1 .\"@ nail.1 - S-nail(1) reference manual.
3 .\" Copyright (c) 2000-2008 Gunnar Ritter, Freiburg i. Br., Germany.
4 .\" Copyright (c) 2012 - 2016 Steffen (Daode) Nurpmeso <steffen@sdaoden.eu>.
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34 .\"@ S-nail(1): v14.9.0-pre2 / 2016-10-31
36 .ds VV \\%v14.9.0-pre2
46 .\" If not ~/.mailrc, it breaks POSIX compatibility. And adjust main.c.
51 .ds OU [no v15-compat]
52 .ds ID [v15 behaviour may differ]
53 .ds NQ [Only new quoting rules]
64 .Nd send and receive Internet mail
70 .\" Keep in SYNC: ./nail.1:"SYNOPSIS, main()
78 .Op Fl a Ar attachment
81 .Op Fl M Ar type | Fl m Ar file | Fl q Ar file | Fl t
83 .Op Fl S Ar var Ns Op Ns = Ns Ar value
88 .Op Fl Fl \~ Ns Ar mta-option ...
97 .Op Fl S Ar var Ns Op Ns = Ns Ar value
100 .Op Fl Fl \~ Ns Ar mta-option ...
108 .Op Fl L Ar spec-list
109 .Op Fl r Ar from-addr
110 .Op Fl S Ar var Ns Op Ns = Ns Ar value
113 .Op Fl Fl \~ Ns Ar mta-option ...
118 .Mx -toc -tree html pdf ps xhtml
121 .\" .Sh DESCRIPTION {{{
124 .Bd -filled -compact -offset indent
125 .Sy Compatibility note:
126 S-nail (\*(UA) will wrap up into \%S-mailx in v15.0 (circa 2018).
127 Backward incompatibility has to be expected \(en
131 -style argument quoting rules, for example.
132 New and old behaviour is flagged \*(IN and \*(OU, and setting
135 .Sx "INTERNAL VARIABLES" ,
136 will choose new behaviour when applicable.
137 \*(OB flags what will vanish, and enabling
141 enables obsoletion warnings.
145 \*(UA is a mail processing system with a command syntax reminiscent of
147 with lines replaced by messages.
148 It is intended to provide the functionality of the POSIX
150 command, but is MIME capable and optionally offers extensions for
151 line editing, S/MIME, SMTP and POP3 among others.
153 .\" .Ss "Options" {{{
156 .Bl -tag -width ".It Fl BaNg"
159 Explicitly control which of the
161 shall be loaded: if the letter
163 is (case-insensitively) part of the
167 is loaded, likewise the letter
169 controls loading of the user's personal
171 file, whereas the letters
175 explicitly forbid loading of any resource files.
176 This option should be used by scripts: to avoid environmental noise they
179 from any configuration files and create a script-local environment,
180 explicitly setting any of the desired
181 .Sx "INTERNAL VARIABLES"
184 This option overrides
191 command for the given user email
193 after program startup is complete (all resource files are loaded, any
195 setting is being established; only
197 commands have not been evaluated yet).
198 Being a special incarnation of
200 macros for the purpose of bundling longer-lived settings, activating
201 such an email account also switches to the accounts
203 .Sx "primary system mailbox"
208 .It Fl a Ar file Ns Op Ar =input-charset Ns Op Ar #output-charset
211 to the message (for compose mode opportunities refer to
217 .Sx "filename transformations"
218 as described in the section
222 apply, but shell word expansion is restricted to the tilde
226 not be accessible but contain a
228 character, then anything after the
230 is treated as a character-set specification.
232 If an input character-set is specified,
233 .Mx -ix "character-set specification"
234 but no output character-set, then the given input character-set is fixed
235 as-is, and no conversion will be applied;
236 giving the special string hyphen
238 will be treated as if
240 has been specified (the default).
241 If an output character-set has also been given then the conversion will
242 be performed exactly as specified and on-the-fly, not considering the
243 file's type and content.
244 As an exception, if the output character-set is specified as the hyphen
246 then the default conversion algorithm (see
247 .Sx "Character sets" )
248 is applied (therefore no conversion is performed on-the-fly,
250 will be MIME-classified and its contents will be inspected first).
