensson@foobar.com> [05-03-06 17:02]:
883 > Bill, can you please send last month's progress report to Mr.
884 > Morgan? We also urgently need the cost estimation for the new
885 > production server that we want to set up before our customer's
886 > project will go live.
889 <p>Generally, try to keep your attribution short yet
890 information-rich. It is <em/not/ the right place for witty quotes,
891 long "attribution" novels or anything like that: the right place
892 for such things is - if at all - the email signature at the very
893 bottom of the message.
895 <p>When you're done with writing your message, save and quit the
896 editor. As before, you will return to the compose menu, which is
897 used in the same way as before.
901 <sect2>Group Replies <!--{{{-->
903 <p>In the situation where a group of people uses email as a
904 discussion, most of the emails will have one or more recipients,
905 and probably several "Cc:" recipients. The group reply functionality
906 ensures that when you press <tt/g/ instead of <tt/r/ to do a reply,
907 each and every recipient that is contained in the original message
908 will receive a copy of the message, either as normal recipient or
913 <sect2>List Replies <!--{{{-->
915 <p>When you use mailing lists, it's generally better to send your
916 reply to a message only to the list instead of the list and the
917 original author. To make this easy to use, mutt-ng features list
920 <p>To do a list reply, simply press <tt/L/. If the email contains
921 a <tt/Mail-Followup-To:/ header, its value will be used as reply
922 address. Otherwise, mutt-ng searches through all mail addresses in
923 the original message and tries to match them a list of regular
924 expressions which can be specified using the <tt/lists/ command.
925 If any of the regular expression matches, a mailing
926 list address has been found, and it will be used as reply address.
929 lists linuxevent@luga\.at vuln-dev@ mutt-ng-users@
932 <p>Nowadays, most mailing list software like GNU Mailman adds a
933 <tt/Mail-Followup-To:/ header to their emails anyway, so setting
934 <tt/lists/ is hardly ever necessary in practice.
940 <sect1>Editing the message header <!--{{{-->
942 When editing the header of your outgoing message, there are a couple of
943 special features available.
945 If you specify<newline>
946 <tt/Fcc:/ <em/filename/<newline>
947 Mutt-ng will pick up <em/filename/
948 just as if you had used the <em/edit-fcc/ function in the <em/compose/ menu.
950 You can also attach files to your message by specifying<newline>
951 <tt/Attach:/ <em/filename/ [ <em/description/ ]<newline>
952 where <em/filename/ is the file to attach and <em/description/ is an
953 optional string to use as the description of the attached file.
955 When replying to messages, if you remove the <em/In-Reply-To:/ field from
956 the header field, Mutt-ng will not generate a <em/References:/ field, which
957 allows you to create a new message thread.
959 Also see <ref id="edit_headers" name="edit_headers">.
963 <sect1>Using Mutt-ng with PGP <!--{{{-->
966 If you want to use PGP, you can specify
968 <tt/Pgp:/ [ <tt/E/ | <tt/S/ | <tt/S/<em/<id>/ ] <newline>
970 ``E'' encrypts, ``S'' signs and
971 ``S<id>'' signs with the given key, setting <ref
972 id="pgp_sign_as" name="$pgp_sign_as"> permanently.
974 If you have told mutt to PGP encrypt a message, it will guide you
975 through a key selection process when you try to send the message.
976 Mutt-ng will not ask you any questions about keys which have a
977 certified user ID matching one of the message recipients' mail
978 addresses. However, there may be situations in which there are
979 several keys, weakly certified user ID fields, or where no matching
982 In these cases, you are dropped into a menu with a list of keys from
983 which you can select one. When you quit this menu, or mutt can't
984 find any matching keys, you are prompted for a user ID. You can, as
985 usually, abort this prompt using <tt/^G/. When you do so, mutt will
986 return to the compose screen.
988 Once you have successfully finished the key selection, the message
989 will be encrypted using the selected public keys, and sent out.
991 Most fields of the entries in the key selection menu (see also <ref
992 id="pgp_entry_format" name="$pgp_entry_format">)
993 have obvious meanings. But some explanations on the capabilities, flags,
994 and validity fields are in order.
996 The flags sequence (%f) will expand to one of the following flags:
998 R The key has been revoked and can't be used.
999 X The key is expired and can't be used.
1000 d You have marked the key as disabled.
1001 c There are unknown critical self-signature
1005 The capabilities field (%c) expands to a two-character sequence
1006 representing a key's capabilities. The first character gives
1007 the key's encryption capabilities: A minus sign (<bf/-/) means
1008 that the key cannot be used for encryption. A dot (<bf/./) means that
1009 it's marked as a signature key in one of the user IDs, but may
1010 also be used for encryption. The letter <bf/e/ indicates that
1011 this key can be used for encryption.
1013 The second character indicates the key's signing capabilities. Once
1014 again, a ``<bf/-/'' implies ``not for signing'', ``<bf/./'' implies
1015 that the key is marked as an encryption key in one of the user-ids, and
1016 ``<bf/s/'' denotes a key which can be used for signing.
1018 Finally, the validity field (%t) indicates how well-certified a user-id
1019 is. A question mark (<bf/?/) indicates undefined validity, a minus
1020 character (<bf/-/) marks an untrusted association, a space character
1021 means a partially trusted association, and a plus character (<bf/+/)
1022 indicates complete validity.
1026 <sect1>Sending anonymous messages via mixmaster <!--{{{-->
1029 You may also have configured mutt to co-operate with Mixmaster, an
1030 anonymous remailer. Mixmaster permits you to send your messages
1031 anonymously using a chain of remailers. Mixmaster support in mutt is for
1032 mixmaster version 2.04 (beta 45 appears to be the latest) and 2.03.
1033 It does not support earlier versions or the later so-called version 3 betas,
1034 of which the latest appears to be called 2.9b23.
1036 To use it, you'll have to obey certain restrictions. Most
1037 important, you cannot use the <tt/Cc/ and <tt/Bcc/ headers. To tell
1038 Mutt-ng to use mixmaster, you have to select a remailer chain, using
1039 the mix function on the compose menu.
1041 The chain selection screen is divided into two parts. In the
1042 (larger) upper part, you get a list of remailers you may use. In
1043 the lower part, you see the currently selected chain of remailers.
1045 You can navigate in the chain using the <tt/chain-prev/ and
1046 <tt/chain-next/ functions, which are by default bound to the left
1047 and right arrows and to the <tt/h/ and <tt/l/ keys (think vi
1048 keyboard bindings). To insert a remailer at the current chain
1049 position, use the <tt/insert/ function. To append a remailer behind
1050 the current chain position, use <tt/select-entry/ or <tt/append/.
1051 You can also delete entries from the chain, using the corresponding
1052 function. Finally, to abandon your changes, leave the menu, or
1053 <tt/accept/ them pressing (by default) the <tt/Return/ key.
1055 Note that different remailers do have different capabilities,
1056 indicated in the %c entry of the remailer menu lines (see
1057 <ref id="mix_entry_format"
1058 name="$mix_entry_format">). Most important is
1059 the ``middleman'' capability, indicated by a capital ``M'': This
1060 means that the remailer in question cannot be used as the final
1061 element of a chain, but will only forward messages to other
1062 mixmaster remailers. For details on the other capabilities, please
1063 have a look at the mixmaster documentation.
1069 <sect>Forwarding and Bouncing Mail<label id="forwarding_mail"> <!--{{{-->
1071 <p>Often, it is necessary to forward mails to other people.
1072 Therefore, mutt-ng supports forwarding messages in two different
1075 <p>The first one is regular forwarding, as you probably know it from
1076 other mail clients. You simply press <tt/f/, enter the recipient
1077 email address, the subject of the forwarded email, and then you can
1078 edit the message to be forwarded in the editor. The forwarded
1079 message is separated from the rest of the message via the two
1083 ----- Forwarded message from Lucas User <luser@example.com> -----
1085 From: Lucas User <luser@example.com>
1086 Date: Thu, 02 Dec 2004 03:08:34 +0100
1087 To: Michael Random <mrandom@example.com>
1088 Subject: Re: blackmail
1090 Pay me EUR 50,000.- cash or your favorite stuffed animal will die
1094 ----- End forwarded message -----</verb>
1096 <p>When you're done with editing the mail, save and quit the editor,
1097 and you will return to the compose menu, the same menu you also
1098 encounter when composing or replying to mails.
1100 <p>The second mode of forwarding emails with mutt-ng is the
1101 so-called <em/bouncing/: when you bounce an email to another
1102 address, it will be sent in practically the same format you send it
1103 (except for headers that are created during transporting the
1104 message). To bounce a message, press <tt/b/ and enter the recipient
1105 email address. By default, you are then asked whether you really
1106 want to bounce the message to the specified recipient. If you answer
1107 with yes, the message will then be bounced.
1109 <p>To the recipient, the bounced email will look as if he got it
1110 like a regular email where he was <tt/Bcc:/ recipient. The only
1111 possibility to find out whether it was a bounced email is to
1112 carefully study the email headers and to find out which host really
1117 <sect>Postponing Mail<label id="postponing_mail"> <!--{{{-->
1120 At times it is desirable to delay sending a message that you have
1121 already begun to compose. When the <em/postpone-message/ function is
1122 used in the <em/compose/ menu, the body of your message and attachments
1123 are stored in the mailbox specified by the <ref id="postponed"
1124 name="$postponed"> variable. This means that you can recall the
1125 message even if you exit Mutt-ng and then restart it at a later time.
1127 Once a message is postponed, there are several ways to resume it. From the
1128 command line you can use the ``-p'' option, or if you <em/compose/ a new
1129 message from the <em/index/ or <em/pager/ you will be prompted if postponed
1130 messages exist. If multiple messages are currently postponed, the
1131 <em/postponed/ menu will pop up and you can select which message you would
1134 <bf/Note:/ If you postpone a reply to a message, the reply setting of
1135 the message is only updated when you actually finish the message and
1136 send it. Also, you must be in the same folder with the message you
1137 replied to for the status of the message to be updated.
1139 See also the <ref id="postpone" name="$postpone"> quad-option.
1145 <chapt>Configuration <!--{{{-->
1147 <sect>Locations of Configuration Files <!--{{{-->
1148 <p>While the default configuration (or ``preferences'') make Mutt-ng usable right out
1149 of the box, it is often desirable to tailor Mutt-ng to suit your own tastes. When
1150 Mutt-ng is first invoked, it will attempt to read the ``system'' configuration
1151 file (defaults set by your local system administrator), unless the ``-n'' <ref
1152 id="commandline" name="command line"> option is specified. This file is
1153 typically <tt>/usr/local/share/muttng/Muttngrc</tt> or <tt>/etc/Muttngrc</tt>,
1154 Mutt-ng users will find this file in <tt>/usr/local/share/muttng/Muttrc</tt> or
1155 <tt>/etc/Muttngrc</tt>. Mutt will next look for a file named <tt>.muttrc</tt>
1156 in your home directory, Mutt-ng will look for <tt>.muttngrc</tt>. If this file
1157 does not exist and your home directory has a subdirectory named <tt/.mutt/,
1158 mutt try to load a file named <tt>.muttng/muttngrc</tt>.
1160 <tt>.muttrc</tt> (or <tt>.muttngrc</tt> for Mutt-ng) is the file where you will
1161 usually place your <ref id="commands" name="commands"> to configure Mutt-ng.
1165 <sect>Syntax of Initialization Files<label id="muttrc-syntax"> <!--{{{-->
1168 An initialization file consists of a series of <ref id="commands"
1169 name="commands">. Each line of the file may contain one or more commands.
1170 When multiple commands are used, they must be separated by a semicolon (;).
1172 set realname='Mutt-ng user' ; ignore x-
1174 The hash mark, or pound sign
1175 (``#''), is used as a ``comment'' character. You can use it to
1176 annotate your initialization file. All text after the comment character
1177 to the end of the line is ignored. For example,
1180 my_hdr X-Disclaimer: Why are you listening to me? # This is a comment
1183 Single quotes (') and double quotes (&dquot;) can be used to quote strings
1184 which contain spaces or other special characters. The difference between
1185 the two types of quotes is similar to that of many popular shell programs,
1186 namely that a single quote is used to specify a literal string (one that is
1187 not interpreted for shell variables or quoting with a backslash [see
1188 next paragraph]), while double quotes indicate a string for which
1189 should be evaluated. For example, backtics are evaluated inside of double
1190 quotes, but <bf/not/ for single quotes.
1192 \ quotes the next character, just as in shells such as bash and zsh.
1193 For example, if want to put quotes ``&dquot;'' inside of a string, you can use
1194 ``\'' to force the next character to be a literal instead of interpreted
1197 set realname="Michael \"MuttDude\" Elkins"
1200 ``\\'' means to insert a literal ``\'' into the line.
1201 ``\n'' and ``\r'' have their usual C meanings of linefeed and
1202 carriage-return, respectively.
1204 A \ at the end of a line can be used to split commands over
1205 multiple lines, provided that the split points don't appear in the
1206 middle of command names.
1208 Please note that, unlike the various shells, mutt-ng interprets a ``\''
1209 at the end of a line also in comments. This allows you to disable a command
1210 split over multiple lines with only one ``#''.
1214 set realname="Michael \"MuttDude\" Elkins"
1217 When testing your config files, beware the following caveat. The backslash
1218 at the end of the commented line extends the current line with the next line
1219 - then referred to as a ``continuation line''. As the first line is
1220 commented with a hash (#) all following continuation lines are also
1221 part of a comment and therefore are ignored, too. So take care of comments
1222 when continuation lines are involved within your setup files!
1234 line1 ``continues'' until line4. however, the part after the # is a
1235 comment which includes line3 and line4. line5 is a new line of its own and
1236 thus is interpreted again.
1238 It is also possible to substitute the output of a Unix command in an
1239 initialization file. This is accomplished by enclosing the command in
1240 backquotes (``). For example,
1242 my_hdr X-Operating-System: `uname -a`
1244 The output of the Unix command ``uname -a'' will be substituted before the
1245 line is parsed. Note that since initialization files are line oriented, only
1246 the first line of output from the Unix command will be substituted.
1248 UNIX environments can be accessed like the way it is done in shells like
1249 sh and bash: Prepend the name of the environment by a ``$''. For
1252 set record=+sent_on_$HOSTNAME
1255 This also applies for all configuration variables known to mutt-ng,
1258 set imap_home_namespace = $folder
1261 The commands understood by mutt are explained in the next paragraphs.
1262 For a complete list, see the <ref id="commands" name="command reference">.
1266 <sect>Defining/Using aliases<label id="alias"> <!--{{{-->
1269 Usage: <tt/alias/ <em/key/ <em/address/ [ , <em/address/, ... ]
1271 It's usually very cumbersome to remember or type out the address of someone
1272 you are communicating with. Mutt-ng allows you to create ``aliases'' which map
1273 a short string to a full address.
1275 <bf/Note:/ if you want to create an alias for a group (by specifying more than
1276 one address), you <bf/must/ separate the addresses with a comma (``,'').
1278 To remove an alias or aliases (``*'' means all aliases):
1280 <tt/unalias/ [ * | <em/key/ <em/.../ ]
1283 alias muttdude me@cs.hmc.edu (Michael Elkins)
1284 alias theguys manny, moe, jack
1287 Unlike other mailers, Mutt-ng doesn't require aliases to be defined
1288 in a special file. The <tt/alias/ command can appear anywhere in
1289 a configuration file, as long as this file is <ref id="source"
1290 name="sourced">. Consequently, you can have multiple alias files, or
1291 you can have all aliases defined in your muttrc.
1293 On the other hand, the <ref id="create-alias" name="create-alias">
1294 function can use only one file, the one pointed to by the <ref
1295 id="alias_file" name="$alias_file"> variable (which is
1296 <tt>˜/.muttrc</tt> by default). This file is not special either,
1297 in the sense that Mutt-ng will happily append aliases to any file, but in
1298 order for the new aliases to take effect you need to explicitly <ref
1299 id="source" name="source"> this file too.
1304 source /usr/local/share/Mutt-ng.aliases
1305 source ~/.mail_aliases
1306 set alias_file=~/.mail_aliases
1309 To use aliases, you merely use the alias at any place in mutt where mutt
1310 prompts for addresses, such as the <em/To:/ or <em/Cc:/ prompt. You can
1311 also enter aliases in your editor at the appropriate headers if you have the
1312 <ref id="edit_headers" name="$edit_headers"> variable set.
1314 In addition, at the various address prompts, you can use the tab character
1315 to expand a partial alias to the full alias. If there are multiple matches,
1316 mutt will bring up a menu with the matching aliases. In order to be
1317 presented with the full list of aliases, you must hit tab with out a partial
1318 alias, such as at the beginning of the prompt or after a comma denoting
1321 In the alias menu, you can select as many aliases as you want with the
1322 <em/select-entry/ key (default: RET), and use the <em/exit/ key
1323 (default: q) to return to the address prompt.
1327 <sect>Changing the default key bindings<label id="bind"> <!--{{{-->
1329 Usage: <tt/bind/ <em/map/ <em/key/ <em/function/
1331 This command allows you to change the default key bindings (operation
1332 invoked when pressing a key).
1334 <em/map/ specifies in which menu the binding belongs. Multiple maps may
1335 be specified by separating them with commas (no additional whitespace is
1336 allowed). The currently defined maps are:
1341 This is not a real menu, but is used as a fallback for all of the other
1342 menus except for the pager and editor modes. If a key is not defined in
1343 another menu, Mutt-ng will look for a binding to use in this menu. This allows
1344 you to bind a key to a certain function in multiple menus instead of having
1345 multiple bind statements to accomplish the same task.
1347 The alias menu is the list of your personal aliases as defined in your
1348 muttrc. It is the mapping from a short alias name to the full email
1349 address(es) of the recipient(s).
1351 The attachment menu is used to access the attachments on received messages.
1353 The browser is used for both browsing the local directory structure, and for
1354 listing all of your incoming mailboxes.
1356 The editor is the line-based editor the user enters text data.
1358 The index is the list of messages contained in a mailbox.
1360 The compose menu is the screen used when sending a new message.
1362 The pager is the mode used to display message/attachment data, and help
1365 The pgp menu is used to select the OpenPGP keys used for encrypting outgoing
1368 The postpone menu is similar to the index menu, except is used when
1369 recalling a message the user was composing, but saved until later.
1372 <em/key/ is the key (or key sequence) you wish to bind. To specify a
1373 control character, use the sequence <em/\Cx/, where <em/x/ is the
1374 letter of the control character (for example, to specify control-A use
1375 ``\Ca''). Note that the case of <em/x/ as well as <em/\C/ is
1376 ignored, so that <em/\CA/, <em/\Ca/, <em/\cA/ and <em/\ca/ are all
1377 equivalent. An alternative form is to specify the key as a three digit
1378 octal number prefixed with a ``\'' (for example <em/\177/ is
1379 equivalent to <em/\c?/).