251 It is an error to specify anything but
253 if no character-set conversion is available
255 does not include the term
260 (\*(OB: \*(UA will always use line-buffered output, to gain
261 line-buffered input even in batch mode enable batch mode via
266 Send a blind carbon copy to
268 ess, if the setting of
271 .Sx "INTERNAL VARIABLES" ,
273 The option may be used multiple times.
275 .Sx "On sending mail, and non-interactive mode" .
279 Send carbon copies to the given receiver, if so allowed by
281 May be used multiple times.
286 the internal variable
288 which enables debug messages and disables message delivery,
289 among others; effectively turns almost any operation into a dry-run.
295 and thus discard messages with an empty message part body.
296 This command line flag is \*(OB.
300 Just check if mail is present (in the specified or system
302 if yes, return an exit status of zero, a non-zero value otherwise.
303 To restrict the set of mails to consider in this evaluation a message
304 specification can be added with the option
309 Save the message to send in a file named after the local part of the
310 first recipient's address (instead of in
315 Read in the contents of the user's
317 (or the specified file) for processing;
318 when \*(UA is quit, it writes undeleted messages back to this file
324 argument will undergo some special
326 .Sx "filename transformations" ,
327 which are documented in the introductional section of
329 as well as for the command
333 is not a argument to the flag
335 but is instead taken from the command line after option processing has
339 that starts with a hyphen, prefix it with a (relative) path, as in
340 .Ql ./-hyphenbox.mbox .
344 Display a summary of the
346 of all messages in the specified mailbox or system
349 A configurable summary view is available via the
355 Show a short usage summary.
356 Because of widespread use a
358 argument will have the same effect.
364 to ignore tty interrupt signals.
367 .It Fl L Ar spec-list
368 Display a summary of all
370 of only those messages in the specified mailbox or the system
376 .Sx "Specifying messages"
383 option has been given in addition no header summary is produced,
384 but \*(UA will instead indicate via its exit status whether
390 note that any verbose output is suppressed in this mode and must instead
391 be enabled explicitly (e.g., by using the option
396 Special send mode that will flag standard input with the MIME
400 and use it as the main message body.
401 \*(ID Using this option will bypass processing of
402 .Va message-inject-head ,
405 .Va message-inject-tail .
411 Special send mode that will MIME classify the specified
413 and use it as the main message body.
414 \*(ID Using this option will bypass processing of
415 .Va message-inject-head ,
418 .Va message-inject-tail .
424 inhibit the initial display of message headers when reading mail or
425 editing a mail folder by calling
427 for the internal variable
432 Standard flag that inhibits reading the system wide
437 allows more control over the startup sequence; also see
438 .Sx "Resource files" .
442 Special send mode that will initialize the message body with the
443 contents of the specified
445 which may be standard input
447 only in non-interactive context.
453 Any folder opened will be in read-only mode.
457 .It Fl r Ar from-addr
458 The source address that appears in the
461 header of a message (or in the
464 header if the former contains multiple addresses) is not used for
465 relaying and delegating a message over the wire via SMTP, but instead an
466 envelope will enwrap the message content and provide the necessary
467 information (i.e., the RFC 5321 reverse-path, also used to report, e.g.,
468 delivery errors) to transmit the message to its destination(s).
469 Whereas the said headers and internal variables will be used by \*(UA to
470 create the envelope if the builtin SMTP
472 (Mail-Transfer-Agent) is used, a file-based MTA will instead use the
473 identity of the message-originating user.
475 This command line option can be used to specify the reverse-path, to be
476 passed to a file-based
478 when a message is sent, via
479 .Ql -f Ar from-addr .
482 include a user name, then the address components will be separated and
483 the name part will be passed to a file-based
489 is also assigned to the internal variable
491 Many default installations and sites disallow explicit overriding of the
492 user identity which could be adjusted by this option, unless either
494 has been configured accordingly, or the user is member of a group with
495 special privileges, respectively.
497 If an empty string is passed as
499 then the content of the variable
501 (or, if that contains multiple addresses,
503 will be evaluated and used for this purpose whenever the file-based
506 Note that \*(UA by default, without
508 that is, neither passes
512 flags to a file-based MTA by itself, unless this automatic deduction is
515 ing the internal variable
516 .Va r-option-implicit .
520 .It Fl S Ar var Ns Op = Ns value
524 iable and, in case of a non-boolean variable which has a value, assign
528 .Sx "INTERNAL VARIABLES"
532 may be overwritten from within resource files,
533 the command line setting will be reestablished after all resource files
538 Specify the subject of the message to be sent.
539 Newline (NL) and carriage-return (CR) bytes are invalid and will be
540 normalized to space (SP) characters.