1381 In addition, <em/key/ may consist of:
1386 <backtab> backtab / shift-tab
1396 <pagedown> Page Down
1397 <backspace> Backspace
1406 <f10> function key 10
1409 <em/key/ does not need to be enclosed in quotes unless it contains a
1412 <em/function/ specifies which action to take when <em/key/ is pressed.
1413 For a complete list of functions, see the <ref id="functions"
1414 name="reference">. The special function <tt/noop/ unbinds the specified key
1419 <sect>Defining aliases for character sets <label id="charset-hook"> <!--{{{-->
1421 Usage: <tt/charset-hook/ <em/alias/ <em/charset/<newline>
1422 Usage: <tt/iconv-hook/ <em/charset/ <em/local-charset/
1424 The <tt/charset-hook/ command defines an alias for a character set.
1425 This is useful to properly display messages which are tagged with a
1426 character set name not known to mutt.
1428 The <tt/iconv-hook/ command defines a system-specific name for a
1429 character set. This is helpful when your systems character
1430 conversion library insists on using strange, system-specific names
1435 <sect>Setting variables based upon mailbox<label id="folder-hook"> <!--{{{-->
1437 Usage: <tt/folder-hook/ [!]<em/regexp/ <em/command/
1439 It is often desirable to change settings based on which mailbox you are
1440 reading. The folder-hook command provides a method by which you can execute
1441 any configuration command. <em/regexp/ is a regular expression specifying
1442 in which mailboxes to execute <em/command/ before loading. If a mailbox
1443 matches multiple folder-hook's, they are executed in the order given in the
1446 <bf/Note:/ if you use the ``!'' shortcut for <ref id="spoolfile"
1447 name="$spoolfile"> at the beginning of the pattern, you must place it
1448 inside of double or single quotes in order to distinguish it from the
1449 logical <em/not/ operator for the expression.
1451 Note that the settings are <em/not/ restored when you leave the mailbox.
1452 For example, a command action to perform is to change the sorting method
1453 based upon the mailbox being read:
1456 folder-hook mutt set sort=threads
1459 However, the sorting method is not restored to its previous value when
1460 reading a different mailbox. To specify a <em/default/ command, use the
1465 folder-hook . set sort=date-sent
1470 <sect>Keyboard macros<label id="macro"> <!--{{{-->
1472 Usage: <tt/macro/ <em/menu/ <em/key/ <em/sequence/ [ <em/description/ ]
1474 Macros are useful when you would like a single key to perform a series of
1475 actions. When you press <em/key/ in menu <em/menu/, Mutt-ng will behave as if
1476 you had typed <em/sequence/. So if you have a common sequence of commands
1477 you type, you can create a macro to execute those commands with a single
1480 <em/menu/ is the <ref id="maps" name="map"> which the macro will be bound.
1481 Multiple maps may be specified by separating multiple menu arguments by
1482 commas. Whitespace may not be used in between the menu arguments and the
1483 commas separating them.
1485 <em/key/ and <em/sequence/ are expanded by the same rules as the <ref
1486 id="bind" name="key bindings">. There are some additions however. The
1487 first is that control characters in <em/sequence/ can also be specified
1488 as <em/ˆx/. In order to get a caret (`ˆ'') you need to use
1489 <em/ˆˆ/. Secondly, to specify a certain key such as <em/up/
1490 or to invoke a function directly, you can use the format
1491 <em/<key name>/ and <em/<function name>/. For a listing of key
1492 names see the section on <ref id="bind" name="key bindings">. Functions
1493 are listed in the <ref id="functions" name="function reference">.
1495 The advantage with using function names directly is that the macros will
1496 work regardless of the current key bindings, so they are not dependent on
1497 the user having particular key definitions. This makes them more robust
1498 and portable, and also facilitates defining of macros in files used by more
1499 than one user (eg. the system Muttngrc).
1501 Optionally you can specify a descriptive text after <em/sequence/,
1502 which is shown in the help screens.
1504 <bf/Note:/ Macro definitions (if any) listed in the help screen(s), are
1505 silently truncated at the screen width, and are not wrapped.
1509 <sect>Using color and mono video attributes<label id="color"> <!--{{{-->
1511 Usage: <tt/color/ <em/object/ <em/foreground/ <em/background/ [ <em/regexp/ ]<newline>
1512 Usage: <tt/color/ index <em/foreground/ <em/background/ <em/pattern/<newline>
1513 Usage: <tt/uncolor/ index <em/pattern/ [ <em/pattern/ ... ]<newline>
1515 If your terminal supports color, you can spice up Mutt-ng by creating your own
1516 color scheme. To define the color of an object (type of information), you
1517 must specify both a foreground color <bf/and/ a background color (it is not
1518 possible to only specify one or the other).
1520 <em/object/ can be one of:
1524 <item>body (match <em/regexp/ in the body of messages)
1525 <item>bold (highlighting bold patterns in the body of messages)
1526 <item>error (error messages printed by Mutt-ng)
1527 <item>header (match <em/regexp/ in the message header)
1528 <item>hdrdefault (default color of the message header in the pager)
1529 <item>index (match <em/pattern/ in the message index)
1530 <item>indicator (arrow or bar used to indicate the current item in a menu)
1531 <item>markers (the ``+'' markers at the beginning of wrapped lines in the pager)
1532 <item>message (informational messages)
1534 <item>quoted (text matching <ref id="quote_regexp"
1535 name="$quote_regexp"> in the body of a message)
1536 <item>quoted1, quoted2, ..., quoted<bf/N/ (higher levels of quoting)
1537 <item>search (highlighting of words in the pager)
1539 <item>status (mode lines used to display info about the mailbox or message)
1540 <item>tilde (the ``˜'' used to pad blank lines in the pager)
1541 <item>tree (thread tree drawn in the message index and attachment menu)
1542 <item>underline (highlighting underlined patterns in the body of messages)
1545 <em/foreground/ and <em/background/ can be one of the following:
1560 <em/foreground/ can optionally be prefixed with the keyword <tt/bright/ to make
1561 the foreground color boldfaced (e.g., <tt/brightred/).
1563 If your terminal supports it, the special keyword <em/default/ can be
1564 used as a transparent color. The value <em/brightdefault/ is also valid.
1565 If Mutt-ng is linked against the <em/S-Lang/ library, you also need to set
1566 the <em/COLORFGBG/ environment variable to the default colors of your
1567 terminal for this to work; for example (for Bourne-like shells):
1570 set COLORFGBG="green;black"
1574 <bf/Note:/ The <em/S-Lang/ library requires you to use the <em/lightgray/
1575 and <em/brown/ keywords instead of <em/white/ and <em/yellow/ when
1576 setting this variable.
1578 <bf/Note:/ The uncolor command can be applied to the index object only. It
1579 removes entries from the list. You <bf/must/ specify the same pattern
1580 specified in the color command for it to be removed. The pattern ``*'' is
1581 a special token which means to clear the color index list of all entries.
1583 Mutt-ng also recognizes the keywords <em/color0/, <em/color1/, …,
1584 <em/color/<bf/N-1/ (<bf/N/ being the number of colors supported
1585 by your terminal). This is useful when you remap the colors for your
1586 display (for example by changing the color associated with <em/color2/
1587 for your xterm), since color names may then lose their normal meaning.
1589 If your terminal does not support color, it is still possible change the video
1590 attributes through the use of the ``mono'' command:
1592 Usage: <tt/mono/ <em/<object> <attribute>/ [ <em/regexp/ ]<newline>
1593 Usage: <tt/mono/ index <em/attribute/ <em/pattern/<newline>
1594 Usage: <tt/unmono/ index <em/pattern/ [ <em/pattern/ ... ]<newline>
1596 where <em/attribute/ is one of the following:
1608 <sect>Ignoring (weeding) unwanted message headers<label id="ignore"> <!--{{{-->
1610 Usage: <tt/[un]ignore/ <em/pattern/ [ <em/pattern/ ... ]
1612 Messages often have many header fields added by automatic processing systems,
1613 or which may not seem useful to display on the screen. This command allows
1614 you to specify header fields which you don't normally want to see.
1616 You do not need to specify the full header field name. For example,
1617 ``ignore content-'' will ignore all header fields that begin with the pattern
1618 ``content-''. ``ignore *'' will ignore all headers.
1620 To remove a previously added token from the list, use the ``unignore'' command.
1621 The ``unignore'' command will make Mutt-ng display headers with the given pattern.
1622 For example, if you do ``ignore x-'' it is possible to ``unignore x-mailer''.
1624 ``unignore *'' will remove all tokens from the ignore list.
1628 # Sven's draconian header weeding
1630 unignore from date subject to cc
1631 unignore organization organisation x-mailer: x-newsreader: x-mailing-list:
1637 <sect>Alternative addresses<label id="alternates"> <!--{{{-->
1639 Usage: <tt/[un]alternates/ <em/regexp/ [ <em/regexp/ ... ]<newline>
1641 With various functions, mutt will treat messages differently,
1642 depending on whether you sent them or whether you received them from
1643 someone else. For instance, when replying to a message that you
1644 sent to a different party, mutt will automatically suggest to send
1645 the response to the original message's recipients -- responding to
1646 yourself won't make much sense in many cases. (See <ref
1647 id="reply_to" name="$reply_to">.)
1649 Many users receive e-mail under a number of different addresses. To
1650 fully use mutt's features here, the program must be able to
1651 recognize what e-mail addresses you receive mail under. That's the
1652 purpose of the <tt/alternates/ command: It takes a list of regular
1653 expressions, each of which can identify an address under which you
1656 The <tt/unalternates/ command can be used to write exceptions to
1657 <tt/alternates/ patterns. If an address matches something in an
1658 <tt/alternates/ command, but you nonetheless do not think it is
1659 from you, you can list a more precise pattern under an <tt/unalternates/
1662 To remove a regular expression from the <tt/alternates/ list, use the
1663 <tt/unalternates/ command with exactly the same <em/regexp/.
1664 Likewise, if the <em/regexp/ for a <tt/alternates/ command matches
1665 an entry on the <tt/unalternates/ list, that <tt/unalternates/
1666 entry will be removed. If the <em/regexp/ for <tt/unalternates/
1667 is ``*'', <em/all entries/ on <tt/alternates/ will be removed.
1671 <sect>Format = Flowed <!--{{{-->
1673 <sect1>Introduction <!--{{{-->
1675 <p>Mutt-ng contains support for so-called <tt/format=flowed/ messages.
1676 In the beginning of email, each message had a fixed line width, and
1677 it was enough for displaying them on fixed-size terminals. But times
1678 changed, and nowadays hardly anybody still uses fixed-size terminals:
1679 more people nowaydays use graphical user interfaces, with dynamically
1680 resizable windows. This led to the demand of a new email format that
1681 makes it possible for the email client to make the email look nice
1682 in a resizable window without breaking quoting levels and creating
1683 an incompatible email format that can also be displayed nicely on
1684 old fixed-size terminals.
1686 <p>For introductory information on <tt/format=flowed/ messages, see
1687 <htmlurl url="http://www.joeclark.org/ffaq.html"
1688 name="<http://www.joeclark.org/ffaq.html>">.
1692 <sect1>Receiving: Display Setup <!--{{{-->
1694 <p>When you receive emails that are marked as <tt/format=flowed/
1695 messages, and is formatted correctly, mutt-ng will try to reformat
1696 the message to optimally fit on your terminal. If you want a fixed
1697 margin on the right side of your terminal, you can set the
1704 <p>The code above makes the line break 10 columns before the right
1705 side of the terminal.
1707 <p>If your terminal is so wide that the lines are embarrassingly long,
1708 you can also set a maximum line length:
1711 set max_line_length = 120
1714 <p>The example above will give you lines not longer than 120
1717 <p>When you view at <tt/format=flowed/ messages, you will often see
1718 the quoting hierarchy like in the following example:
1721 >Bill, can you please send last month's progress report to Mr.
1722 >Morgan? We also urgently need the cost estimation for the new
1723 >production server that we want to set up before our customer's
1724 >project will go live.
1727 <p>This obviously doesn't look very nice, and it makes it very
1728 hard to differentiate between text and quoting character. The
1729 solution is to configure mutt-ng to "stuff" the quoting:
1735 <p>This will lead to a nicer result that is easier to read:
1738 > Bill, can you please send last month's progress report to Mr.
1739 > Morgan? We also urgently need the cost estimation for the new
1740 > production server that we want to set up before our customer's
1741 > project will go live.
1746 <sect1>Sending <!--{{{-->
1748 <p>If you want mutt-ng to send emails with <tt/format=flowed/ set, you
1749 need to explicitly set it:
1755 <p>Additionally, you have to use an editor which supports writing
1756 <tt/format=flowed/-conforming emails. For vim, this is done by
1757 adding <tt/w/ to the formatoptions (see <tt/:h formatoptions/ and
1758 <tt/:h fo-table/) when writing emails.
1760 <p>Also note that <em/format=flowed/ knows about ``space-stuffing'',
1761 that is, when sending messages, some kinds of lines have to be
1762 indented with a single space on the sending side. On the receiving
1763 side, the first space (if any) is removed. As a consequence and in
1764 addition to the above simple setting, please keep this in mind when
1765 making manual formattings within the editor. Also note that mutt-ng
1766 currently violates the standard (RfC 3676) as it does not
1767 space-stuff lines starting with:
1771 <item><tt/>/ This is <em/not/ the quote character but a right
1772 angle used for other reasons
1774 <item><tt/From/ with a trailing space.
1776 <item>just a space for formatting reasons
1780 Please make sure that you manually prepend a space to each of them.
1784 <sect1>Additional Notes <!--{{{-->
1786 <p> For completeness, the <ref id="delete_space"
1787 name="$delete_space"> variable provides the mechanism
1788 to generate a <tt/DelSp=yes/ parameter on <em/outgoing/ messages.
1789 According to the standard, clients receiving a <tt/format=flowed/
1790 messages should delete the last space of a flowed line but still
1791 interpret the line as flowed. Because flowed lines usually contain
1792 only one space at the end, this parameter would make the receiving
1793 client concatenate the last word of the previous with the first of
1794 the current line <em/without/ a space. This makes ordinary text
1795 unreadable and is intended for languages rarely using spaces. So
1796 please use this setting only if you're sure what you're doing.
1802 <sect>Mailing lists<label id="lists"> <!--{{{-->
1804 Usage: <tt/[un]lists/ <em/regexp/ [ <em/regexp/ ... ]<newline>
1805 Usage: <tt/[un]subscribe/ <em/regexp/ [ <em/regexp/ ... ]
1807 Mutt-ng has a few nice features for <ref id="using_lists" name="handling
1808 mailing lists">. In order to take advantage of them, you must
1809 specify which addresses belong to mailing lists, and which mailing
1810 lists you are subscribed to. Once you have done this, the <ref
1811 id="list-reply" name="list-reply"> function will work for all known lists.
1812 Additionally, when you send a message to a subscribed list, mutt will
1813 add a Mail-Followup-To header to tell other users' mail user agents
1814 not to send copies of replies to your personal address. Note that
1815 the Mail-Followup-To header is a non-standard extension which is not
1816 supported by all mail user agents. Adding it is not bullet-proof against
1817 receiving personal CCs of list messages. Also note that the generation
1818 of the Mail-Followup-To header is controlled by the <ref id="followup_to"
1819 name="$followup_to"> configuration variable.
1821 More precisely, Mutt-ng maintains lists of patterns for the addresses
1822 of known and subscribed mailing lists. Every subscribed mailing
1823 list is known. To mark a mailing list as known, use the ``lists''
1824 command. To mark it as subscribed, use ``subscribe''.
1826 You can use regular expressions with both commands. To mark all
1827 messages sent to a specific bug report's address on mutt's bug
1828 tracking system as list mail, for instance, you could say
1829 ``subscribe [0-9]*@bugs.guug.de''. Often, it's sufficient to just
1830 give a portion of the list's e-mail address.
1832 Specify as much of the address as you need to to remove ambiguity. For
1833 example, if you've subscribed to the Mutt-ng mailing list, you will receive mail
1834 addressed to <em/mutt-users@mutt.org/. So, to tell Mutt-ng that this is a
1835 mailing list, you could add ``lists mutt-users'' to your
1836 initialization file. To tell mutt that you are subscribed to it,
1837 add ``subscribe mutt-users'' to your initialization file instead.
1838 If you also happen to get mail from someone whose address is
1839 <em/mutt-users@example.com/, you could use ``lists mutt-users@mutt\\.org''
1840 or ``subscribe mutt-users@mutt\\.org'' to
1841 match only mail from the actual list.
1843 The ``unlists'' command is used to remove a token from the list of
1844 known and subscribed mailing-lists. Use ``unlists *'' to remove all
1847 To remove a mailing list from the list of subscribed mailing lists,
1848 but keep it on the list of known mailing lists, use ``unsubscribe''.
1852 <sect>Using Multiple spool mailboxes<label id="mbox-hook"> <!--{{{-->
1854 Usage: <tt/mbox-hook/ [!]<em/pattern/ <em/mailbox/
1856 This command is used to move read messages from a specified mailbox to a
1857 different mailbox automatically when you quit or change folders.
1858 <em/pattern/ is a regular expression specifying the mailbox to treat as a
1859 ``spool'' mailbox and <em/mailbox/ specifies where mail should be saved when
1862 Unlike some of the other <em/hook/ commands, only the <em/first/ matching
1863 pattern is used (it is not possible to save read mail in more than a single
1868 <sect>Defining mailboxes which receive mail<label id="mailboxes"> <!--{{{-->
1870 Usage: <tt/[un]mailboxes/ [!]<em/filename/ [ <em/filename/ ... ]
1872 This command specifies folders which can receive mail and
1873 which will be checked for new messages. By default, the
1874 main menu status bar displays how many of these folders have
1877 When changing folders, pressing <em/space/ will cycle
1878 through folders with new mail.
1880 Pressing TAB in the directory browser will bring up a menu showing the files
1881 specified by the <tt/mailboxes/ command, and indicate which contain new
1882 messages. Mutt-ng will automatically enter this mode when invoked from the
1883 command line with the <tt/-y/ option.
1885 The ``unmailboxes'' command is used to remove a token from the list
1886 of folders which receive mail. Use ``unmailboxes *'' to remove all
1890 <bf/Note:/ new mail is detected by comparing the last modification time to
1891 the last access time. Utilities like <tt/biff/ or <tt/frm/ or any other
1892 program which accesses the mailbox might cause Mutt-ng to never detect new mail
1893 for that mailbox if they do not properly reset the access time. Backup
1894 tools are another common reason for updated access times.
1897 <bf/Note:/ the filenames in the <tt/mailboxes/ command are resolved when
1898 the command is executed, so if these names contain <ref id="shortcuts"
1899 name="shortcut characters"> (such as ``='' and ``!''), any variable
1900 definition that affect these characters (like <ref id="folder"
1901 name="$folder"> and <ref id="spoolfile" name="$spoolfile">)
1902 should be executed before the <tt/mailboxes/ command.