544 The message given (on standard input) is expected to contain, separated
545 from the message body by an empty line, a message header with
550 fields giving its recipients, which will be added to any recipients
551 specified on the command line.
552 If a message subject is specified via
554 then it will be used in favour of one given on the command line.
570 .Ql Mail-Followup-To: ,
571 by default created automatically dependent on message context, will
572 be used if specified (a special address massage will however still occur
574 Any other (also custom) header field is passed through entirely
575 unchanged, and in conjunction with the option
577 it is possible to embed
578 .Sx "COMMAND ESCAPES" .
586 .Sx "primary system mailbox"
589 appropriate privileges presumed; effectively identical to
599 will also show the list of
601 .Ql $ \*(uA -Xversion -Xx .
606 ting the internal variable
608 enables display of some informational context messages.
609 Using it twice increases the level of verbosity.
613 Add the given (or multiple for a multiline argument)
615 to the list of commands to be executed (as a unit, just as via
617 as a last step of program startup, before normal operation starts.
621 .Va batch-exit-on-error ;
622 the only possibility to execute commands in non-interactive mode when
623 reading startup files is actively prohibited.
628 .Sx "COMMAND ESCAPES"
629 even if not in interactive mode.
630 This can be used to, e.g., automatically format the composed message
631 text before sending the message:
632 .Bd -literal -offset indent
633 $ ( echo 'line one. Word. Word2.'; \e
634 echo '~| /usr/bin/fmt -tuw66' ) |\e
635 LC_ALL=C \*(uA -:/ -Sttycharset=utf-8 -d~ bob@exam.ple
641 In batch mode the full set of commands is available, just like in
642 interactive mode, standard input is made line buffered, and diverse
643 .Sx "INTERNAL VARIABLES"
644 are adjusted for batch necessities, e.g., it
660 .Sx "COMMAND ESCAPES"
661 is enabled in compose mode.
662 The following prepares an email message in a batched dry run:
663 .Bd -literal -offset indent
664 $ LC_ALL=C printf 'm bob\en~s ubject\enText\en~.\enx\en' | \e
665 LC_ALL=C \*(uA -:/ -d# -X'alias bob bob@exam.ple'
670 This flag forces termination of option processing in order to prevent
673 It also forcefully puts \*(UA into send mode, see
674 .Sx "On sending mail, and non-interactive mode" .
682 argument, as well as all receivers established by the command line options
686 are subject to checks established via
689 .Sx "INTERNAL VARIABLES" .
691 .Op Ar mta-option ...
693 arguments that are given at the end of the command line after a
695 separator will be passed through to a file-based
697 (Mail-Transfer-Agent) and persist for an entire (interactive) session
698 \(en if the setting of the internal variable
700 allows their recognition; no such constraints apply to the variable
704 .\" .Ss "A starter" {{{
707 \*(UA is a direct descendant of
709 Mail, a successor of the Research
712 .Dq was there from the start
717 Mail reference manual begins with the following words:
719 .Bd -ragged -offset indent
720 Mail provides a simple and friendly environment for sending and
722 It divides incoming mail into its constituent messages and allows the
723 user to deal with them in any order.
724 In addition, it provides a set of
726 -like commands for manipulating messages and sending mail.
727 Mail offers the user simple editing capabilities to ease the composition
728 of outgoing messages, as well as providing the ability to define and
729 send to names which address groups of users.
733 \*(UA is thus the user side of the
735 mail system, whereas the system side (Mail-Transfer-Agent, MTA) was
736 traditionally taken by
738 and most MTAs provide a binary of this name for compatibility purposes.
743 of \*(UA then the system side is not a mandatory precondition for mail
747 Because \*(UA strives for compliance with POSIX
749 it is likely that some configuration settings have to be adjusted before
750 using it is a smooth experience.
753 resource file bends those standard imposed settings of the
754 .Sx "INTERNAL VARIABLES"
755 a bit towards more user friendliness and safety, however, e.g., it
760 in order to suppress the automatic moving of messages to
762 that would otherwise occur (see
763 .Sx "Message states" ) ,
766 to not remove empty system (MBOX) mailbox files in order not to mangle
767 file permissions when files eventually get recreated; be aware that
768 \*(UA will (try to) remove all empty (MBOX) mailbox files unless this
769 variable is set in case
771 .Pf ( Ev POSIXLY_CORRECT )
772 mode has been enabled.