1906 <sect>User defined headers<label id="my_hdr"> <!--{{{-->
1909 <tt/my_hdr/ <em/string/<newline>
1910 <tt/unmy_hdr/ <em/field/ [ <em/field/ ... ]
1912 The ``my_hdr'' command allows you to create your own header
1913 fields which will be added to every message you send.
1915 For example, if you would like to add an ``Organization:'' header field to
1916 all of your outgoing messages, you can put the command
1919 my_hdr Organization: A Really Big Company, Anytown, USA
1922 in your <tt/.muttrc/.
1924 <bf/Note:/ space characters are <em/not/ allowed between the keyword and
1925 the colon (``:''). The standard for electronic mail (RFC822) says that
1926 space is illegal there, so Mutt-ng enforces the rule.
1928 If you would like to add a header field to a single message, you should
1929 either set the <ref id="edit_headers" name="edit_headers"> variable,
1930 or use the <em/edit-headers/ function (default: ``E'') in the send-menu so
1931 that you can edit the header of your message along with the body.
1933 To remove user defined header fields, use the ``unmy_hdr''
1934 command. You may specify an asterisk (``*'') to remove all header
1935 fields, or the fields to remove. For example, to remove all ``To'' and
1936 ``Cc'' header fields, you could use:
1944 <sect>Defining the order of headers when viewing messages<label id="hdr_order"> <!--{{{-->
1946 Usage: <tt/hdr_order/ <em/header1/ <em/header2/ <em/header3/
1948 With this command, you can specify an order in which mutt will attempt
1949 to present headers to you when viewing messages.
1951 ``unhdr_order *'' will clear all previous headers from the order list,
1952 thus removing the header order effects set by the system-wide startup
1956 hdr_order From Date: From: To: Cc: Subject:
1961 <sect>Specify default save filename<label id="save-hook"> <!--{{{-->
1963 Usage: <tt/save-hook/ [!]<em/pattern/ <em/filename/
1965 This command is used to override the default filename used when saving
1966 messages. <em/filename/ will be used as the default filename if the message is
1967 <em/From:/ an address matching <em/regexp/ or if you are the author and the
1968 message is addressed <em/to:/ something matching <em/regexp/.
1970 See <ref id="pattern_hook" name="Message Matching in Hooks"> for information on the exact format of <em/pattern/.
1975 save-hook me@(turing\\.)?cs\\.hmc\\.edu$ +elkins
1976 save-hook aol\\.com$ +spam
1979 Also see the <ref id="fcc-save-hook" name="fcc-save-hook"> command.
1983 <sect>Specify default Fcc: mailbox when composing<label id="fcc-hook"> <!--{{{-->
1985 Usage: <tt/fcc-hook/ [!]<em/pattern/ <em/mailbox/
1987 This command is used to save outgoing mail in a mailbox other than
1988 <ref id="record" name="$record">. Mutt-ng searches the initial list of
1989 message recipients for the first matching <em/regexp/ and uses <em/mailbox/
1990 as the default Fcc: mailbox. If no match is found the message will be saved
1991 to <ref id="record" name="$record"> mailbox.
1993 See <ref id="pattern_hook" name="Message Matching in Hooks"> for information on the exact format of <em/pattern/.
1995 Example: <tt/fcc-hook [@.]aol\\.com$ +spammers/
1997 The above will save a copy of all messages going to the aol.com domain to
1998 the `+spammers' mailbox by default. Also see the <ref id="fcc-save-hook"
1999 name="fcc-save-hook"> command.
2003 <sect>Specify default save filename and default Fcc: mailbox at once<label id="fcc-save-hook"> <!--{{{-->
2005 Usage: <tt/fcc-save-hook/ [!]<em/pattern/ <em/mailbox/
2007 This command is a shortcut, equivalent to doing both a <ref id="fcc-hook" name="fcc-hook">
2008 and a <ref id="save-hook" name="save-hook"> with its arguments.
2012 <sect>Change settings based upon message recipients<label id="send-hook"><label id="reply-hook"><label id="send2-hook"> <!--{{{-->
2014 Usage: <tt/reply-hook/ [!]<em/pattern/ <em/command/<newline>
2015 Usage: <tt/send-hook/ [!]<em/pattern/ <em/command/<newline>
2016 Usage: <tt/send2-hook/ [!]<em/pattern/ <em/command/
2018 These commands can be used to execute arbitrary configuration commands based
2019 upon recipients of the message. <em/pattern/ is a regular expression
2020 matching the desired address. <em/command/ is executed when <em/regexp/
2021 matches recipients of the message.
2023 <tt/reply-hook/ is matched against the message you are <em/replying/
2024 <bf/to/, instead of the message you are <em/sending/. <tt/send-hook/ is
2025 matched against all messages, both <em/new/ and <em/replies/. <bf/Note:/
2026 <tt/reply-hook/s are matched <bf/before/ the <tt/send-hook/, <bf/regardless/
2027 of the order specified in the users's configuration file.
2029 <tt/send2-hook/ is matched every time a message is changed, either
2030 by editing it, or by using the compose menu to change its recipients
2031 or subject. <tt/send2-hook/ is executed after <tt/send-hook/, and
2032 can, e.g., be used to set parameters such as the <ref id="sendmail"
2033 name="$sendmail"> variable depending on the message's sender
2036 For each type of <tt/send-hook/ or <tt/reply-hook/, when multiple matches
2037 occur, commands are executed in the order they are specified in the muttrc
2038 (for that type of hook).
2040 See <ref id="pattern_hook" name="Message Matching in Hooks"> for information on the exact format of <em/pattern/.
2042 Example: <tt/send-hook mutt &dquot;set mime_forward signature=''&dquot;/
2044 Another typical use for this command is to change the values of the
2045 <ref id="attribution" name="$attribution">, <ref id="signature"
2046 name="$signature"> and <ref id="locale" name="$locale">
2047 variables in order to change the language of the attributions and
2048 signatures based upon the recipients.
2050 <bf/Note:/ the send-hook's are only executed ONCE after getting the initial
2051 list of recipients. Adding a recipient after replying or editing the
2052 message will NOT cause any send-hook to be executed. Also note that
2053 my_hdr commands which modify recipient headers, or the message's
2054 subject, don't have any effect on the current message when executed
2059 <sect>Change settings before formatting a message<label id="message-hook"> <!--{{{-->
2061 Usage: <tt/message-hook/ [!]<em/pattern/ <em/command/
2063 This command can be used to execute arbitrary configuration commands
2064 before viewing or formatting a message based upon information about the message.
2065 <em/command/ is executed if the <em/pattern/ matches the message to be
2066 displayed. When multiple matches occur, commands are executed in the order
2067 they are specified in the muttrc.
2069 See <ref id="pattern_hook" name="Message Matching in Hooks"> for
2070 information on the exact format of <em/pattern/.
2074 message-hook ~A 'set pager=builtin'
2075 message-hook '~f freshmeat-news' 'set pager="less \"+/^ subject: .*\""'
2080 <sect>Choosing the cryptographic key of the recipient<label id="crypt-hook"> <!--{{{-->
2082 Usage: <tt/crypt-hook/ <em/pattern/ <em/keyid/
2084 When encrypting messages with PGP or OpenSSL, you may want to associate a certain
2085 key with a given e-mail address automatically, either because the
2086 recipient's public key can't be deduced from the destination address,
2087 or because, for some reasons, you need to override the key Mutt-ng would
2088 normally use. The crypt-hook command provides a method by which you can
2089 specify the ID of the public key to be used when encrypting messages to
2090 a certain recipient.
2092 The meaning of "key id" is to be taken broadly in this context: You
2093 can either put a numerical key ID here, an e-mail address, or even
2098 <sect>Adding key sequences to the keyboard buffer<label id="push"> <!--{{{-->
2100 Usage: <tt/push/ <em/string/
2102 This command adds the named string to the keyboard buffer. The string may
2103 contain control characters, key names and function names like the sequence
2104 string in the <ref id="macro" name="macro"> command. You may use it to
2105 automatically run a sequence of commands at startup, or when entering
2110 <sect>Executing functions<label id="exec"> <!--{{{-->
2112 Usage: <tt/exec/ <em/function/ [ <em/function/ ... ]
2114 This command can be used to execute any function. Functions are
2115 listed in the <ref id="functions" name="function reference">.
2116 ``exec function'' is equivalent to ``push <function>''.
2120 <sect>Message Scoring<label id="score-command"> <!--{{{-->
2123 Usage: <tt/score/ <em/pattern/ <em/value/<newline>
2124 Usage: <tt/unscore/ <em/pattern/ [ <em/pattern/ ... ]
2127 In situations where you have to cope with a lot of emails, e.g.
2128 when you read many different mailing lists, and take part in
2129 discussions, it is always useful to have the important messages
2130 marked and the annoying messages or the ones that you aren't
2131 interested in deleted. For this purpose, mutt-ng features a
2132 mechanism called ``scoring''.
2135 When you use scoring, every message has a base score of 0. You
2136 can then use the <tt/score/ command to define patterns and a
2137 positive or negative value associated with it. When a pattern
2138 matches a message, the message's score will be raised or lowered by
2139 the amount of the value associated with the pattern.
2142 score "~f nion@muttng\.org" 50
2143 score "~f @sco\.com" -100</verb>
2145 <p>If the pattern matches, it is also possible to set the score
2146 value of the current message to a certain value and then stop
2150 score "~f santaclaus@northpole\.int" =666</verb>
2152 <p>What is important to note is that negative score values will be
2155 <p>To make scoring actually useful, the score must be applied in
2156 some way. That's what the <em/score thresholds/ are for. Currently,
2157 there are three score thresholds:
2161 <item>flag threshold: when a message has a score value equal or higher
2162 than the flag threshold, it will be flagged.
2164 <item>read threshold: when a message has a score value equal or lower
2165 than the read threshold, it will be marked as read.
2167 <item>delete threshold: when a message has a score value equal or
2168 lower than the delete threshold, it will be marked as deleted.
2172 <p>These three thresholds can be set via the variables <ref
2173 id="score_threshold_flag"
2174 name="$score_threshold_flag">, <ref
2175 id="score_threshold_read"
2176 name="$score_threshold_read">, <ref
2177 id="score_threshold_delete"
2178 name="$score_threshold_delete"> and. By
2179 default, <ref id="score_threshold_read"
2180 name="$score_threshold_read"> and <ref
2181 id="score_threshold_delete"
2182 name="$score_threshold_delete"> are set to
2183 <tt/-1/, which means that in the default threshold configuration no
2184 message will ever get marked as read or deleted.
2186 <p>Scoring gets especially interesting when combined with the <tt/color/ command
2187 and the <tt>˜n</tt> pattern:
2190 color black yellow "~n 10-"
2191 color red yellow "~n 100-"</verb>
2193 <p>The rules above mark all messages with a score between 10 and 99
2194 with black and yellow, and messages with a score greater or equal
2195 100 with red and yellow. This might be unusual to you if you're used
2196 to e.g. slrn's scoring mechanism, but it is more flexible, as it
2197 visually marks different scores.
2201 <sect>Spam detection<label id="spam"> <!--{{{-->
2203 Usage: <tt/spam/ <em/pattern/ <em/format/<newline>
2204 Usage: <tt/nospam/ <em/pattern/
2206 Mutt-ng has generalized support for external spam-scoring filters.
2207 By defining your spam patterns with the <tt/spam/ and <tt/nospam/
2208 commands, you can <em/limit/, <em/search/, and <em/sort/ your
2209 mail based on its spam attributes, as determined by the external
2210 filter. You also can display the spam attributes in your index
2211 display using the <tt/%H/ selector in the <ref id="index_format"
2212 name="$index_format"> variable. (Tip: try <tt/%?H?[%H] ?/
2213 to display spam tags only when they are defined for a given message.)
2215 Your first step is to define your external filter's spam patterns using
2216 the <tt/spam/ command. <em/pattern/ should be a regular expression
2217 that matches a header in a mail message. If any message in the mailbox
2218 matches this regular expression, it will receive a ``spam tag'' or
2219 ``spam attribute'' (unless it also matches a <tt/nospam/ pattern -- see
2220 below.) The appearance of this attribute is entirely up to you, and is
2221 governed by the <em/format/ parameter. <em/format/ can be any static
2222 text, but it also can include back-references from the <em/pattern/
2223 expression. (A regular expression ``back-reference'' refers to a
2224 sub-expression contained within parentheses.) <tt/%1/ is replaced with
2225 the first back-reference in the regex, <tt/%2/ with the second, etc.
2227 If you're using multiple spam filters, a message can have more than
2228 one spam-related header. You can define <tt/spam/ patterns for each
2229 filter you use. If a message matches two or more of these patterns, and
2230 the $spam_separator variable is set to a string, then the
2231 message's spam tag will consist of all the <em/format/ strings joined
2232 together, with the value of $spam_separator separating
2235 For example, suppose I use DCC, SpamAssassin, and PureMessage. I might
2236 define these spam settings:
2238 spam "X-DCC-.*-Metrics:.*(....)=many" "90+/DCC-%1"
2239 spam "X-Spam-Status: Yes" "90+/SA"
2240 spam "X-PerlMX-Spam: .*Probability=([0-9]+)%" "%1/PM"
2241 set spam_separator=", "
2244 If I then received a message that DCC registered with ``many'' hits
2245 under the ``Fuz2'' checksum, and that PureMessage registered with a
2246 97% probability of being spam, that message's spam tag would read
2247 <tt>90+/DCC-Fuz2, 97/PM</tt>. (The four characters before ``=many'' in a
2248 DCC report indicate the checksum used -- in this case, ``Fuz2''.)
2250 If the $spam_separator variable is unset, then each
2251 spam pattern match supersedes the previous one. Instead of getting
2252 joined <em/format/ strings, you'll get only the last one to match.
2254 The spam tag is what will be displayed in the index when you use
2255 <tt/%H/ in the <tt/$index_format/ variable. It's also the
2256 string that the <tt/~H/ pattern-matching expression matches against for
2257 <em/search/ and <em/limit/ functions. And it's what sorting by spam
2258 attribute will use as a sort key.
2260 That's a pretty complicated example, and most people's actual
2261 environments will have only one spam filter. The simpler your
2262 configuration, the more effective mutt can be, especially when it comes
2265 Generally, when you sort by spam tag, mutt will sort <em/lexically/ --
2266 that is, by ordering strings alphnumerically. However, if a spam tag
2267 begins with a number, mutt will sort numerically first, and lexically
2268 only when two numbers are equal in value. (This is like UNIX's
2269 <tt/sort -n/.) A message with no spam attributes at all -- that is, one
2270 that didn't match <em/any/ of your <tt/spam/ patterns -- is sorted at
2271 lowest priority. Numbers are sorted next, beginning with 0 and ranging
2272 upward. Finally, non-numeric strings are sorted, with ``a'' taking lower
2273 priority than ``z''. Clearly, in general, sorting by spam tags is most
2274 effective when you can coerce your filter to give you a raw number. But
2275 in case you can't, mutt can still do something useful.
2277 The <tt/nospam/ command can be used to write exceptions to <tt/spam/
2278 patterns. If a header pattern matches something in a <tt/spam/ command,
2279 but you nonetheless do not want it to receive a spam tag, you can list a
2280 more precise pattern under a <tt/nospam/ command.
2282 If the <em/pattern/ given to <tt/nospam/ is exactly the same as the
2283 <em/pattern/ on an existing <tt/spam/ list entry, the effect will be to
2284 remove the entry from the spam list, instead of adding an exception.
2285 Likewise, if the <em/pattern/ for a <tt/spam/ command matches an entry
2286 on the <tt/nospam/ list, that <tt/nospam/ entry will be removed. If the
2287 <em/pattern/ for <tt/nospam/ is ``*'', <em/all entries on both lists/
2288 will be removed. This might be the default action if you use <tt/spam/
2289 and <tt/nospam/ in conjunction with a <tt/folder-hook/.
2291 You can have as many <tt/spam/ or <tt/nospam/ commands as you like.
2292 You can even do your own primitive spam detection within mutt -- for
2293 example, if you consider all mail from <tt/MAILER-DAEMON/ to be spam,
2294 you can use a <tt/spam/ command like this:
2297 spam "^From: .*MAILER-DAEMON" "999"
2302 <sect>Setting variables<label id="set"> <!--{{{-->
2304 Usage: <tt/set/ [no|inv]<em/variable/[=<em/value/] [ <em/variable/ ... ]<newline>
2305 Usage: <tt/toggle/ <em/variable/ [<em/variable/ ... ]<newline>
2306 Usage: <tt/unset/ <em/variable/ [<em/variable/ ... ]<newline>
2307 Usage: <tt/reset/ <em/variable/ [<em/variable/ ... ]
2309 This command is used to set (and unset) <ref id="variables"
2310 name="configuration variables">. There are four basic types of variables:
2311 boolean, number, string and quadoption. <em/boolean/ variables can be
2312 <em/set/ (true) or <em/unset/ (false). <em/number/ variables can be
2313 assigned a positive integer value.
2315 <em/string/ variables consist of any number of printable characters.
2316 <em/strings/ must be enclosed in quotes if they contain spaces or tabs. You
2317 may also use the ``C'' escape sequences <bf/\n/ and <bf/\t/ for
2318 newline and tab, respectively.
2320 <em/quadoption/ variables are used to control whether or not to be prompted
2321 for certain actions, or to specify a default action. A value of <em/yes/
2322 will cause the action to be carried out automatically as if you had answered
2323 yes to the question. Similarly, a value of <em/no/ will cause the the
2324 action to be carried out as if you had answered ``no.'' A value of
2325 <em/ask-yes/ will cause a prompt with a default answer of ``yes'' and
2326 <em/ask-no/ will provide a default answer of ``no.''
2328 Prefixing a variable with ``no'' will unset it. Example: <tt/set noaskbcc/.
2330 For <em/boolean/ variables, you may optionally prefix the variable name with
2331 <tt/inv/ to toggle the value (on or off). This is useful when writing
2332 macros. Example: <tt/set invsmart_wrap/.
2334 The <tt/toggle/ command automatically prepends the <tt/inv/ prefix to all
2335 specified variables.
2337 The <tt/unset/ command automatically prepends the <tt/no/ prefix to all
2338 specified variables.
2340 Using the enter-command function in the <em/index/ menu, you can query the
2341 value of a variable by prefixing the name of the variable with a question
2348 The question mark is actually only required for boolean and quadoption
2351 The <tt/reset/ command resets all given variables to the compile time
2352 defaults (hopefully mentioned in this manual). If you use the command
2353 <tt/set/ and prefix the variable with ``&'' this has the same
2354 behavior as the reset command.
2356 With the <tt/reset/ command there exists the special variable ``all'',
2357 which allows you to reset all variables to their system defaults.
2361 <sect>Reading initialization commands from another file<label id="source"> <!--{{{-->
2363 Usage: <tt/source/ <em/filename/ [ <em/filename/ ... ]
2365 This command allows the inclusion of initialization commands
2366 from other files. For example, I place all of my aliases in
2367 <tt>˜/.mail_aliases</tt> so that I can make my
2368 <tt>˜/.muttrc</tt> readable and keep my aliases private.
2370 If the filename begins with a tilde (``˜''), it will be expanded to the
2371 path of your home directory.
2373 If the filename ends with a vertical bar (|), then <em/filename/ is
2374 considered to be an executable program from which to read input (eg.
2375 <tt>source ~/bin/myscript|</tt>).
2379 <sect>Removing hooks<label id="unhook"> <!--{{{-->
2381 Usage: <tt/unhook/ [ * | <em/hook-type/ ]
2383 This command permits you to flush hooks you have previously defined.
2384 You can either remove all hooks by giving the ``*'' character as an
2385 argument, or you can remove all hooks of a specific type by saying
2386 something like <tt/unhook send-hook/.
2390 <sect>Sharing Setups<label id="sect:sharingsetups"> <!--{{{-->
2392 <sect1>Character Sets <!--{{{-->
2394 <p>As users may run mutt-ng on different systems, the configuration
2395 must be maintained because it's likely that people want to use the
2396 setup everywhere they use mutt-ng. And mutt-ng tries to help where it
2399 <p>To not produce conflicts with different character sets, mutt-ng
2400 allows users to specify in which character set their configuration
2401 files are encoded. Please note that while reading the configuration
2402 files, this is only respected after the corresponding declaration
2403 appears. It's advised to put the following at the very beginning of a
2407 set config_charset = "..."</verb>
2409 <p>and replacing the dots with the actual character set. To avoid
2410 problems while maintaining the setup, vim user's may want to use
2411 modelines as show in:
2414 # vim:fileencoding=...:</verb>
2416 <p>while, again, replacing the dots with the appropriate name. This
2417 tells vim as which character set to read and save the file.
2421 <sect1>Modularization <!--{{{-->
2423 <p>``Modularization'' means to divide the setup into several files
2424 while sorting the options or commands by topic. Especially for
2425 longer setups (e.g. with many hooks), this helps maintaining it
2426 and solving trouble.
2428 <p>When using separation, setups may be, as a whole or in
2429 fractions, shared over different systems.
2433 <sect1>Conditional parts <!--{{{-->
2435 <p>When using a configuration on different systems, the user may not
2436 always have influence on how mutt-ng is installed and which features
2439 <p>To solve this, mutt-ng contain a feature based on the ``ifdef''
2440 patch written for mutt. Its basic syntax is:
2443 ifdef <item> <command>
2444 ifndef <item> <command></verb>
2446 <p>...whereby <tt/<item>/ can be one of:
2450 <item>a function name
2452 <item>a variable name
2456 <item>a feature name
2460 <p>All available functions, variables and menus are documented
2461 elsewhere in this manual but ``features'' is specific to these two
2462 commands. To test for one, prefix one of the following keywords with
2463 <tt/feature_/:
2466 ncurses, slang, iconv, idn, dotlock, standalone, pop, nntp, imap, ssl,
2467 gnutls, sasl, sasl2, libesmtp, compressed, color, classic_pgp,
2468 classic_smime, gpgme, header_cache</verb>
2470 <p>As an example, one can use the following in
2471 <tt>˜/.muttngrc</tt>:
2474 ifdef feature_imap 'source ~/.mutt-ng/setup-imap'
2475 ifdef feature_pop 'source ~/.mutt-ng/setup-pop'
2476 ifdef feature_nntp 'source ~/.mutt-ng/setup-nntp'</verb>
2478 <p>...to only source <tt>˜/.mutt-ng/setup-imap</tt> if IMAP
2479 support is built in, only source <tt>˜/.mutt-ng/setup-pop</tt>
2480 if POP support is built in and only source
2481 <tt>˜/.mutt-ng/setup-nntp</tt> if NNTP support is built in.
2483 <p>An example for testing for variable names can be used if users
2484 use different revisions of mutt-ng whereby the older one may not
2485 have a certain variable. To test for the availability of <ref
2486 id="imap_mail_check" name="$imap_mail_check">,
2490 ifdef imap_mail_check 'set imap_mail_check = 300'</verb>
2492 <p>Provided for completeness is the test for menu names. To set <ref
2493 id="pager_index_lines"
2494 name="$pager_index_lines"> only if the pager
2495 menu is available, use:
2498 ifdef pager 'set pager_index_lines = 10'</verb>
2500 <p>For completeness, too, the opposite of <tt/ifdef/ is provided:
2501 <tt/ifndef/ which only executes the command if the test fails. For
2502 example, the following two examples are equivalent:
2505 ifdef feature_ncurses 'source ~/.mutt-ng/setup-ncurses'
2506 ifndef feature_ncurses 'source ~/.mutt-ng/setup-slang'</verb>
2511 ifdef feature_slang 'source ~/.mutt-ng/setup-slang'
2512 ifndef feature_slang 'source ~/.mutt-ng/setup-ncurses'</verb>
2519 <sect>Obsolete Variables <!--{{{-->
2521 <p>In the process of ensuring and creating more consistency, many
2522 variables have been renamed and some of the old names were already
2523 removed. Please see <ref id="sect_obsolete" name="Obsolete Variables">
2524 for a complete list.
2530 <chapt>Advanced Usage <!--{{{-->
2532 <sect>Regular Expressions<label id="regexp"> <!--{{{-->
2534 All string patterns in Mutt-ng including those in more complex
2535 <ref id="patterns" name="patterns"> must be specified
2536 using regular expressions (regexp) in the ``POSIX extended'' syntax (which
2537 is more or less the syntax used by egrep and GNU awk). For your
2538 convenience, we have included below a brief description of this syntax.
2540 The search is case sensitive if the pattern contains at least one upper
2541 case letter, and case insensitive otherwise. Note that ``\''
2542 must be quoted if used for a regular expression in an initialization
2543 command: ``\\''.
2545 A regular expression is a pattern that describes a set of strings.
2546 Regular expressions are constructed analogously to arithmetic
2547 expressions, by using various operators to combine smaller expressions.
2549 Note that the regular expression can be enclosed/delimited by either &dquot;
2550 or ' which is useful if the regular expression includes a white-space
2551 character. See <ref id="muttrc-syntax" name="Syntax of Initialization Files">
2552 for more information on &dquot; and ' delimiter processing. To match a
2553 literal &dquot; or ' you must preface it with \ (backslash).
2555 The fundamental building blocks are the regular expressions that match
2556 a single character. Most characters, including all letters and digits,
2557 are regular expressions that match themselves. Any metacharacter with
2558 special meaning may be quoted by preceding it with a backslash.
2560 The period ``.'' matches any single character. The caret ``ˆ'' and
2561 the dollar sign ``&dollar'' are metacharacters that respectively match
2562 the empty string at the beginning and end of a line.
2564 A list of characters enclosed by ``['' and ``]'' matches any
2565 single character in that list; if the first character of the list
2566 is a caret ``ˆ'' then it matches any character <bf/not/ in the
2567 list. For example, the regular expression <bf/[0123456789]/
2568 matches any single digit. A range of ASCII characters may be specified
2569 by giving the first and last characters, separated by a hyphen
2570 ``-''. Most metacharacters lose their special meaning inside
2571 lists. To include a literal ``]'' place it first in the list.
2572 Similarly, to include a literal ``ˆ'' place it anywhere but first.
2573 Finally, to include a literal hyphen ``-'' place it last.
2575 Certain named classes of characters are predefined. Character classes
2576 consist of ``[:'', a keyword denoting the class, and ``:]''.
2577 The following classes are defined by the POSIX standard:
2580 <tag/[:alnum:]/
2581 Alphanumeric characters.
2582 <tag/[:alpha:]/
2583 Alphabetic characters.
2584 <tag/[:blank:]/
2585 Space or tab characters.
2586 <tag/[:cntrl:]/
2588 <tag/[:digit:]/
2590 <tag/[:graph:]/
2591 Characters that are both printable and visible. (A space is printable,
2592 but not visible, while an ``a'' is both.)
2593 <tag/[:lower:]/
2594 Lower-case alphabetic characters.
2595 <tag/[:print:]/
2596 Printable characters (characters that are not control characters.)
2597 <tag/[:punct:]/
2598 Punctuation characters (characters that are not letter, digits, control
2599 characters, or space characters).
2600 <tag/[:space:]/
2601 Space characters (such as space, tab and formfeed, to name a few).
2602 <tag/[:upper:]/
2603 Upper-case alphabetic characters.
2604 <tag/[:xdigit:]/
2605 Characters that are hexadecimal digits.
2608 A character class is only valid in a regular expression inside the
2609 brackets of a character list. Note that the brackets in these
2610 class names are part of the symbolic names, and must be included
2611 in addition to the brackets delimiting the bracket list. For
2612 example, <bf/[[:digit:]]/ is equivalent to
2613 <bf/[0-9]/.
2615 Two additional special sequences can appear in character lists. These
2616 apply to non-ASCII character sets, which can have single symbols (called
2617 collating elements) that are represented with more than one character,
2618 as well as several characters that are equivalent for collating or
2622 <tag/Collating Symbols/
2623 A collating symbol is a multi-character collating element enclosed in
2624 ``[.'' and ``.]''. For example, if ``ch'' is a collating
2625 element, then <bf/[[.ch.]]/ is a regexp that matches
2626 this collating element, while <bf/[ch]/ is a regexp that
2627 matches either ``c'' or ``h''.
2628 <tag/Equivalence Classes/
2629 An equivalence class is a locale-specific name for a list of
2630 characters that are equivalent. The name is enclosed in ``[=''
2631 and ``=]''. For example, the name ``e'' might be used to
2632 represent all of ``è'' ``é'' and ``e''. In this case,
2633 <bf/[[=e=]]/ is a regexp that matches any of
2634 ``è'', ``é'' and ``e''.
2637 A regular expression matching a single character may be followed by one
2638 of several repetition operators:
2642 The preceding item is optional and matched at most once.
2644 The preceding item will be matched zero or more times.
2646 The preceding item will be matched one or more times.
2648 The preceding item is matched exactly <em/n/ times.
2649 <tag/{n,}/
2650 The preceding item is matched <em/n/ or more times.
2651 <tag/{,m}/
2652 The preceding item is matched at most <em/m/ times.
2653 <tag/{n,m}/
2654 The preceding item is matched at least <em/n/ times, but no more than
2658 Two regular expressions may be concatenated; the resulting regular
2659 expression matches any string formed by concatenating two substrings
2660 that respectively match the concatenated subexpressions.
2662 Two regular expressions may be joined by the infix operator ``|'';
2663 the resulting regular expression matches any string matching either
2666 Repetition takes precedence over concatenation, which in turn takes
2667 precedence over alternation. A whole subexpression may be enclosed in
2668 parentheses to override these precedence rules.
2670 <bf/Note:/ If you compile Mutt-ng with the GNU <em/rx/ package, the
2671 following operators may also be used in regular expressions:
2675 Matches the empty string at either the beginning or the end of a word.
2677 Matches the empty string within a word.
2678 <tag/\\</
2679 Matches the empty string at the beginning of a word.
2680 <tag/\\>/
2681 Matches the empty string at the end of a word.
2683 Matches any word-constituent character (letter, digit, or underscore).
2685 Matches any character that is not word-constituent.
2687 Matches the empty string at the beginning of a buffer (string).
2689 Matches the empty string at the end of a buffer.
2692 Please note however that these operators are not defined by POSIX, so
2693 they may or may not be available in stock libraries on various systems.
2697 <sect>Patterns <!--{{{-->
2699 <p>Mutt-ng's pattern language provides a simple yet effective way to
2700 set up rules to match messages, e.g. for operations like tagging and
2701 scoring. A pattern consists of one or more sub-pattern, which can be
2702 logically grouped, ORed, and negated. For a complete listing of
2703 these patterns, please refer to table <ref id="patterns"
2704 name="Patterns"> in the Reference chapter.
2706 <p>It must be noted that in this table, <tt/EXPR/, <tt/USER/,
2707 <tt/ID/ and <tt/SUBJECT/ are regular expressions. For ranges, the
2708 forms <tt/<[MAX]/, <tt/>>[MIN]/, <tt/[MIN]-/ and <tt/-[MAX]/
2711 <sect1>Complex Patterns
2713 <p>It is possible to combine several sub-patterns to a more complex
2714 pattern. The most simple possibility is to logically AND several
2715 patterns by stringing them together:
2720 <p>The pattern above matches all messages that contain ``SPAM'' in
2721 the subject and are unread.
2723 <p>To logical OR patterns, simply use the <tt/|/ operator. This one
2724 especially useful when using local groups:
2727 ~f ("nion@muttng\.org"|"ak@muttng\.org"|"pdmef@muttng\.org")
2728 (~b mutt-ng|~s Mutt-ng)
2729 !~x '@synflood\.at'</verb>
2731 <p>The first pattern matches all messages that were sent by one of
2732 the mutt-ng maintainers, while the seconds pattern matches all
2733 messages that contain ``mutt-ng'' in the message body or ``Mutt-ng''
2734 in the subject. The third pattern matches all messages that do not
2735 contain ``@synflood\.at'' in the <tt/References:/ header, i.e.
2736 messages that are not an (indirect) reply to one of my messages. A
2737 pattern can be logicall negated using the <tt/!/ operator.
2739 <sect1>Patterns and Dates
2741 <p>When using dates in patterns, the dates must be specified in a
2742 special format, i.e. <tt>DD/MM/YYYY</tt>. If you don't specify
2743 month or year, they default to the current month or year. When using
2744 date ranges, and you specify only the minimum or the maximum, the
2745 specified date will be excluded, e.g. <tt>01/06/2005-</tt> matches
2746 against all messages <em/after/ Juni 1st, 2005.
2748 <p>It is also possible to use so-called ``error margins'' when
2749 specifying date ranges. You simply specify a date, and then the
2750 error margin. This margin needs to contain the information whether
2751 it goes ``forth'' or ``back'' in time, by using <tt/+/ and <tt/-/.
2752 Then follows a number and a unit, i.e. <tt/y/ for years, <tt/m/ for
2753 months, <tt/w/ for weeks and <tt/d/ for days. If you use the special
2754 <tt/*/ sign, it means that the error margin goes to both
2755 ``directions'' in time.
2760 ~d 28/12/2004*1d</verb>
2762 <p>The first pattern matches all dates between January 1st, 2005 and
2763 January 1st 2006. The second pattern matches all dates between
2764 October 18th, 2004 and October 4th 2004 (2 weeks before 18/10/2004),
2765 while the third pattern matches all dates 1 day around December
2766 28th, 2004 (i.e. Dec 27th, 28th and 29th).
2768 <p>Relative dates are also very important, as they make it possible
2769 to specify date ranges between a fixed number of units and the
2770 current date. How this works can be seen in the following example:
2773 ~d >2w # messages older than two weeks
2774 ~d <3d # messages newer than 3 days
2775 ~d =1m # messages that are exactly one month old</verb>
2779 <sect>Format Strings <!--{{{-->
2781 <sect1>Introduction <!--{{{-->
2783 <p>The so called <em/Format Strings/ offer great flexibility when
2784 configuring mutt-ng. In short, they describe what items to print
2785 out how in menus and status messages.
2787 <p>Basically, they work as this: for different menus and bars,
2788 there's a variable specifying the layout. For every item
2789 available, there is a so called <em/expando/.
2791 <p>For example, when running mutt-ng on different machines or
2792 different versions for testing purposes, it may be interesting to
2793 have the following information always printed on screen when one
2798 <item>the current hostname
2800 <item>the current mutt-ng version number
2804 <p>The setting for the status bar of the index is controlled via the
2805 <ref id="status_format" name="$status_format">
2806 variable. For the hostname and version string, there's an expando
2807 for <tt>$status_format</tt>: <tt/%h/ expands to the
2808 hostname and <tt/%v/ to the version string. When just configuring:
2811 set status_format = "%v on %h: ..."</verb>
2813 <p>mutt-ng will replace the sequence <tt/%v/ with the version string
2814 and <tt/%h/ with the host's name. When you are, for example, running
2815 mutt-ng version <tt/1.5.9i/ on host <tt/mailhost/, you'll see the
2816 following when you're in the index:
2819 Mutt-ng 1.5.9i on mailhost: ...</verb>
2821 <p>In the index, there're more useful information one could want to
2826 <item>which mailbox is open
2828 <item>how man new, flagged or postponed messages
2834 <p>To include the mailbox' name is as easy as:
2837 set status_format = "%v on %h: %B: ...</verb>
2839 <p>When the currently opened mailbox is <tt/Inbox/, this will be expanded
2843 Mutt-ng 1.5.9i on mailhost: Inbox: ...</verb>
2845 <p>For the number of certain types of messages, one more feature of the format
2846 strings is extremely useful. If there aren't messages of a certain type, it
2847 may not be desired to print just that there aren't any but instead only
2848 print something if there are any.
2852 <sect1>Conditional Expansion <!--{{{-->
2854 <p>To only print the number of messages if there are new messages in
2855 the current mailbox, further extend
2856 <tt/$status_format/ to:
2859 set status_format = "%v on %h: %B %?n?%n new? ...</verb>
2861 <p>This feature is called <em/nonzero-printing/ and works as this:
2862 some expandos may be optionally printed nonzero, i.e. a portion
2863 of the format string is only evaluated if the value of the expando
2864 is different from zero. The basic syntax is:
2867 %?<item>?<string if nonzero>?</verb>
2869 <p>which tells mutt-ng to only look at <tt><string if
2870 nonzero></tt> if the value of the <tt>%<item%gt;</tt>
2871 expando is different from zero. In our example, we used <tt/n/ as
2872 the expando to check for and <tt/%n new/ as the optional nonzero
2875 <p>But this is not all: this feature only offers one alternative:
2876 ``print something if not zero.'' Mutt-ng does, as you might guess,
2877 also provide a logically complete version: ``if zero, print
2878 something and else print something else.'' This is achieved by the
2879 following syntax for those expandos which may be printed nonzero:
2882 %?<item>?<string if nonzero>&<string if zero>?</verb>
2884 <p>Using this we can make mutt-ng to do the following:
2888 <item> make it print ``<em/n/ new messages'' whereby <em/n/ is the
2889 count but only if there new ones
2891 <item> and make it print ``no new messages'' if there aren't any
2895 <p>The corresponding configuration is:
2898 set status_format = "%v on %h: %B: %?n?%n new messages&no new messages? ...</verb>
2900 <p>This doubles the use of the ``new messages'' string because it'll get
2901 always printed. Thus, it can be shortened to:
2904 set status_format = "%v on %h: %B: %?n?%n&no? new messages ...</verb>
2906 <p>As you might see from this rather simple example, one can create
2907 very complex but fancy status messages. Please see the reference
2908 chapter for expandos and those which may be printed nonzero.
2912 <sect1>Modifications and Padding <!--{{{-->
2914 <p>Besides the information given so far, there're even more features of
2919 <item>When specifying <tt>%_<item></tt> instead of
2920 just <tt>%<item></tt>, mutt-ng will convert all
2921 characters in the expansion of <tt><item></tt> to
2924 <item>When specifying <tt>%:<item></tt> instead of just
2925 <tt>%<item></tt>, mutt-ng will convert all dots in the
2926 expansion of <tt><item></tt> to underscores
2927 (<tt>_</tt>).