773 The file mode creation mask is explicitly managed via
779 in order to synchronize \*(UA with the exit status report of the used
784 to enter interactive startup even if the initial mailbox is empty,
786 to allow editing of headers as well as
788 to not strip down addresses in compose mode, and
790 to include the message that is being responded to when
795 contains some more complete configuration examples.
798 .\" .Ss "On sending mail, and non-interactive mode" {{{
799 .Ss "On sending mail, and non-interactive mode"
801 To send a message to one or more people, using a local or a builtin
803 (Mail-Transfer-Agent) transport to actually deliver the generated mail
804 message, \*(UA can be invoked with arguments which are the names of
805 people to whom the mail will be sent, and the command line options
809 can be used to add (blind) carbon copy receivers:
811 .Bd -literal -offset indent
812 $ \*(uA -s ubject -a ttach.txt bill@exam.ple
813 # But... try it in an isolated dry-run mode first
814 $ LC_ALL=C \*(uA -:/ -d -vv -Ssendwait \e
815 -b bcc@exam.ple -c cc@exam.ple -. \e
816 '(Lovely) Bob <bob@exam.ple>' eric@exam.ple
818 $ LC_ALL=C \*(uA -:/ -d -vv -Sv15-compat -Ssendwait \e
819 -S 'mta=smtps://mylogin@exam.ple:465' -Ssmtp-auth=login \e
820 -S 'from=scriptreply@exam.ple' \e
826 If standard input is a terminal rather than the message to be sent,
827 the user is expected to type in the message contents.
828 In this compose mode \*(UA treats lines beginning with the character
830 special \(en these are so-called
831 .Sx "COMMAND ESCAPES"
832 which can be used to read in files, process shell commands, add and edit
833 attachments and more; e.g., the command escape
835 will start the text editor to revise the message in its current state,
837 allows editing of the most important message headers and
839 gives an overview of available command escapes.
843 at the beginning of an empty line leaves compose mode and causes the
844 message to be sent, whereas typing
847 twice will abort the current letter (saving its contents in the file
853 Messages are sent asynchronously, without supervision, unless the variable
855 is set, therefore send errors are not recognizable until then.
861 .Sx "INTERNAL VARIABLES"
862 can be used to alter default behavior; e.g.,
867 will automatically startup a text editor when compose mode is entered,
869 allows editing of headers additionally to plain body content,
871 will cause the user to be prompted actively for carbon-copy recipients
874 will allow leaving compose mode by writing a line consisting solely of
880 hook macros may be set to automatically adjust some settings dependent
881 on receiver, sender or subject contexts, and
882 .Va on-compose-done-shell
885 are increasingly powerful mechanisms to perform automated message
886 adjustments in between.
889 Especially for using public mail provider accounts with the SMTP
891 it is often necessary to set
893 and saving a copy of sent messages in a
895 may be desirable \(en as for most mailbox
897 targets the value will undergo
899 .Sx "filename transformations" ,
900 also see the introduction of
905 for the purpose of arranging a complete environment of settings that can
906 be switched to with a single command or command line option may be
909 contains example configurations for sending messages via some of the
910 well-known public mail providers and also gives a compact overview on
911 how to setup a secure SSL/TLS environment).
916 sandbox dry-run tests first will prove correctness.
920 .Sx "On URL syntax and credential lookup"
921 will spread light on the different ways of how to specify user email
922 account credentials, the
924 variable chains, and accessing protocol-specific resources,
927 goes into the details of character encoding and how to use them for
928 representing messages and MIME part contents by specifying them in
930 and reading the section
931 .Sx "The mime.types files"
932 should help to understand how the MIME-type of outgoing attachments are
933 classified, and what can be done for fine-tuning.
934 Over the wire an intermediate, configurable
935 .Pf content-transfer-\: Va encoding
936 may be applied to the raw message part data.
939 Message recipients (as specified on the command line or defined in
944 may not only be email addressees but can also be names of mailboxes and
945 even complete shell command pipe specifications.
948 is not set then only network addresses (see
950 for a description of mail addresses) and plain user names (including MTA
951 aliases) may be used, other types will be filtered out, giving a warning
954 .\" When changing any of the following adjust any RECIPIENTADDRSPEC;
955 .\" grep the latter for the complete picture
959 is set then extended recipient addresses will optionally be accepted:
960 Any name which starts with a vertical bar
962 character specifies a command pipe \(en the command string following the
964 is executed and the message is sent to its standard input;
965 Likewise, any name that starts with the character solidus
967 or the character sequence dot solidus
969 is treated as a file, regardless of the remaining content;
970 likewise a name that solely consists of a hyphen
972 Any other name which contains an at sign
974 character is treated as a network address;
975 Any other name which starts with a plus sign
977 character specifies a mailbox name;
978 Any other name which contains a solidus
980 character but no exclamation mark
984 character before also specifies a mailbox name;
985 What remains is treated as a network address.
987 .Bd -literal -offset indent
988 $ echo bla | \*(uA -Sexpandaddr -s test ./mbox.mbox
989 $ echo bla | \*(uA -Sexpandaddr -s test '|cat >> ./mbox.mbox'
990 $ echo safe | LC_ALL=C \e
991 \*(uA -:/ -Sv15-compat -Ssendwait -Snosave \e
992 -Sexpandaddr=fail,-all,+addr -s test \e
997 It is possible to create personal distribution lists via the
999 command, so that, for instance, the user can send mail to
1001 and have it go to a group of people.
1002 These aliases have nothing in common with the system wide aliases that
1003 may be used by the MTA, which are subject to the
1007 and are often tracked in a file
1013 Personal aliases will be expanded by \*(UA before the message is sent,
1014 and are thus a convenient alternative to specifying each addressee by
1018 .Dl alias cohorts bill jkf mark kridle@ucbcory ~/mail/cohorts.mbox
1021 To avoid environmental noise scripts should
1023 \*(UA from any configuration files and create a script-local
1024 environment, ideally with the command line options
1026 to disable any configuration file in conjunction with repetitions of
1028 to specify variables:
1030 .Bd -literal -offset indent
1031 $ env LC_ALL=C \*(uA -:/ \e
1032 -Sv15-compat -Ssendwait -Snosave -Sttycharset=utf-8 \e
1033 -Sexpandaddr=fail,-all,+addr \e
1034 -S 'mta=smtps://mylogin@exam.ple:465' -Ssmtp-auth=login \e
1035 -S 'from=scriptreply@exam.ple' \e
1036 -s 'subject' -a attachment_file \e
1037 -. "Recipient 1 <rec1@exam.ple>" rec2@exam.ple \e
1042 As shown, scripts can
1044 a locale environment, the above specifies the all-compatible 7-bit clean
1047 but will nonetheless take and send UTF-8 in the message text by using
1049 In interactive mode, which is introduced in the next section, messages
1050 can be sent by calling the
1052 command with a list of recipient addresses \(em the semantics are
1053 completely identical to non-interactive message sending:
1055 .Bd -literal -offset indent
1056 $ \*(uA -d -Squiet -Semptystart
1057 "/var/spool/mail/user": 0 messages
1058 ? mail "Recipient 1 <rec1@exam.ple>", rec2@exam.ple
1059 ? # Will do the right thing (tm)
1060 ? m rec1@exam.ple rec2@exam.ple
1064 .\" .Ss "On reading mail, and interactive mode" {{{
1065 .Ss "On reading mail, and interactive mode"
1067 When invoked without addressees \*(UA enters interactive mode in which
1069 When used like that the user's system
1073 for an in-depth description of the different mailbox types that exist)
1074 is read in and a one line header of each message therein is displayed.
1075 The visual style of this summary of
1077 can be adjusted through the variable
1079 and the possible sorting criterion via
1085 can be performed with the command
1087 If the initially opened mailbox is empty \*(UA will instead exit
1088 immediately (after displaying a message) unless the variable
1097 will give a listing of all available commands and
1099 will give a summary of some common ones.
1100 If the \*(OPal documentation strings are available one can type
1103 and see the actual expansion of
1105 and what its purpose is, i.e., commands can be abbreviated
1106 (note that POSIX defines some abbreviations, so that the alphabetical
1107 order of commands does not necessarily relate to the abbreviations; it is
1108 possible to define overwrites with the
1111 These commands can also produce a more
1116 Messages are given numbers (starting at 1) which uniquely identify
1117 messages; the current message \(en the
1119 \(en will either be the first new message, or the first unread message,
1120 or the first message of the mailbox; the internal variable
1122 will instead cause usage of the last message for this purpose.
1127 ful of header summaries containing the
1131 will display only the summaries of the given messages, defaulting to the
1135 Message content can be displayed on the users' terminal with the
1139 If instead the command
1141 is used, only the first
1143 of a message will be shown.