2931 <p>Also, there's a feature called <em/Padding/ supplied by the
2932 following two expandos: <tt/%|X/ and <tt/%>X/.
2936 <tag><tt>%|X</tt></tag> When this occurs, mutt-ng will fill the
2937 rest of the line with the character <tt/X/. In our example,
2938 filling the rest of the line with dashes is done by setting:
2941 set status_format = "%v on %h: %B: %?n?%n&no? new messages %|-"</verb>
2943 <tag><tt>%>X</tt></tag> Since the previous expando stops at
2944 the end of line, there must be a way to fill the gap between
2945 two items via the <tt>%>X</tt> expando: it puts as many
2946 characters <tt>X</tt> in between two items so that the rest of
2947 the line will be right-justified. For example, to not put the
2948 version string and hostname of our example on the left but on
2949 the right and fill the gap with spaces, one might use (note
2950 the space after <tt>%></tt>):
2953 set status_format = "%B: %?n?%n&no? new messages %> (%v on %h)"</verb>
2961 <sect>Using Tags <!--{{{-->
2964 Sometimes it is desirable to perform an operation on a group of
2965 messages all at once rather than one at a time. An example might be
2966 to save messages to a mailing list to a separate folder, or to
2967 delete all messages with a given subject. To tag all messages
2968 matching a pattern, use the tag-pattern function, which is bound to
2969 ``shift-T'' by default. Or you can select individual messages by
2970 hand using the ``tag-message'' function, which is bound to ``t'' by
2971 default. See <ref id="patterns" name="patterns"> for Mutt-ng's pattern
2974 Once you have tagged the desired messages, you can use the
2975 ``tag-prefix'' operator, which is the ``;'' (semicolon) key by default.
2976 When the ``tag-prefix'' operator is used, the <bf/next/ operation will
2977 be applied to all tagged messages if that operation can be used in that
2978 manner. If the <ref id="auto_tag" name="$auto_tag">
2979 variable is set, the next operation applies to the tagged messages
2980 automatically, without requiring the ``tag-prefix''.
2982 In <ref id="macro" name="macros"> or <ref id="push" name="push"> commands,
2983 you can use the ``tag-prefix-cond'' operator. If there are no tagged
2984 messages, mutt will "eat" the rest of the macro to abort it's execution.
2985 Mutt-ng will stop "eating" the macro when it encounters the ``end-cond''
2986 operator; after this operator the rest of the macro will be executed as
2991 <sect>Using Hooks<label id="hooks"> <!--{{{-->
2993 A <em/hook/ is a concept borrowed from the EMACS editor which allows you to
2994 execute arbitrary commands before performing some operation. For example,
2995 you may wish to tailor your configuration based upon which mailbox you are
2996 reading, or to whom you are sending mail. In the Mutt-ng world, a <em/hook/
2997 consists of a <ref id="regexp" name="regular expression"> or
2998 <ref id="patterns" name="pattern"> along with a
2999 configuration option/command. See
3001 <item><ref id="folder-hook" name="folder-hook">
3002 <item><ref id="send-hook" name="send-hook">
3003 <item><ref id="message-hook" name="message-hook">
3004 <item><ref id="save-hook" name="save-hook">
3005 <item><ref id="mbox-hook" name="mbox-hook">
3006 <item><ref id="fcc-hook" name="fcc-hook">
3007 <item><ref id="fcc-save-hook" name="fcc-save-hook">
3009 for specific details on each type of <em/hook/ available.
3011 <bf/Note:/ if a hook changes configuration settings, these changes remain
3012 effective until the end of the current mutt session. As this is generally
3013 not desired, a default hook needs to be added before all other hooks to
3014 restore configuration defaults. Here is an example with send-hook and the
3018 send-hook . 'unmy_hdr From:'
3019 send-hook ~C'^b@b\.b$' my_hdr from: c@c.c
3022 <sect1>Message Matching in Hooks<label id="pattern_hook">
3024 Hooks that act upon messages (<tt/send-hook, save-hook, fcc-hook,
3025 message-hook/) are evaluated in a slightly different manner. For the other
3026 types of hooks, a <ref id="regexp" name="regular expression"> is
3027 sufficient. But in dealing with messages a finer grain of control is
3028 needed for matching since for different purposes you want to match
3031 Mutt-ng allows the use of the <ref id="patterns" name="search pattern">
3032 language for matching messages in hook commands. This works in
3033 exactly the same way as it would when <em/limiting/ or
3034 <em/searching/ the mailbox, except that you are restricted to those
3035 operators which match information mutt extracts from the header of
3036 the message (i.e. from, to, cc, date, subject, etc.).
3038 For example, if you wanted to set your return address based upon sending
3039 mail to a specific address, you could do something like:
3041 send-hook '~t ^me@cs\.hmc\.edu$' 'my_hdr From: Mutt-ng User <user@host>'
3043 which would execute the given command when sending mail to
3046 However, it is not required that you write the pattern to match using the
3047 full searching language. You can still specify a simple <em/regular
3048 expression/ like the other hooks, in which case Mutt-ng will translate your
3049 pattern into the full language, using the translation specified by the
3050 <ref id="default_hook" name="$default_hook"> variable. The
3051 pattern is translated at the time the hook is declared, so the value of
3052 <ref id="default_hook" name="$default_hook"> that is in effect
3053 at that time will be used.
3057 <sect>Using the sidebar<label id="sidebar"> <!--{{{-->
3059 The sidebar, a feature specific to Mutt-ng, allows you to use a mailbox listing
3060 which looks very similar to the ones you probably know from GUI mail clients.
3061 The sidebar lists all specified mailboxes, shows the number in each
3062 and highlights the ones with new email
3063 Use the following configuration commands:
3065 set sidebar_visible="yes"
3066 set sidebar_width=25
3069 If you want to specify the mailboxes you can do so with:
3078 You can also specify the colors for mailboxes with new mails by using:
3080 color sidebar_new red black
3081 color sidebar white black
3084 The available functions are:
3086 sidebar-scroll-up Scrolls the mailbox list up 1 page
3087 sidebar-scroll-down Scrolls the mailbox list down 1 page
3088 sidebar-next Highlights the next mailbox
3089 sidebar-next-new Highlights the next mailbox with new mail
3090 sidebar-previous Highlights the previous mailbox
3091 sidebar-open Opens the currently highlighted mailbox
3094 Reasonable key bindings look e.g. like this:
3096 bind index \Cp sidebar-prev
3097 bind index \Cn sidebar-next
3098 bind index \Cb sidebar-open
3099 bind pager \Cp sidebar-prev
3100 bind pager \Cn sidebar-next
3101 bind pager \Cb sidebar-open
3103 macro index B ':toggle sidebar_visible^M'
3104 macro pager B ':toggle sidebar_visible^M'
3107 You can then go up and down by pressing Ctrl-P and Ctrl-N, and
3108 switch on and off the sidebar simply by pressing 'B'.
3112 <sect>External Address Queries<label id="query"> <!--{{{-->
3114 Mutt-ng supports connecting to external directory databases such as LDAP,
3115 ph/qi, bbdb, or NIS through a wrapper script which connects to mutt
3116 using a simple interface. Using the <ref id="query_command"
3117 name="$query_command"> variable, you specify the wrapper
3118 command to use. For example:
3121 set query_command = "mutt_ldap_query.pl '%s'"
3124 The wrapper script should accept the query on the command-line. It
3125 should return a one line message, then each matching response on a
3126 single line, each line containing a tab separated address then name then
3127 some other optional information. On error, or if there are no matching
3128 addresses, return a non-zero exit code and a one line error message.
3130 An example multiple response output:
3132 Searching database ... 20 entries ... 3 matching:
3133 me@cs.hmc.edu Michael Elkins mutt dude
3134 blong@fiction.net Brandon Long mutt and more
3135 roessler@guug.de Thomas Roessler mutt pgp
3138 There are two mechanisms for accessing the query function of mutt. One
3139 is to do a query from the index menu using the query function (default: Q).
3140 This will prompt for a query, then bring up the query menu which will
3141 list the matching responses. From the query menu, you can select
3142 addresses to create aliases, or to mail. You can tag multiple addresses
3143 to mail, start a new query, or have a new query appended to the current
3146 The other mechanism for accessing the query function is for address
3147 completion, similar to the alias completion. In any prompt for address
3148 entry, you can use the complete-query function (default: ^T) to run a
3149 query based on the current address you have typed. Like aliases, mutt
3150 will look for what you have typed back to the last space or comma. If
3151 there is a single response for that query, mutt will expand the address
3152 in place. If there are multiple responses, mutt will activate the query
3153 menu. At the query menu, you can select one or more addresses to be
3154 added to the prompt.
3158 <sect>Mailbox Formats <!--{{{-->
3160 Mutt-ng supports reading and writing of four different mailbox formats:
3161 mbox, MMDF, MH and Maildir. The mailbox type is autodetected, so there
3162 is no need to use a flag for different mailbox types. When creating new
3163 mailboxes, Mutt-ng uses the default specified with the <ref id="mbox_type"
3164 name="$mbox_type"> variable.
3166 <bf/mbox/. This is the most widely used mailbox format for UNIX. All
3167 messages are stored in a single file. Each message has a line of the form:
3170 From me@cs.hmc.edu Fri, 11 Apr 1997 11:44:56 PST
3173 to denote the start of a new message (this is often referred to as the
3174 ``From_'' line).
3176 <bf/MMDF/. This is a variant of the <em/mbox/ format. Each message is
3177 surrounded by lines containing ``^A^A^A^A'' (four control-A's).
3179 <bf/MH/. A radical departure from <em/mbox/ and <em/MMDF/, a mailbox
3180 consists of a directory and each message is stored in a separate file.
3181 The filename indicates the message number (however, this is may not
3182 correspond to the message number Mutt-ng displays). Deleted messages are
3183 renamed with a comma (,) prepended to the filename. <bf/Note:/ Mutt
3184 detects this type of mailbox by looking for either <tt/.mh_sequences/
3185 or <tt/.xmhcache/ (needed to distinguish normal directories from MH
3188 <bf/Maildir/. The newest of the mailbox formats, used by the Qmail MTA (a
3189 replacement for sendmail). Similar to <em/MH/, except that it adds three
3190 subdirectories of the mailbox: <em/tmp/, <em/new/ and <em/cur/. Filenames
3191 for the messages are chosen in such a way they are unique, even when two
3192 programs are writing the mailbox over NFS, which means that no file locking
3197 <sect>Mailbox Shortcuts<label id="shortcuts"> <!--{{{-->
3199 There are a number of built in shortcuts which refer to specific mailboxes.
3200 These shortcuts can be used anywhere you are prompted for a file or mailbox
3204 <item>! -- refers to your <ref id="spoolfile" name="$spoolfile"> (incoming) mailbox
3205 <item>> -- refers to your <ref id="mbox" name="$mbox"> file
3206 <item>< -- refers to your <ref id="record" name="$record"> file
3207 <item>^ -- refers to the current mailbox
3208 <item>- or !! -- refers to the file you've last visited
3209 <item>˜ -- refers to your home directory
3210 <item>= or + -- refers to your <ref id="folder" name="$folder"> directory
3211 <item>@<em/alias/ -- refers to the <ref id="save-hook"
3212 name="default save folder"> as determined by the address of the alias
3217 <sect>Handling Mailing Lists<label id="using_lists"> <!--{{{-->
3220 Mutt-ng has a few configuration options that make dealing with large
3221 amounts of mail easier. The first thing you must do is to let Mutt
3222 know what addresses you consider to be mailing lists (technically
3223 this does not have to be a mailing list, but that is what it is most
3224 often used for), and what lists you are subscribed to. This is
3225 accomplished through the use of the <ref id="lists"
3226 name="lists and subscribe"> commands in your muttrc.
3228 Now that Mutt-ng knows what your mailing lists are, it can do several
3229 things, the first of which is the ability to show the name of a list
3230 through which you received a message (i.e., of a subscribed list) in
3231 the <em/index/ menu display. This is useful to distinguish between
3232 personal and list mail in the same mailbox. In the <ref id="index_format"
3233 name="$index_format"> variable, the escape ``%L''
3234 will return the string ``To <list>'' when ``list'' appears in the
3235 ``To'' field, and ``Cc <list>'' when it appears in the ``Cc''
3236 field (otherwise it returns the name of the author).
3238 Often times the ``To'' and ``Cc'' fields in mailing list messages
3239 tend to get quite large. Most people do not bother to remove the
3240 author of the message they are reply to from the list, resulting in
3241 two or more copies being sent to that person. The ``list-reply''
3242 function, which by default is bound to ``L'' in the <em/index/ menu
3243 and <em/pager/, helps reduce the clutter by only replying to the
3244 known mailing list addresses instead of all recipients (except as
3245 specified by <tt/Mail-Followup-To/, see below).
3247 Mutt-ng also supports the <tt/Mail-Followup-To/ header. When you send
3248 a message to a list of recipients which includes one or several
3249 subscribed mailing lists, and if the <ref id="followup_to"
3250 name="$followup_to"> option is set, mutt will generate
3251 a Mail-Followup-To header which contains all the recipients to whom
3252 you send this message, but not your address. This indicates that
3253 group-replies or list-replies (also known as ``followups'') to this
3254 message should only be sent to the original recipients of the
3255 message, and not separately to you - you'll receive your copy through
3256 one of the mailing lists you are subscribed to.
3258 Conversely, when group-replying or list-replying to a message which
3259 has a <tt/Mail-Followup-To/ header, mutt will respect this header if
3260 the <ref id="honor_followup_to"
3261 name="$honor_followup_to"> configuration
3262 variable is set. Using list-reply will in this case also make sure
3263 that the reply goes to the mailing list, even if it's not specified
3264 in the list of recipients in the <tt/Mail-Followup-To/.
3266 Note that, when header editing is enabled, you can create a
3267 <tt/Mail-Followup-To/ header manually. Mutt-ng will only auto-generate
3268 this header if it doesn't exist when you send the message.
3271 The other method some mailing list admins use is to generate a
3272 ``Reply-To'' field which points back to the mailing list address rather
3273 than the author of the message. This can create problems when trying
3274 to reply directly to the author in private, since most mail clients
3275 will automatically reply to the address given in the ``Reply-To''
3276 field. Mutt-ng uses the <ref id="reply_to" name="$reply_to">
3277 variable to help decide which address to use. If set to <em/ask-yes/ or
3278 <em/ask-no/, you will be
3279 prompted as to whether or not you would like to use the address given in
3280 the ``Reply-To'' field, or reply directly to the address given in the
3281 ``From'' field. When set to <em/yes/, the ``Reply-To'' field will be used when
3284 The ``X-Label:'' header field can be used to further identify mailing
3285 lists or list subject matter (or just to annotate messages
3286 individually). The <ref id="index_format"
3287 name="$index_format"> variable's ``%y'' and
3288 ``%Y'' escapes can be used to expand ``X-Label:'' fields in the
3289 index, and Mutt-ng's pattern-matcher can match regular expressions to
3290 ``X-Label:'' fields with the ``˜y'' selector. ``X-Label:'' is not a
3291 standard message header field, but it can easily be inserted by procmail
3292 and other mail filtering agents.
3294 Lastly, Mutt-ng has the ability to <ref id="sort" name="sort"> the mailbox into
3295 <ref id="threads" name="threads">. A thread is a group of messages which all relate to the same
3296 subject. This is usually organized into a tree-like structure where a
3297 message and all of its replies are represented graphically. If you've ever
3298 used a threaded news client, this is the same concept. It makes dealing
3299 with large volume mailing lists easier because you can easily delete
3300 uninteresting threads and quickly find topics of value.
3304 <sect>Editing threads <!--{{{-->
3306 Mutt-ng has the ability to dynamically restructure threads that are broken
3307 either by misconfigured software or bad behavior from some
3308 correspondents. This allows to clean your mailboxes formats) from these
3309 annoyances which make it hard to follow a discussion.
3311 <sect1>Linking threads
3314 Some mailers tend to "forget" to correctly set the "In-Reply-To:" and
3315 "References:" headers when replying to a message. This results in broken
3316 discussions because Mutt-ng has not enough information to guess the correct
3318 You can fix this by tagging the reply, then moving to the parent message
3319 and using the ``link-threads'' function (bound to & by default). The
3320 reply will then be connected to this "parent" message.
3322 You can also connect multiple children at once, tagging them and using the
3323 tag-prefix command (';') or the auto_tag option.
3325 <sect1>Breaking threads
3328 On mailing lists, some people are in the bad habit of starting a new
3329 discussion by hitting "reply" to any message from the list and changing
3330 the subject to a totally unrelated one.
3331 You can fix such threads by using the ``break-thread'' function (bound
3332 by default to #), which will turn the subthread starting from the
3333 current message into a whole different thread.
3337 <sect>Delivery Status Notification (DSN) Support<label id="dsn"> <!--{{{-->
3340 RFC1894 defines a set of MIME content types for relaying information
3341 about the status of electronic mail messages. These can be thought of as
3342 ``return receipts.''
3344 Users can make use of it in one of the following two ways:
3347 <item>Berkeley sendmail 8.8.x currently has some command line options
3348 in which the mail client can make requests as to what type of status
3349 messages should be returned.
3350 <item>The SMTP support via libESMTP supports it, too.
3353 To support this, there are two variables:
3357 <item><ref id="dsn_notify" name="$dsn_notify"> is used
3358 to request receipts for different results (such as failed message,
3359 message delivered, etc.).
3361 <item><ref id="dsn_return" name="$dsn_return"> requests
3362 how much of your message should be returned with the receipt
3363 (headers or full message).
3367 Please see the reference chapter for possible values.
3371 <sect>POP3 Support (OPTIONAL) <!--{{{-->
3374 If Mutt-ng was compiled with POP3 support (by running the <em/configure/
3375 script with the <em/--enable-pop/ flag), it has the ability to work
3376 with mailboxes located on a remote POP3 server and fetch mail for local
3379 You can access the remote POP3 mailbox by selecting the folder
3380 <tt>pop://popserver/</tt>.
3382 You can select an alternative port by specifying it with the server, i.e.:
3383 <tt>pop://popserver:port/</tt>.
3385 You can also specify different username for each folder, i.e.:
3386 <tt>pop://username@popserver[:port]/</tt>.
3388 Polling for new mail is more expensive over POP3 than locally. For this
3389 reason the frequency at which Mutt-ng will check for mail remotely can be
3391 <ref id="pop_mail_check" name="$pop_mail_check">
3392 variable, which defaults to every 60 seconds.
3394 If Mutt-ng was compiled with SSL support (by running the <em/configure/
3395 script with the <em/--with-ssl/ flag), connections to POP3 servers
3396 can be encrypted. This naturally requires that the server supports
3397 SSL encrypted connections. To access a folder with POP3/SSL, you should
3398 use pops: prefix, ie:
3399 <tt>pops://[username@]popserver[:port]/</tt>.