1144 By default the current message
1146 is displayed, but like with many other commands it is possible to give
1147 a fancy message specification (see
1148 .Sx "Specifying messages" ) ,
1151 will display all unread messages,
1156 will type the messages 1 and 5,
1158 will type the messages 1 through 5, and
1162 will display the last and the next message, respectively.
1165 (a more substantial alias of the standard command
1167 will display a header summary of the given message specification list
1168 instead of their content, e.g., the following will search for subjects:
1171 .Dl from "'@Some subject to search for'"
1174 In the default setup all header fields of a message will be
1176 d, but fields can be white- or blacklisted for a variety of
1177 applications by using the command
1179 e.g., to restrict display to a very restricted set:
1180 .Ql Ic \:headerpick Cd \:type retain add Ar \:from to cc subject .
1181 In order to display all header fields of a message regardless of
1182 currently active ignore or retain lists, use the commands
1188 controls whether and when \*(UA will use the configured
1190 for display instead of directly writing to the user terminal
1192 (generally speaking).
1193 Note that historically the global
1195 not only adjusts the list of displayed headers, but also sets
1199 Dependent upon the configuration a line editor (see the section
1200 .Sx "On terminal control and line editor" )
1201 aims at making user experience with the many
1204 When reading the system
1210 specified a mailbox explicitly prefixed with the special
1212 modifier (propagating the mailbox to a
1214 .Sx "primary system mailbox" ) ,
1215 then messages which have been read will be moved to a
1217 .Sx "secondary mailbox" ,
1220 file, automatically when the mailbox is left, either by changing the
1221 active mailbox or by quitting \*(UA (also see
1222 .Sx "Message states" )
1223 \(en this automatic moving from a system or primary to the secondary
1224 mailbox is not performed when the variable
1229 After examining a message the user can also
1233 to the sender and all recipients or
1235 exclusively to the sender(s).
1236 Messages can also be
1238 ed (shorter alias is
1240 Note that when replying to or forwarding a message recipient addresses
1241 will be stripped from comments and names unless the internal variable
1244 Deletion causes \*(UA to forget about the message;
1245 This is not irreversible, though, one can
1247 the message by giving its number,
1248 or the \*(UA session can be ended by giving the
1253 To end a mail processing session one may either issue
1255 to cause a full program exit, which possibly includes
1256 automatic moving of read messages to
1258 as well as updating the \*(OPal line editor
1262 instead in order to prevent any of these actions.
1265 .\" .Ss "HTML mail and MIME attachments" {{{
1266 .Ss "HTML mail and MIME attachments"
1268 Messages which are HTML-only get more and more common and of course many
1269 messages come bundled with a bouquet of MIME attachments.
1270 Whereas \*(UA \*(OPally supports a simple HTML-to-text converter to deal
1271 with HTML messages (see
1272 .Sx "The mime.types files" ) ,
1273 it normally cannot deal with any of these itself, but instead programs
1274 need to become registered to deal with specific MIME types or file
1276 These programs may either prepare plain text versions of their input
1277 in order to enable \*(UA to display the content on the terminal,
1278 or display the content themselves, for example in a graphical window.
1281 To install an external handler program for a specific MIME type set an
1283 .Va pipe-TYPE/SUBTYPE
1284 variable; to instead define a handler for a specific file extension set
1287 variable \(en these handlers take precedence.
1288 \*(OPally \*(UA supports mail user agent configuration as defined in
1289 RFC 1524; this mechanism, documented in the section
1290 .Sx "The Mailcap files" ,
1291 will be queried for display or quote handlers if none of the former two
1292 .\" TODO v15-compat "will be" -> "is"
1293 did; it will be the sole source for handlers of other purpose.
1294 A last source for handlers may be the MIME type definition itself, if
1295 the \*(UA specific type-marker extension was used when defining the type
1298 (Many of the builtin MIME types do so by default.)
1302 .Va mime-counter-evidence
1303 can be set to improve dealing with faulty MIME part declarations as are
1304 often seen in real-life messages.
1305 E.g., to display a HTML message inline (that is, converted to a more
1306 fancy plain text representation than the builtin converter is capable to
1307 produce) with either of the text-mode browsers
1311 teach \*(UA about MathML documents and make it display them as plain
1312 text, and to open PDF attachments in an external PDF viewer,
1313 asynchronously and with some other magic attached:
1315 .Bd -literal -offset indent
1316 if $features !@ +filter-html-tagsoup
1317 #set pipe-text/html='elinks -force-html -dump 1'
1318 set pipe-text/html='lynx -stdin -dump -force_html'
1319 # Display HTML as plain text instead
1320 #set pipe-text/html=@
1322 mimetype '@ application/mathml+xml mathml'
1323 wysh set pipe-application/pdf='@&=@ \e
1324 trap "rm -f \e"${NAIL_FILENAME_TEMPORARY}\e"" EXIT;\e
1325 trap "trap \e"\e" INT QUIT TERM; exit 1" INT QUIT TERM;\e
1326 mupdf "${NAIL_FILENAME_TEMPORARY}"'
1330 Note: special care must be taken when using such commands as mail
1331 viruses may be distributed by this method: if messages of type
1332 .Ql application/x-sh
1333 or files with the extension
1335 were blindly filtered through the shell, for example, a message sender
1336 could easily execute arbitrary code on the system \*(UA is running on.
1337 For more on MIME, also in respect to sending of messages, see the
1339 .Sx "The mime.types files" ,
1340 .Sx "The Mailcap files"
1345 .\" .Ss "Mailing lists" {{{
1348 \*(UA offers some support to ease handling of mailing lists.
1351 promotes all given arguments to known mailing lists, and
1353 sets their subscription attribute, creating them first as necessary.
1358 automatically, but only resets the subscription attribute.)
1359 Using the commands without arguments will show (a subset of) all
1360 currently defined mailing lists.
1365 can be used to mark out messages with configured list addresses
1366 in the header display.
1369 \*(OPally mailing lists may also be specified as (extended) regular
1370 expressions, which allows matching of many addresses with a single
1372 However, all fully qualified list addresses are matched via a fast
1373 dictionary, whereas expressions are placed in (a) list(s) which is
1374 (are) matched sequentially.
1376 .Bd -literal -offset indent
1377 set followup-to followup-to-honour=ask-yes reply-to-honour=ask-yes
1378 wysh mlist a1@b1.c1 a2@b2.c2 '.*@lists\e.c3$'
1379 mlsubscribe a4@b4.c4 exact@lists.c3
1384 .Va followup-to-honour
1386 .Ql Mail-\:Followup-\:To:
1387 header is honoured when the message is being replied to (via
1393 controls whether this header is created when sending mails; it will be
1394 created automatically for a couple of reasons, too, like when the
1396 .Dq mailing list specific
1401 is used to respond to a message with its
1402 .Ql Mail-Followup-To:
1406 A difference in between the handling of known and subscribed lists is
1407 that the address of the sender is usually not part of a generated
1408 .Ql Mail-Followup-To:
1409 when addressing the latter, whereas it is for the former kind of lists.
1410 Usually because there are exceptions: say, if multiple lists are
1411 addressed and not all of them are subscribed lists.
1413 For convenience \*(UA will, temporarily, automatically add a list
1414 address that is presented in the
1416 header of a message that is being responded to to the list of known
1418 Shall that header have existed \*(UA will instead, dependent on the
1420 .Va reply-to-honour ,
1423 for this purpose in order to accept a list administrators' wish that
1424 is supposed to have been manifested like that (but only if it provides
1425 a single address which resides on the same domain as what is stated in
1429 .\" .Ss "Resource files" {{{
1430 .Ss "Resource files"
1432 Upon startup \*(UA reads in several resource files:
1434 .Bl -tag -width ".It Pa BaNg"
1437 System wide initialization file.
1438 Reading of this file can be suppressed, either by using the
1442 command line options, or by setting the
1445 .Ev NAIL_NO_SYSTEM_RC .
1449 File giving initial commands.
1450 A different file can be chosen by setting the
1454 Reading of this file can be suppressed with the
1456 command line option.
1458 .It Va NAIL_EXTRA_RC
1459 Can be used to define an optional startup file to be read after all
1460 other resource files.
1461 It can be used to specify settings that are not understood by other
1463 implementations, for example.
1464 This variable is only honoured when defined in a resource file, e.g.,
1466 .Sx "INTERNAL VARIABLES" .
1470 The content of these files is interpreted as follows:
1473 .Bl -bullet -compact
1475 A lines' leading whitespace is removed.
1477 Empty lines are ignored.
1479 Any other line is interpreted as a command.
1480 It may be spread over multiple input lines if the newline character is
1482 by placing a reverse solidus character
1484 as the last character of the line; whereas any leading whitespace of
1485 follow lines is ignored, trailing whitespace before a escaped newline
1486 remains in the input.