3401 Another way to access your POP3 mail is the <em/fetch-mail/ function
3402 (default: G). It allows to connect to <ref id="pop_host"
3403 name="pop_host">, fetch all your new mail and place it in the
3404 local <ref id="spoolfile" name="spoolfile">. After this
3405 point, Mutt-ng runs exactly as if the mail had always been local.
3407 <bf/Note:/ If you only need to fetch all messages to local mailbox
3408 you should consider using a specialized program, such as <htmlurl
3409 url="http://www.ccil.org/~esr/fetchmail" name="fetchmail">
3413 <sect>IMAP Support (OPTIONAL) <!--{{{-->
3416 If Mutt-ng was compiled with IMAP support (by running the <em/configure/
3417 script with the <em/--enable-imap/ flag), it has the ability to work
3418 with folders located on a remote IMAP server.
3420 You can access the remote inbox by selecting the folder
3421 <tt>imap://imapserver/INBOX</tt>, where <tt/imapserver/ is the name of the
3422 IMAP server and <tt/INBOX/ is the special name for your spool mailbox on
3423 the IMAP server. If you want to access another mail folder at the IMAP
3424 server, you should use <tt>imap://imapserver/path/to/folder</tt> where
3425 <tt>path/to/folder</tt> is the path of the folder you want to access.
3427 You can select an alternative port by specifying it with the server, i.e.:
3428 <tt>imap://imapserver:port/INBOX</tt>.
3430 You can also specify different username for each folder, i.e.:
3431 <tt>imap://username@imapserver[:port]/INBOX</tt>.
3433 If Mutt-ng was compiled with SSL support (by running the <em/configure/
3434 script with the <em/--with-ssl/ flag), connections to IMAP servers
3435 can be encrypted. This naturally requires that the server supports
3436 SSL encrypted connections. To access a folder with IMAP/SSL, you should
3437 use <tt>imaps://[username@]imapserver[:port]/path/to/folder</tt> as your
3440 Pine-compatible notation is also supported, i.e.
3441 <tt>{[username@]imapserver[:port][/ssl]}path/to/folder</tt>
3443 Note that not all servers use / as the hierarchy separator. Mutt-ng should
3444 correctly notice which separator is being used by the server and convert
3447 When browsing folders on an IMAP server, you can toggle whether to look
3448 at only the folders you are subscribed to, or all folders with the
3449 <em/toggle-subscribed/ command. See also the
3450 <ref id="imap_list_subscribed"
3451 name="$imap_list_subscribed"> variable.
3453 Polling for new mail on an IMAP server can cause noticeable delays. So, you'll
3454 want to carefully tune the
3455 <ref id="imap_mail_check" name="$imap_mail_check">
3457 <ref id="timeout" name="$timeout">
3460 Note that if you are using mbox as the mail store on UW servers prior to
3461 v12.250, the server has been reported to disconnect a client if another client
3462 selects the same folder.
3464 <sect1>The Folder Browser
3467 As of version 1.2, mutt supports browsing mailboxes on an IMAP
3468 server. This is mostly the same as the local file browser, with the
3469 following differences:
3471 <item>Instead of file permissions, mutt displays the string "IMAP",
3472 possibly followed by the symbol "+", indicating
3473 that the entry contains both messages and subfolders. On
3474 Cyrus-like servers folders will often contain both messages and
3476 <item>For the case where an entry can contain both messages and
3477 subfolders, the selection key (bound to <tt>enter</tt> by default)
3478 will choose to descend into the subfolder view. If you wish to view
3479 the messages in that folder, you must use <tt>view-file</tt> instead
3480 (bound to <tt>space</tt> by default).
3481 <item>You can create, delete and rename mailboxes with the
3482 <tt>create-mailbox</tt>, <tt>delete-mailbox</tt>, and
3483 <tt>rename-mailbox</tt> commands (default bindings: <tt>C</tt>,
3484 <tt>d</tt> and <tt>r</tt>, respectively). You may also
3485 <tt>subscribe</tt> and <tt>unsubscribe</tt> to mailboxes (normally
3486 these are bound to <tt>s</tt> and <tt>u</tt>, respectively).
3489 <sect1>Authentication
3492 Mutt-ng supports four authentication methods with IMAP servers: SASL,
3493 GSSAPI, CRAM-MD5, and LOGIN (there is a patch by Grant Edwards to add
3494 NTLM authentication for you poor exchange users out there, but it has
3495 yet to be integrated into the main tree). There is also support for
3496 the pseudo-protocol ANONYMOUS, which allows you to log in to a public
3497 IMAP server without having an account. To use ANONYMOUS, simply make
3498 your username blank or "anonymous".
3500 SASL is a special super-authenticator, which selects among several protocols
3501 (including GSSAPI, CRAM-MD5, ANONYMOUS, and DIGEST-MD5) the most secure
3502 method available on your host and the server. Using some of these methods
3503 (including DIGEST-MD5 and possibly GSSAPI), your entire session will be
3504 encrypted and invisible to those teeming network snoops. It is the best
3505 option if you have it. To use it, you must have the Cyrus SASL library
3506 installed on your system and compile mutt with the <em/--with-sasl/ flag.
3508 Mutt-ng will try whichever methods are compiled in and available on the server,
3509 in the following order: SASL, ANONYMOUS, GSSAPI, CRAM-MD5, LOGIN.
3511 There are a few variables which control authentication:
3513 <item><ref id="imap_user" name="$imap_user"> - controls
3514 the username under which you request authentication on the IMAP server,
3515 for all authenticators. This is overridden by an explicit username in
3516 the mailbox path (i.e. by using a mailbox name of the form
3518 <item><ref id="imap_pass" name="$imap_pass"> - a
3519 password which you may preset, used by all authentication methods where
3520 a password is needed.
3521 <item><ref id="imap_authenticators"
3522 name="$imap_authenticators"> - a colon-delimited list of IMAP
3523 authentication methods to try, in the order you wish to try them. If
3524 specified, this overrides mutt's default (attempt everything, in the order
3530 <sect>NNTP Support (OPTIONAL)<label id="reading_news"> <!--{{{-->
3532 <p>If compiled with ``--enable-nntp'' option, Mutt-ng can read news from
3533 a newsserver via NNTP. You can open a newsgroup with the
3534 ``change-newsgroup'' function from the index/pager which is by default
3537 <p>The Default newsserver can be obtained from the
3538 <tt/$NNTPSERVER/ environment variable. Like other news readers,
3539 info about subscribed newsgroups is saved in a file as specified by the
3540 <ref id="nntp_newsrc" name="$nntp_newsrc"> variable.
3541 Article headers are cached and can be loaded from a file when a
3542 newsgroup is entered instead loading from newsserver; currently, this
3543 caching mechanism still is different from the header caching for
3546 <sect1>Again: Scoring <!--{{{-->
3548 <p>Especially for Usenet, people often ask for advanced filtering
3549 and scoring functionality. Of course, mutt-ng has scoring and
3550 allows a killfile, too. How to use a killfile has been discussed
3551 in <ref id="score-command" name="Message scoring">.
3553 <p>What has not been discusses in detail is mutt-ng's built-in
3554 realname filter. For may newsreaders including those for
3555 ``advanced users'' like <em/slrn/ or <em/tin/, there are frequent
3556 request for such functionality. The solutions offered often are
3557 complicated regular expressions.
3559 <p>In mutt-ng this is as easy as
3565 <p>This tells mutt-ng to apply a score of 42 to all messages whose
3566 sender specified a valid realname and a valid email address. Using
3572 <p>on the contrary applies a score of 42 to all messages <em/not/
3573 matching those criteria which are very strict:
3577 <item>Email addresses must be valid according to RFC 2822, see
3578 <htmlurl url="ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/in-notes/rfc2822.txt"
3579 name="<ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/in-notes/rfc2822.txt>">
3581 <item>the name must consist of at least 2 fields whereby a field
3582 must not end in a dot. This means that ``Joe User'' and ``Joe A.
3583 User'' are valid while ``J. User'' and ``J. A. User'' aren't.
3585 <item>it's assumed that users are interested in reading their
3586 own mail and mail from people who they have defined an alias for
3587 so that those 2 groups of messages are excluded from the strict
3596 <sect>SMTP Support (OPTIONAL) <!--{{{-->
3598 <p>Mutt-ng can be built using a library called ``libESMTP'' which
3599 provides SMTP functionality. When <tt/configure/ was called with
3600 <tt/--with-libesmtp/ or the output <tt>muttng -v</tt> contains
3601 <tt>+USE_LIBESMTP</tt>, this will be or is the case already. The SMTP
3602 support includes support for Delivery Status Notification (see <ref
3603 id="dsn" name="Delivery Status Notification"> section) as well as
3604 handling the <tt/8BITMIME/ flag controlled via <ref id="use_8bitmime"
3605 name="$use_8bitmime">.
3607 <p>To enable sending mail directly via SMTP without an MTA such as
3608 Postfix or SSMTP and the like, simply set the <ref id="smtp_host"
3609 name="$smtp_host"> variable pointing to your SMTP server.
3611 <p>Authentication mechanisms are available via the <ref id="smtp_user"
3612 name="$smtp_user"> and <ref id="smtp_pass"
3613 name="$smtp_pass"> variables.
3615 <p>Transport Encryption via the StartTLS command is also available. For
3616 this to work, first of all Mutt-ng must be built with SSL or GNUTLS.
3617 Secondly, the <ref id="smtp_use_tls"
3618 name="$smtp_use_tls"> variable must be either set
3619 to ``enabled'' or ``required.'' In both cases, StartTLS will be used if
3620 the server supports it: for the second case, the connection will fail if
3621 it doesn't while switching back to unencrypted communication for the
3624 <p>Some mail providers require user's to set a particular envelope
3625 sender, i.e. they allow for only one value which may not be what the
3626 user wants to send as the <tt/From:/ header. In this case, the variable
3627 <ref id="smtp_envelope" name="$smtp_envelope"> may be used
3628 to set the envelope different from the <tt/From:/ header.
3632 <sect>Managing multiple IMAP/POP/NNTP accounts (OPTIONAL)<label id="account-hook"> <!--{{{-->
3635 If you happen to have accounts on multiple IMAP and/or POP servers,
3636 you may find managing all the authentication settings inconvenient and
3637 error-prone. The account-hook command may help. This hook works like
3638 folder-hook but is invoked whenever you access a remote mailbox
3639 (including inside the folder browser), not just when you open the
3645 account-hook . 'unset imap_user; unset imap_pass; unset tunnel'
3646 account-hook imap://host1/ 'set imap_user=me1 imap_pass=foo'
3647 account-hook imap://host2/ 'set tunnel="ssh host2 /usr/libexec/imapd"'
3652 <sect>Start a WWW Browser on URLs (EXTERNAL)<label id="urlview"> <!--{{{-->
3654 If a message contains URLs (<em/unified resource locator/ = address in the
3655 WWW space like <em>http://www.mutt.org/</em>), it is efficient to get
3656 a menu with all the URLs and start a WWW browser on one of them. This
3657 functionality is provided by the external urlview program which can be
3658 retrieved at <htmlurl url="ftp://ftp.mutt.org/mutt/contrib/"
3659 name="ftp://ftp.mutt.org/mutt/contrib/"> and the configuration commands:
3661 macro index \cb |urlview\n
3662 macro pager \cb |urlview\n
3667 <sect>Compressed folders Support (OPTIONAL) <!--{{{-->
3670 If Mutt-ng was compiled with compressed folders support (by running the
3671 <em/configure/ script with the <em/--enable-compressed/ flag), Mutt
3672 can open folders stored in an arbitrary format, provided that the user
3673 has a script to convert from/to this format to one of the accepted.
3675 The most common use is to open compressed archived folders e.g. with
3678 In addition, the user can provide a script that gets a folder in an
3679 accepted format and appends its context to the folder in the
3680 user-defined format, which may be faster than converting the entire
3681 folder to the accepted format, appending to it and converting back to
3682 the user-defined format.
3684 There are three hooks defined (<ref id="open-hook" name="open-hook">,
3685 <ref id="close-hook" name="close-hook"> and <ref id="append-hook"
3686 name="append-hook">) which define commands to uncompress and compress
3687 a folder and to append messages to an existing compressed folder
3693 open-hook \\.gz$ "gzip -cd %f > %t"
3694 close-hook \\.gz$ "gzip -c %t > %f"
3695 append-hook \\.gz$ "gzip -c %t >> %f"
3698 You do not have to specify all of the commands. If you omit <ref
3699 id="append-hook" name="append-hook">, the folder will be open and
3700 closed again each time you will add to it. If you omit <ref
3701 id="close-hook" name="close-hook"> (or give empty command) , the
3702 folder will be open in the mode. If you specify <ref
3703 id="append-hook" name="append-hook"> though you'll be able to append
3706 Note that Mutt-ng will only try to use hooks if the file is not in one of
3707 the accepted formats. In particular, if the file is empty, mutt
3708 supposes it is not compressed. This is important because it allows the
3709 use of programs that do not have well defined extensions. Just use
3710 &dquot;.&dquot; as a regexp. But this may be surprising if your
3711 compressing script produces empty files. In this situation, unset <ref
3712 id="save_empty" name="$save_empty">, so that the compressed file
3713 will be removed if you delete all of the messages.
3715 <sect1>Open a compressed mailbox for reading<label id="open-hook">
3717 Usage: <tt/open-hook/ <em/regexp/ &dquot;<em/command/&dquot;
3719 The <em/command/ is the command that can be used for opening the
3720 folders whose names match <em/regexp/.
3722 The <em/command/ string is the printf-like format string, and it
3723 should accept two parameters: %f, which is replaced with the
3724 (compressed) folder name, and %t which is replaced with the
3725 name of the temporary folder to which to write.
3727 %f and %t can be repeated any number of times in the
3728 command string, and all of the entries are replaced with the
3729 appropriate folder name. In addition, %% is replaced by
3730 %, as in printf, and any other %anything is left as is.
3732 The <em/command/ should <bf/not/ remove the original compressed file.
3733 The <em/command/ should return non-zero exit status if it fails, so
3734 mutt knows something's wrong.
3739 open-hook \\.gz$ "gzip -cd %f > %t"
3742 If the <em/command/ is empty, this operation is disabled for this file
3745 <sect1>Write a compressed mailbox<label id="close-hook">
3747 Usage: <tt/close-hook/ <em/regexp/ &dquot;<em/command/&dquot;
3749 This is used to close the folder that was open with the <ref id="open-hook"
3750 name="open-hook"> command after some changes were made to it.
3752 The <em/command/ string is the command that can be used for closing the
3753 folders whose names match <em/regexp/. It has the same format as in
3754 the <ref id="open-hook" name="open-hook"> command. Temporary folder
3755 in this case is the folder previously produced by the <<ref id="open-hook"
3756 name="open-hook"> command.
3758 The <em/command/ should <bf/not/ remove the decompressed file. The
3759 <em/command/ should return non-zero exit status if it fails, so mutt
3760 knows something's wrong.
3765 close-hook \\.gz$ "gzip -c %t > %f"
3768 If the <em/command/ is empty, this operation is disabled for this file
3769 type, and the file can only be open in the readonly mode.
3771 <ref id="close-hook" name ="close-hook"> is not called when you exit
3772 from the folder if the folder was not changed.
3774 <sect1>Append a message to a compressed mailbox<label id="append-hook">
3776 Usage: <tt/append-hook/ <em/regexp/ &dquot;<em/command/&dquot;
3778 This command is used for saving to an existing compressed folder.
3779 The <em/command/ is the command that can be used for appending to the
3780 folders whose names match <em/regexp/. It has the same format as in
3781 the <ref id="open-hook" name="open-hook"> command.
3782 The temporary folder in this case contains the messages that are being
3785 The <em/command/ should <bf/not/ remove the decompressed file. The
3786 <em/command/ should return non-zero exit status if it fails, so mutt
3787 knows something's wrong.
3792 append-hook \\.gz$ "gzip -c %t >> %f"
3795 When <ref id="append-hook" name="append-hook"> is used, the folder is
3796 not opened, which saves time, but this means that we can not find out
3797 what the folder type is. Thus the default (<ref id="mbox_type"
3798 name="$mbox_type">) type is always supposed (i.e.
3799 this is the format used for the temporary folder).
3801 If the file does not exist when you save to it, <ref id="close-hook"
3802 name="close-hook"> is called, and not <ref id="append-hook"
3803 name="append-hook">. <ref id="append-hook" name="append-hook"> is only
3804 for appending to existing folders.
3806 If the <em/command/ is empty, this operation is disabled for this file
3807 type. In this case, the folder will be open and closed again (using
3808 <ref id="open-hook" name="open-hook"> and <ref id="close-hook"
3809 name="close-hook">respectively) each time you will add to it.
3811 <sect1>Encrypted folders
3813 The compressed folders support can also be used to handle encrypted
3814 folders. If you want to encrypt a folder with PGP, you may want to use
3815 the following hooks:
3818 open-hook \\.pgp$ "pgp -f < %f > %t"
3819 close-hook \\.pgp$ "pgp -fe YourPgpUserIdOrKeyId < %t > %f"
3822 Please note, that PGP does not support appending to an encrypted
3823 folder, so there is no append-hook defined.
3825 <bf/Note:/ the folder is temporary stored decrypted in the /tmp
3826 directory, where it can be read by your system administrator. So think
3827 about the security aspects of this.
3833 <chapt>Mutt-ng's MIME Support <!--{{{-->
3835 Quite a bit of effort has been made to make Mutt-ng the premier text-mode
3836 MIME MUA. Every effort has been made to provide the functionality that
3837 the discerning MIME user requires, and the conformance to the standards
3838 wherever possible. When configuring Mutt-ng for MIME, there are two extra
3839 types of configuration files which Mutt-ng uses. One is the
3840 <tt/mime.types/ file, which contains the mapping of file extensions to
3841 IANA MIME types. The other is the <tt/mailcap/ file, which specifies
3842 the external commands to use for handling specific MIME types.
3844 <sect>Using MIME in Mutt <!--{{{-->
3846 There are three areas/menus in Mutt-ng which deal with MIME, they are the
3847 pager (while viewing a message), the attachment menu and the compose
3850 <sect1>Viewing MIME messages in the pager
3852 When you select a message from the index and view it in the pager, Mutt
3853 decodes the message to a text representation. Mutt-ng internally supports
3854 a number of MIME types, including <tt>text/plain, text/enriched,
3855 message/rfc822, and message/news</tt>. In addition, the export
3856 controlled version of Mutt-ng recognizes a variety of PGP MIME types,
3857 including PGP/MIME and application/pgp.
3859 Mutt-ng will denote attachments with a couple lines describing them.
3860 These lines are of the form:
3862 [-- Attachment #1: Description --]
3863 [-- Type: text/plain, Encoding: 7bit, Size: 10000 --]
3865 Where the <tt/Description/ is the description or filename given for the
3866 attachment, and the <tt/Encoding/ is one of
3867 <tt>7bit/8bit/quoted-printable/base64/binary</tt>.
3869 If Mutt-ng cannot deal with a MIME type, it will display a message like:
3871 [-- image/gif is unsupported (use 'v' to view this part) --]
3874 <sect1>The Attachment Menu<label id="attach_menu">
3876 The default binding for <tt/view-attachments/ is `v', which displays the
3877 attachment menu for a message. The attachment menu displays a list of
3878 the attachments in a message. From the attachment menu, you can save,
3879 print, pipe, delete, and view attachments. You can apply these
3880 operations to a group of attachments at once, by tagging the attachments
3881 and by using the ``tag-prefix'' operator. You can also reply to the
3882 current message from this menu, and only the current attachment (or the
3883 attachments tagged) will be quoted in your reply. You can view
3884 attachments as text, or view them using the mailcap viewer definition.
3886 Finally, you can apply the usual message-related functions (like
3887 <ref id="resend-message" name="resend-message">, and the reply
3888 and forward functions) to attachments of type <tt>message/rfc822</tt>.
3890 See the help on the attachment menu for more information.
3892 <sect1>The Compose Menu<label id="compose_menu">
3894 The compose menu is the menu you see before you send a message. It
3895 allows you to edit the recipient list, the subject, and other aspects
3896 of your message. It also contains a list of the attachments of your
3897 message, including the main body. From this menu, you can print, copy,
3898 filter, pipe, edit, compose, review, and rename an attachment or a
3899 list of tagged attachments. You can also modifying the attachment
3900 information, notably the type, encoding and description.
3902 Attachments appear as follows:
3904 - 1 [text/plain, 7bit, 1K] /tmp/mutt-euler-8082-0 <no description>
3905 2 [applica/x-gunzip, base64, 422K] ~/src/mutt-0.85.tar.gz <no description>
3908 The '-' denotes that Mutt-ng will delete the file after sending (or
3909 postponing, or canceling) the message. It can be toggled with the
3910 <tt/toggle-unlink/ command (default: u). The next field is the MIME
3911 content-type, and can be changed with the <tt/edit-type/ command
3912 (default: ^T). The next field is the encoding for the attachment,
3913 which allows a binary message to be encoded for transmission on 7bit
3914 links. It can be changed with the <tt/edit-encoding/ command
3915 (default: ^E). The next field is the size of the attachment,
3916 rounded to kilobytes or megabytes. The next field is the filename,
3917 which can be changed with the <tt/rename-file/ command (default: R).
3918 The final field is the description of the attachment, and can be
3919 changed with the <tt/edit-description/ command (default: d).
3923 <sect>MIME Type configuration with <tt/mime.types/ <!--{{{-->
3925 When you add an attachment to your mail message, Mutt-ng searches your
3926 personal mime.types file at <tt>${HOME}/.mime.types</tt>, and then
3927 the system mime.types file at <tt>/usr/local/share/mutt/mime.types</tt> or
3928 <tt>/etc/mime.types</tt>
3930 The mime.types file consist of lines containing a MIME type and a space
3931 separated list of extensions. For example:
3933 application/postscript ps eps
3935 audio/x-aiff aif aifc aiff
3937 A sample <tt/mime.types/ file comes with the Mutt-ng distribution, and
3938 should contain most of the MIME types you are likely to use.
3940 If Mutt-ng can not determine the mime type by the extension of the file you
3941 attach, it will look at the file. If the file is free of binary
3942 information, Mutt-ng will assume that the file is plain text, and mark it
3943 as <tt>text/plain</tt>. If the file contains binary information, then Mutt-ng will
3944 mark it as <tt>application/octet-stream</tt>. You can change the MIME
3945 type that Mutt-ng assigns to an attachment by using the <tt/edit-type/
3946 command from the compose menu (default: ^T). The MIME type is actually a
3947 major mime type followed by the sub-type, separated by a '/'. 6 major
3948 types: application, text, image, video, audio, and model have been approved
3949 after various internet discussions. Mutt-ng recognises all of these if the
3950 appropriate entry is found in the mime.types file. It also recognises other
3951 major mime types, such as the chemical type that is widely used in the
3952 molecular modelling community to pass molecular data in various forms to
3953 various molecular viewers. Non-recognised mime types should only be used
3954 if the recipient of the message is likely to be expecting such attachments.
3958 <sect>MIME Viewer configuration with <tt/mailcap/ <!--{{{-->
3960 Mutt-ng supports RFC 1524 MIME Configuration, in particular the Unix
3961 specific format specified in Appendix A of RFC 1524. This file format
3962 is commonly referred to as the mailcap format. Many MIME compliant
3963 programs utilize the mailcap format, allowing you to specify handling
3964 for all MIME types in one place for all programs. Programs known to
3965 use this format include Netscape, XMosaic, lynx and metamail.
3967 In order to handle various MIME types that Mutt-ng can not handle
3968 internally, Mutt-ng parses a series of external configuration files to
3969 find an external handler. The default search string for these files
3970 is a colon delimited list set to
3972 ${HOME}/.mailcap:/usr/local/share/mutt/mailcap:/etc/mailcap:/etc/mailcap:/usr/etc/mailcap:/usr/local/etc/mailcap
3974 where <tt/$HOME/ is your home directory.
3976 In particular, the metamail distribution will install a mailcap file,
3977 usually as <tt>/usr/local/etc/mailcap</tt>, which contains some baseline
3980 <sect1>The Basics of the mailcap file
3982 A mailcap file consists of a series of lines which are comments, blank,
3985 A comment line consists of a # character followed by anything you want.
3987 A blank line is blank.
3989 A definition line consists of a content type, a view command, and any
3990 number of optional fields. Each field of a definition line is divided
3991 by a semicolon ';' character.
3993 The content type is specified in the MIME standard type/subtype method.
3995 <tt>text/plain, text/html, image/gif, </tt>
3996 etc. In addition, the mailcap format includes two formats for
3997 wildcards, one using the special '*' subtype, the other is the implicit
3998 wild, where you only include the major type. For example, <tt>image/*</tt>, or
3999 <tt>video,</tt> will match all image types and video types,
4002 The view command is a Unix command for viewing the type specified. There
4003 are two different types of commands supported. The default is to send
4004 the body of the MIME message to the command on stdin. You can change
4005 this behavior by using %s as a parameter to your view command.
4006 This will cause Mutt-ng to save the body of the MIME message to a temporary
4007 file, and then call the view command with the %s replaced by
4008 the name of the temporary file. In both cases, Mutt-ng will turn over the
4009 terminal to the view program until the program quits, at which time Mutt
4010 will remove the temporary file if it exists.
4012 So, in the simplest form, you can send a text/plain message to the
4013 external pager more on stdin:
4017 Or, you could send the message as a file:
4021 Perhaps you would like to use lynx to interactively view a text/html
4026 In this case, lynx does not support viewing a file from stdin, so you
4027 must use the %s syntax.
4028 <bf/Note:/ <em>Some older versions of lynx contain a bug where they
4029 will check the mailcap file for a viewer for text/html. They will find
4030 the line which calls lynx, and run it. This causes lynx to continuously
4031 spawn itself to view the object.</em>
4033 On the other hand, maybe you don't want to use lynx interactively, you
4034 just want to have it convert the text/html to text/plain, then you can
4037 text/html; lynx -dump %s | more
4040 Perhaps you wish to use lynx to view text/html files, and a pager on
4041 all other text formats, then you would use the following:
4046 This is the simplest form of a mailcap file.
4048 <sect1>Secure use of mailcap
4050 The interpretation of shell meta-characters embedded in MIME parameters
4051 can lead to security problems in general. Mutt-ng tries to quote parameters
4052 in expansion of %s syntaxes properly, and avoids risky characters by
4053 substituting them, see the <ref id="mailcap_sanitize"
4054 name="mailcap_sanitize"> variable.
4056 Although mutt's procedures to invoke programs with mailcap seem to be
4057 safe, there are other applications parsing mailcap, maybe taking less care
4058 of it. Therefore you should pay attention to the following rules:
4060 <em/Keep the %-expandos away from shell quoting./
4061 Don't quote them with single or double quotes. Mutt-ng does this for
4062 you, the right way, as should any other program which interprets
4063 mailcap. Don't put them into backtick expansions. Be highly careful
4064 with eval statements, and avoid them if possible at all. Trying to fix
4065 broken behaviour with quotes introduces new leaks - there is no
4066 alternative to correct quoting in the first place.
4068 If you have to use the %-expandos' values in context where you need
4069 quoting or backtick expansions, put that value into a shell variable
4070 and reference the shell variable where necessary, as in the following
4071 example (using <tt/$charset/ inside the backtick expansion is safe,
4072 since it is not itself subject to any further expansion):
4075 text/test-mailcap-bug; cat %s; copiousoutput; test=charset=%{charset} \
4076 && test "`echo $charset | tr '[A-Z]' '[a-z]'`" != iso-8859-1
4079 <sect1>Advanced mailcap Usage
4082 <sect2>Optional Fields
4084 In addition to the required content-type and view command fields, you
4085 can add semi-colon ';' separated fields to set flags and other options.
4086 Mutt-ng recognizes the following optional fields:
4089 This flag tells Mutt-ng that the command passes possibly large amounts of
4090 text on stdout. This causes Mutt-ng to invoke a pager (either the internal
4091 pager or the external pager defined by the pager variable) on the output
4092 of the view command. Without this flag, Mutt-ng assumes that the command
4093 is interactive. One could use this to replace the pipe to <tt>more</tt>
4094 in the <tt>lynx -dump</tt> example in the Basic section:
4096 text/html; lynx -dump %s ; copiousoutput
4098 This will cause lynx to format the text/html output as text/plain
4099 and Mutt-ng will use your standard pager to display the results.
4101 Mutt-ng uses this flag when viewing attachments with <ref id="auto_view"
4102 name="autoview">, in order to decide whether it should honor the setting
4103 of the <ref id="wait_key" name="$wait_key"> variable or
4104 not. When an attachment is viewed using an interactive program, and the
4105 corresponding mailcap entry has a <em/needsterminal/ flag, Mutt-ng will use
4106 <ref id="wait_key" name="$wait_key"> and the exit status
4107 of the program to decide if it will ask you to press a key after the
4108 external program has exited. In all other situations it will not prompt
4110 <tag>compose=<command></tag>
4111 This flag specifies the command to use to create a new attachment of a
4112 specific MIME type. Mutt-ng supports this from the compose menu.
4113 <tag>composetyped=<command></tag>
4114 This flag specifies the command to use to create a new attachment of a
4115 specific MIME type. This command differs from the compose command in
4116 that mutt will expect standard MIME headers on the data. This can be
4117 used to specify parameters, filename, description, etc. for a new
4118 attachment. Mutt-ng supports this from the compose menu.
4119 <tag>print=<command></tag>
4120 This flag specifies the command to use to print a specific MIME type.
4121 Mutt-ng supports this from the attachment and compose menus.
4122 <tag>edit=<command></tag>
4123 This flag specifies the command to use to edit a specific MIME type.
4124 Mutt-ng supports this from the compose menu, and also uses it to compose
4125 new attachments. Mutt-ng will default to the defined editor for text
4127 <tag>nametemplate=<template></tag>
4128 This field specifies the format for the file denoted by %s in the
4129 command fields. Certain programs will require a certain file extension,
4130 for instance, to correctly view a file. For instance, lynx will only
4131 interpret a file as <tt>text/html</tt> if the file ends in <tt/.html/.
4132 So, you would specify lynx as a <tt>text/html</tt> viewer with a line in
4133 the mailcap file like:
4135 text/html; lynx %s; nametemplate=%s.html
4137 <tag>test=<command></tag>
4138 This field specifies a command to run to test whether this mailcap
4139 entry should be used. The command is defined with the command expansion
4140 rules defined in the next section. If the command returns 0, then the
4141 test passed, and Mutt-ng uses this entry. If the command returns non-zero,
4142 then the test failed, and Mutt-ng continues searching for the right entry.
4143 <bf/Note:/ <em>the content-type must match before Mutt-ng performs the test.</em>
4146 text/html; netscape -remote 'openURL(%s)' ; test=RunningX
4149 In this example, Mutt-ng will run the program RunningX which will return 0
4150 if the X Window manager is running, and non-zero if it isn't. If
4151 RunningX returns 0, then Mutt-ng will call netscape to display the
4152 text/html object. If RunningX doesn't return 0, then Mutt-ng will go on
4153 to the next entry and use lynx to display the text/html object.
4158 When searching for an entry in the mailcap file, Mutt-ng will search for
4159 the most useful entry for its purpose. For instance, if you are
4160 attempting to print an <tt>image/gif</tt>, and you have the following
4161 entries in your mailcap file, Mutt-ng will search for an entry with the
4165 image/gif; ; print= anytopnm %s | pnmtops | lpr; \
4168 Mutt-ng will skip the <tt>image/*</tt> entry and use the <tt>image/gif</tt>
4169 entry with the print command.
4171 In addition, you can use this with <ref id="auto_view" name="Autoview">
4172 to denote two commands for viewing an attachment, one to be viewed
4173 automatically, the other to be viewed interactively from the attachment
4174 menu. In addition, you can then use the test feature to determine which
4175 viewer to use interactively depending on your environment.
4177 text/html; netscape -remote 'openURL(%s)' ; test=RunningX
4178 text/html; lynx %s; nametemplate=%s.html
4179 text/html; lynx -dump %s; nametemplate=%s.html; copiousoutput
4181 For <ref id="auto_view" name="Autoview">, Mutt-ng will choose the third
4182 entry because of the copiousoutput tag. For interactive viewing, Mutt
4183 will run the program RunningX to determine if it should use the first
4184 entry. If the program returns non-zero, Mutt-ng will use the second entry
4185 for interactive viewing.
4187 <sect2>Command Expansion
4189 The various commands defined in the mailcap files are passed to the
4190 <tt>/bin/sh</tt> shell using the system() function. Before the
4191 command is passed to <tt>/bin/sh -c</tt>, it is parsed to expand
4192 various special parameters with information from Mutt-ng. The keywords
4193 Mutt-ng expands are:
4196 As seen in the basic mailcap section, this variable is expanded
4197 to a filename specified by the calling program. This file contains
4198 the body of the message to view/print/edit or where the composing
4199 program should place the results of composition. In addition, the
4200 use of this keyword causes Mutt-ng to not pass the body of the message
4201 to the view/print/edit program on stdin.
4203 Mutt-ng will expand %t to the text representation of the content
4204 type of the message in the same form as the first parameter of the
4205 mailcap definition line, ie <tt>text/html</tt> or
4207 <tag>%{<parameter>}</tag>
4208 Mutt-ng will expand this to the value of the specified parameter
4209 from the Content-Type: line of the mail message. For instance, if
4210 Your mail message contains:
4212 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
4214 then Mutt-ng will expand %{charset} to iso-8859-1. The default metamail
4215 mailcap file uses this feature to test the charset to spawn an xterm
4216 using the right charset to view the message.
4217 <tag>\%</tag>
4218 This will be replaced by a %
4220 Mutt-ng does not currently support the %F and %n keywords
4221 specified in RFC 1524. The main purpose of these parameters is for
4222 multipart messages, which is handled internally by Mutt-ng.
4224 <sect1>Example mailcap files
4226 This mailcap file is fairly simple and standard:
4228 # I'm always running X :)
4229 video/*; xanim %s > /dev/null
4230 image/*; xv %s > /dev/null
4232 # I'm always running netscape (if my computer had more memory, maybe)
4233 text/html; netscape -remote 'openURL(%s)'
4236 This mailcap file shows quite a number of examples:
4239 # Use xanim to view all videos Xanim produces a header on startup,
4240 # send that to /dev/null so I don't see it
4241 video/*; xanim %s > /dev/null
4243 # Send html to a running netscape by remote
4244 text/html; netscape -remote 'openURL(%s)'; test=RunningNetscape
4246 # If I'm not running netscape but I am running X, start netscape on the
4248 text/html; netscape %s; test=RunningX
4250 # Else use lynx to view it as text
4253 # This version would convert the text/html to text/plain
4254 text/html; lynx -dump %s; copiousoutput
4256 # I use enscript to print text in two columns to a page
4257 text/*; more %s; print=enscript -2Gr %s
4259 # Netscape adds a flag to tell itself to view jpegs internally
4260 image/jpeg;xv %s; x-mozilla-flags=internal
4262 # Use xv to view images if I'm running X
4263 # In addition, this uses the \ to extend the line and set my editor
4265 image/*;xv %s; test=RunningX; \
4268 # Convert images to text using the netpbm tools
4269 image/*; (anytopnm %s | pnmscale -xysize 80 46 | ppmtopgm | pgmtopbm |
4270 pbmtoascii -1x2 ) 2>&1 ; copiousoutput
4272 # Send excel spreadsheets to my NT box
4273 application/ms-excel; open.pl %s
4278 <sect>MIME Autoview<label id="auto_view"> <!--{{{-->
4280 In addition to explicitly telling Mutt-ng to view an attachment with the
4281 MIME viewer defined in the mailcap file, Mutt-ng has support for
4282 automatically viewing MIME attachments while in the pager.
4284 To work, you must define a viewer in the mailcap file which uses the
4285 <tt/copiousoutput/ option to denote that it is non-interactive.
4286 Usually, you also use the entry to convert the attachment to a text
4287 representation which you can view in the pager.
4289 You then use the <tt/auto_view/ muttrc command to list the
4290 content-types that you wish to view automatically.
4292 For instance, if you set auto_view to:
4294 auto_view text/html application/x-gunzip application/postscript image/gif application/x-tar-gz
4297 Mutt-ng could use the following mailcap entries to automatically view
4298 attachments of these types.
4300 text/html; lynx -dump %s; copiousoutput; nametemplate=%s.html
4301 image/*; anytopnm %s | pnmscale -xsize 80 -ysize 50 | ppmtopgm | pgmtopbm | pbmtoascii ; copiousoutput
4302 application/x-gunzip; gzcat; copiousoutput
4303 application/x-tar-gz; gunzip -c %s | tar -tf - ; copiousoutput
4304 application/postscript; ps2ascii %s; copiousoutput
4307 ``unauto_view'' can be used to remove previous entries from the autoview list.
4308 This can be used with message-hook to autoview messages based on size, etc.
4309 ``unauto_view *'' will remove all previous entries.
4313 <sect>MIME Multipart/Alternative<label id="alternative_order"> <!--{{{-->
4315 Mutt-ng has some heuristics for determining which attachment of a
4316 multipart/alternative type to display. First, mutt will check the
4317 alternative_order list to determine if one of the available types
4318 is preferred. The alternative_order list consists of a number of
4319 MIME types in order, including support for implicit and explicit
4320 wildcards, for example:
4322 alternative_order text/enriched text/plain text application/postscript image/*
4325 Next, mutt will check if any of the types have a defined
4326 <ref id="auto_view" name="auto_view">, and use that. Failing
4327 that, Mutt-ng will look for any text type. As a last attempt, mutt will
4328 look for any type it knows how to handle.
4330 To remove a MIME type from the <tt/alternative_order/ list, use the
4331 <tt/unalternative_order/ command.
4335 <sect>MIME Lookup<label id="mime_lookup"> <!--{{{-->
4337 Mutt-ng's mime_lookup list specifies a list of mime-types that should not
4338 be treated according to their mailcap entry. This option is designed to
4339 deal with binary types such as application/octet-stream. When an attachment's
4340 mime-type is listed in mime_lookup, then the extension of the filename will
4341 be compared to the list of extensions in the mime.types file. The mime-type
4342 associated with this extension will then be used to process the attachment
4343 according to the rules in the mailcap file and according to any other configuration
4344 options (such as auto_view) specified. Common usage would be:
4346 mime_lookup application/octet-stream application/X-Lotus-Manuscript
4349 In addition, the unmime_lookup command may be used to disable this feature
4350 for any particular mime-type if it had been set, for example, in a global
4357 <chapt>Security Considerations <!--{{{-->
4359 <p>First of all, mutt-ng contains no security holes included by
4360 intention but may contain unknown security holes. As a consequence,
4361 please run mutt-ng only with as few permissions as possible.
4363 <p>Please do not run mutt-ng as the super user.
4365 <p>When configuring mutt-ng, there're some points to note about secure
4368 <p>In practice, mutt-ng can be easily made as vulnerable as even the
4369 most insecure mail user agents (in their default configuration) just
4370 by changing mutt-ng's configuration files: it then can execute
4371 arbitrary programs and scripts attached to messages, send out private
4372 data on its own, etc. Although this is not believed to the common type
4373 of setup, please read this chapter carefully.
4375 <sect>Passwords <!--{{{-->
4377 <p>Although mutt-ng can be told the various passwords for accounts,
4378 please never store passwords in configuration files. Besides the
4379 fact that the system's operator can always read them, you could
4380 forget to replace the actual password with asterisks when reporting
4381 a bug or asking for help via, for example, a mailing list so that
4382 your mail including your password could be archived by internet
4383 search engines, etc. Please never store passwords on disk.
4387 <sect>Temporary Files <!--{{{-->
4389 <p>Mutt-ng uses many temporary files for viewing messages, verifying
4390 digital signatures, etc. The <ref id="umask" name="$umask">
4391 variable can be used to change the default permissions of these
4392 files. Please only change it if you really know what you are doing.
4393 Also, a different location for these files may be desired which can
4394 be changed via the <ref id="tmpdir" name="$tmpdir"> variable.
4398 <sect>Information Leaks <!--{{{-->
4400 <sect1>Message-ID: headers <!--{{{-->
4402 <p>In the default configuration, mutt-ng will leak some information
4403 to the outside world when sending messages: the generation of
4404 <tt/Message-ID:/ headers includes a step counter which is increased
4405 (and rotated) with every message sent. If you'd like to hide this
4406 information probably telling others how many mail you sent in which
4407 time, you at least need to remove the <tt/%P/ expando from the
4408 default setting of the <ref id="msgid_format"
4409 name="$msgid_format"> variable. Please make sure that
4410 you really know how local parts of these <tt/Message-ID:/ headers
4415 <sect1>mailto:-style links <!--{{{-->
4417 <p>As mutt-ng be can be set up to be the mail client to handle
4418 <tt/mailto:/ style links in websites, there're security
4419 considerations, too. To keep the old behavior by default, mutt-ng
4420 will be strict in interpreting them which means that arbitrary
4421 header fields can be embedded in these links which could override
4422 existing header fields or attach arbitrary files. This may be
4423 problematic if the <ref id="edit_headers"
4424 name="$edit_headers"> variable is <em/unset/, i.e. the
4425 user doesn't want to see header fields while editing the message.
4427 <p>For example, following a link like
4430 mailto:joe@host?Attach=~/.gnupg/secring.gpg</verb>
4432 will send out the user's private gnupg keyring to <tt/joe@host/ if
4433 the user doesn't follow the information on screen carefully
4436 <p>When <em/unsetting/ the <ref id="strict_mailto"
4437 name="$strict_mailto"> variable, mutt-ng will
4441 <item>be less strict when interpreting these links by
4442 prepending a <tt/X-Mailto-/ string to all header fields
4443 embedded in such a link <em/and/
4445 <item>turn on the <ref id="edit_headers"
4446 name="$edit_headers"> variable by
4447 force to let the user see all the headers
4448 (because they still may leak information.)
4456 <sect>External applications <!--{{{-->
4458 <p>Mutt-ng in many places has to rely on external applications or
4459 for convenience supports mechanisms involving external
4462 <sect1>mailcap <!--{{{-->
4464 <p>One of these is the <tt/mailcap/ mechanism as defined by RfC
4465 1524. Mutt-ng can be set up to <em/automatically/ execute any
4466 given utility as listed in one of the mailcap files (see the
4467 <ref id="mailcap_path" name="$mailcap_path">
4468 variable for details.)
4470 These utilities may have a variety of security vulnerabilities,
4471 including overwriting of arbitrary files, information leaks or
4472 other exploitable bugs. These vulnerabilities may go unnoticed by
4473 the user, especially when they are called automatically (and
4474 without interactive prompting) from the mailcap file(s). When
4475 using mutt-ng's autoview mechanism in combination with mailcap
4476 files, please be sure to...
4480 <item>manually select trustworth applications with a reasonable
4483 <item>periodically check the contents of mailcap files,
4484 especially after software installations or upgrades
4486 <item>keep the software packages referenced in the mailcap file up to date
4488 <item>leave the <ref id="mailcap_sanitize"
4489 name="$mailcap_sanitize"> variable in its default
4490 state to restrict mailcap expandos to a safe set of characters
4496 <sect1>Other <!--{{{-->
4498 <p>Besides the mailcap mechanism, mutt-ng uses a number of other
4499 external utilities for operation.
4501 <p>The same security considerations apply for these as for tools
4502 involved via mailcap (for example, mutt-ng is vulnerable to Denial
4503 of Service Attacks with compressed folders support if the
4504 uncompressed mailbox is too large for the disk it is saved to.)
4506 <p>As already noted, most of these problems are not built in but
4507 caused by wrong configuration, so please check your configuration.
4515 <chapt>Reference <!--{{{-->
4517 <sect>Command line options<label id="commandline"> <!--{{{-->
4519 Running <tt/mutt/ with no arguments will make Mutt-ng attempt to read your spool
4520 mailbox. However, it is possible to read other mailboxes and
4521 to send messages from the command line as well.
4525 -a attach a file to a message
4526 -b specify a blind carbon-copy (BCC) address
4527 -c specify a carbon-copy (Cc) address
4528 -D print the value of all variables on stdout
4529 -e specify a config command to be run after initialization files are read
4530 -f specify a mailbox to load
4531 -F specify an alternate file to read initialization commands
4532 -h print help on command line options
4533 -H specify a draft file from which to read a header and body
4534 -i specify a file to include in a message composition
4535 -m specify a default mailbox type
4536 -n do not read the system Muttngrc
4537 -p recall a postponed message
4538 -Q query a configuration variable
4539 -R open mailbox in read-only mode
4540 -s specify a subject (enclose in quotes if it contains spaces)
4541 -v show version number and compile-time definitions
4542 -x simulate the mailx(1) compose mode
4543 -y show a menu containing the files specified by the mailboxes command
4544 -z exit immediately if there are no messages in the mailbox
4545 -Z open the first folder with new message,exit immediately if none
4548 To read messages in a mailbox
4550 <tt/mutt/ [ -nz ] [ -F <em/muttrc/ ] [ -m <em/type/ ] [ -f <em/mailbox/ ]
4552 To compose a new message
4554 <tt/mutt/ [ -n ] [ -F <em/muttrc/ ] [ -a <em/file/ ] [ -c <em/address/ ] [ -i <em/filename/ ] [ -s <em/subject/ ] <em/address/ [ <em/address/ ... ]
4556 Mutt-ng also supports a ``batch'' mode to send prepared messages. Simply redirect
4557 input from the file you wish to send. For example,
4559 <tt>mutt -s &dquot;data set for run #2&dquot; professor@bigschool.edu
4560 < ˜/run2.dat</tt>
4562 This command will send a message to ``professor@bigschool.edu'' with a subject
4563 of ``data set for run #2''. In the body of the message will be the contents
4564 of the file ``˜/run2.dat''.
4568 <sect>Patterns<label id="patterns"> <!--{{{-->
4573 ~b EXPR messages which contain EXPR in the message body
4574 ~B EXPR messages which contain EXPR in the whole message
4575 ~c USER messages carbon-copied to USER
4576 ~C EXPR message is either to: or cc: EXPR
4578 ~d [MIN]-[MAX] messages with ``date-sent'' in a Date range
4580 ~e EXPR message which contains EXPR in the ``Sender'' field
4582 ~f USER messages originating from USER
4583 ~g cryptographically signed messages
4584 ~G cryptographically encrypted messages
4585 ~H EXPR messages with a spam attribute matching EXPR
4586 ~h EXPR messages which contain EXPR in the message header
4587 ~k message contains PGP key material
4588 ~i ID message which match ID in the ``Message-ID'' field
4589 ~L EXPR message is either originated or received by EXPR
4590 ~l message is addressed to a known mailing list
4591 ~m [MIN]-[MAX] message in the range MIN to MAX *)
4592 ~n [MIN]-[MAX] messages with a score in the range MIN to MAX *)
4595 ~p message is addressed to you (consults alternates)
4596 ~P message is from you (consults alternates)
4597 ~Q messages which have been replied to
4599 ~r [MIN]-[MAX] messages with ``date-received'' in a Date range
4600 ~S superseded messages
4601 ~s SUBJECT messages having SUBJECT in the ``Subject'' field.
4603 ~t USER messages addressed to USER
4605 ~v message is part of a collapsed thread.
4606 ~V cryptographically verified messages
4607 ~w EXPR messages which contain EXPR in the `Newsgroups' field
4608 (if compiled with NNTP support)
4609 ~x EXPR messages which contain EXPR in the `References' field
4610 ~y EXPR messages which contain EXPR in the `X-Label' field
4611 ~z [MIN]-[MAX] messages with a size in the range MIN to MAX *)
4612 ~= duplicated messages (see $duplicate_threads)
4613 ~$ unreferenced messages (requires threaded view)
4614 ~* ``From'' contains realname and (syntactically) valid
4615 address (excluded are addresses matching against
4616 alternates or any alias)
4619 Where EXPR, USER, ID, and SUBJECT are
4620 <ref id="regexp" name="regular expressions">. Special attention has to be
4621 made when using regular expressions inside of patterns. Specifically,
4622 Mutt-ng's parser for these patterns will strip one level of backslash (\),
4623 which is normally used for quoting. If it is your intention to use a
4624 backslash in the regular expression, you will need to use two backslashes
4627 *) The forms <tt/<[MAX]/, <tt/>[MIN]/,
4628 <tt/[MIN]-/ and <tt/-[MAX]/
4633 <sect>Configuration Commands<label id="commands"> <!--{{{-->
4635 The following are the commands understood by mutt.
4639 <tt><ref id="account-hook" name="account-hook"></tt> <em/pattern/ <em/command/
4641 <tt><ref id="alias" name="alias"></tt> <em/key/ <em/address/ [ , <em/address/, ... ]
4643 <tt><ref id="alias" name="unalias"></tt> [ * | <em/key/ ... ]
4645 <tt><ref id="alternates" name="alternates"></tt> <em/regexp/ [ <em/regexp/ ... ]
4647 <tt><ref id="alternates" name="unalternates"></tt> [ * | <em/regexp/ ... ]
4649 <tt><ref id="alternative_order" name="alternative_order"></tt> <em/mimetype/ [ <em/mimetype/ ... ]
4651 <tt><ref id="alternative_order" name="unalternative_order"></tt> <em/mimetype/ [ <em/mimetype/ ... ]
4653 <tt><ref id="append-hook" name="append-hook"></tt> <em/regexp/ <em/command/
4655 <tt><ref id="auto_view" name="auto_view"></tt> <em/mimetype/ [ <em/mimetype/ ... ]
4657 <tt><ref id="auto_view" name="unauto_view"></tt> <em/mimetype/ [ <em/mimetype/ ... ]
4659 <tt><ref id="bind" name="bind"></tt> <em/map/ <em/key/ <em/function/
4661 <tt><ref id="charset-hook" name="charset-hook"></tt> <em/alias/ <em/charset/
4663 <tt><ref id="close-hook" name="close-hook"></tt> <em/regexp/ <em/command/
4665 <tt><ref id="color" name="color"></tt> <em/object/ <em/foreground/ <em/background/ [ <em/regexp/ ]
4667 <tt><ref id="color" name="uncolor"></tt> <em/index/ <em/pattern/ [ <em/pattern/ ... ]
4669 <tt><ref id="exec" name="exec"></tt> <em/function/ [ <em/function/ ... ]
4671 <tt><ref id="fcc-hook" name="fcc-hook"></tt> <em/pattern/ <em/mailbox/
4673 <tt><ref id="fcc-save-hook" name="fcc-save-hook"></tt> <em/pattern/ <em/mailbox/
4675 <tt><ref id="folder-hook" name="folder-hook"></tt> <em/pattern/ <em/command/
4677 <tt><ref id="hdr_order" name="hdr_order"></tt> <em/header/ [ <em/header/ ... ]
4679 <tt><ref id="hdr_order" name="unhdr_order"></tt> <em/header/ [ <em/header/ ... ]
4681 <tt><ref id="charset-hook" name="iconv-hook"></tt> <em/charset/ <em/local-charset/
4683 <tt><ref id="ignore" name="ignore"></tt> <em/pattern/ [ <em/pattern/ ... ]
4685 <tt><ref id="ignore" name="unignore"></tt> <em/pattern/ [ <em/pattern/ ... ]
4687 <tt><ref id="lists" name="lists"></tt> <em/regexp/ [ <em/regexp/ ... ]
4689 <tt><ref id="lists" name="unlists"></tt> <em/regexp/ [ <em/regexp/ ... ]
4691 <tt><ref id="macro" name="macro"></tt> <em/menu/ <em/key/ <em/sequence/ [ <em/description/ ]
4693 <tt><ref id="mailboxes" name="mailboxes"></tt> <em/filename/ [ <em/filename/ ... ]
4695 <tt><ref id="mbox-hook" name="mbox-hook"></tt> <em/pattern/ <em/mailbox/
4697 <tt><ref id="message-hook" name="message-hook"></tt> <em/pattern/ <em/command/
4699 <tt><ref id="mime_lookup" name="mime_lookup"></tt> <em/mimetype/ [ <em/mimetype/ ... ]
4701 <tt><ref id="mime_lookup" name="unmime_lookup"></tt> <em/mimetype/ [ <em/mimetype/ ... ]
4703 <tt><ref id="color" name="mono"></tt> <em/object attribute/ [ <em/regexp/ ]
4705 <tt><ref id="color" name="unmono"></tt> <em/index/ <em/pattern/ [ <em/pattern/ ... ]
4707 <tt><ref id="my_hdr" name="my_hdr"></tt> <em/string/
4709 <tt><ref id="my_hdr" name="unmy_hdr"></tt> <em/field/ [ <em/field/ ... ]
4711 <tt><ref id="open-hook" name="open-hook"></tt> <em/regexp/ <em/command/
4713 <tt><ref id="crypt-hook" name="crypt-hook"></tt> <em/pattern/ <em/key-id/
4715 <tt><ref id="push" name="push"></tt> <em/string/
4717 <tt><ref id="set" name="reset"></tt> <em/variable/ [<em/variable/ ... ]
4719 <tt><ref id="save-hook" name="save-hook"></tt> <em/regexp/ <em/filename/
4721 <tt><ref id="score-command" name="score"></tt> <em/pattern/ <em/value/
4723 <tt><ref id="score-command" name="unscore"></tt> <em/pattern/ [ <em/pattern/ ... ]
4725 <tt><ref id="send-hook" name="send-hook"></tt> <em/regexp/ <em/command/
4727 <tt><ref id="reply-hook" name="reply-hook"></tt> <em/regexp/ <em/command/
4729 <tt><ref id="set" name="set"></tt> [no|inv]<em/variable/[=<em/value/] [ <em/variable/ ... ]
4731 <tt><ref id="set" name="unset"></tt> <em/variable/ [<em/variable/ ... ]
4733 <tt><ref id="source" name="source"></tt> <em/filename/
4735 <tt><ref id="spam" name="spam"></tt> <em/pattern/ <em/format/
4737 <tt><ref id="spam" name="nospam"></tt> <em/pattern/
4739 <tt><ref id="lists" name="subscribe"></tt> <em/regexp/ [ <em/regexp/ ... ]
4741 <tt><ref id="lists" name="unsubscribe"></tt> <em/regexp/ [ <em/regexp/ ... ]
4743 <tt><ref id="set" name="toggle"></tt> <em/variable/ [<em/variable/ ... ]
4745 <tt><ref id="unhook" name="unhook"></tt> <em/hook-type/
4748 <sect>Configuration variables<label id="variables">
4750 <p>The following list contains all variables which, in the process of
4751 providing more consistency, have been renamed and are partially even
4752 removed already. The left column contains the old synonym variables,
4753 the right column the full/new name:
4755 <label id="sect_obsolete">
4757 edit_hdrs edit_headers
4758 forw_decode forward_decode
4759 forw_format forward_format
4760 forw_quote forward_quote
4761 hdr_format index_format
4762 indent_str indent_string
4763 mime_fwd mime_forward
4764 msg_format message_format
4765 pgp_autosign crypt_autosign
4766 pgp_autoencrypt crypt_autoencrypt
4767 pgp_replyencrypt crypt_replyencrypt
4768 pgp_replysign crypt_replysign
4769 pgp_replysignencrypted crypt_replysignencrypted
4770 pgp_verify_sig crypt_verify_sig
4771 pgp_create_traditional pgp_autoinline
4772 pgp_auto_traditional pgp_replyinline
4773 forw_decrypt forward_decrypt
4774 smime_sign_as smime_default_key
4775 post_indent_str post_indent_string
4776 print_cmd print_command
4777 shorten_hierarchy sidebar_shorten_hierarchy
4778 ask_followup_to nntp_ask_followup_to
4779 ask_x_comment_to nntp_ask_x_comment_to
4780 catchup_newsgroup nntp_catchup
4781 followup_to_poster nntp_followup_to_poster
4782 group_index_format nntp_group_index_format
4784 mime_subject nntp_mime_subject
4785 news_cache_dir nntp_cache_dir
4786 news_server nntp_host
4788 nntp_poll nntp_mail_check
4789 pop_checkinterval pop_mail_check
4790 post_moderated nntp_post_moderated
4791 save_unsubscribed nntp_save_unsubscribed
4792 show_new_news nntp_show_new_news
4793 show_only_unread nntp_show_only_unread
4794 x_comment_to nntp_x_comment_to
4795 smtp_auth_username smtp_user
4796 smtp_auth_password smtp_pass
4799 The <tt/contrib/ subdirectory contains a script named
4800 <tt/update-config.pl/ which eases migration.
4802 A complete list of current variables follows.