1488 If the line (content) starts with the number sign
1490 then it is a comment-command \(en a real command! \(en and also ignored.
1491 This command is the only form of comment that is understood.
1495 Unless \*(UA is about to enter interactive mode syntax errors that occur
1496 while loading these files are treated as errors and cause program exit.
1497 More files with syntactically equal content can be
1499 The following, saved in a file, would be an examplary content:
1501 .Bd -literal -offset indent
1502 # This line is a comment command. And y\e
1503 es, it is really continued here.
1510 .\" .Ss "Character sets" {{{
1511 .Ss "Character sets"
1513 \*(OP \*(UA detects the character set of the terminal by using
1514 mechanisms that are controlled by the
1519 should give an overview); the \*(UA internal variable
1521 will be set to the detected terminal character set accordingly
1522 and will thus show up in the output of the commands
1528 However, a user supplied
1530 value is not overwritten by this detection mechanism: this
1532 must be used if the detection does not work properly,
1533 and it may be used to adjust the name of the locale character set.
1534 E.g., on BSD systems one may use a locale with the character set
1535 ISO8859-1, which is not a valid name for this character set; to be on
1536 the safe side, one may set
1538 to the correct name, which is ISO-8859-1.
1541 Note that changing the value does not mean much beside that,
1542 since several aspects of the real character set are implied by the
1543 locale environment of the system,
1544 and that stays unaffected by the content of an overwritten
1547 (This is mostly an issue when interactively using \*(UA, though.
1548 It is actually possible to send mail in a completely
1550 locale environment, an option that \*(UA's test-suite uses excessively.)
1553 If no character set conversion capabilities have been compiled into
1556 does not include the term
1560 will be the only supported character set,
1561 it is simply assumed that it can be used to exchange 8-bit messages
1562 (over the wire an intermediate
1563 .Pf content-transfer-\: Va encoding
1565 and the rest of this section does not apply;
1566 it may however still be necessary to explicitly set it if automatic
1567 detection fails, since in that case it defaults to the mentioned
1568 .\" (Keep in SYNC: ./nail.1:"Character sets", ./nail.h:CHARSET_*!)
1572 When reading messages, their text is converted into
1574 as necessary in order to display them on the users terminal.
1575 Unprintable characters and invalid byte sequences are detected
1576 and replaced by proper substitution characters (unless the variable
1578 was set once \*(UA was started).
1580 .Va charset-unknown-8bit
1581 to deal with another hairy aspect of message interpretation.
1584 When sending messages all their parts and attachments are classified.
1585 Whereas no character set conversion is performed on those parts which
1586 appear to be binary data,
1587 the character set being used must be declared within the MIME header of
1588 an outgoing text part if it contains characters that do not conform to
1589 the set of characters that are allowed by the email standards.
1590 Permissible values for character sets can be declared using the
1594 which defines a catch-all last-resort fallback character set that is
1595 implicitly appended to the list of character-sets in
1599 When replying to a message and the variable
1600 .Va reply-in-same-charset
1601 is set then the character set of the message being replied to is tried
1603 And it is also possible to make \*(UA work even more closely related to
1604 the current locale setting automatically by using the variable
1605 .Va sendcharsets-else-ttycharset ,
1606 please see there for more information.
1609 All the specified character sets are tried in order unless the
1610 conversion of the part or attachment succeeds.
1611 If none of the tried (8-bit) character sets is capable to represent the
1612 content of the part or attachment,
1613 then the message will not be sent and its text will optionally be
1617 In general, if the message
1618 .Dq Cannot convert from a to b
1619 appears, either some characters are not appropriate for the currently
1620 selected (terminal) character set,
1621 or the needed conversion is not supported by the system.
1622 In the first case, it is necessary to set an appropriate
1624 locale and/or the variable
1628 The best results are usually achieved when \*(UA is run in a UTF-8
1629 locale on a UTF-8 capable terminal, in which case the full Unicode
1630 spectrum of characters is available.
1631 In this setup characters from various countries can be displayed,
1632 while it is still possible to use more simple character sets for sending
1633 to retain maximum compatibility with older mail clients.
1636 On the other hand the POSIX standard defines a locale-independent 7-bit
1637 .Dq portable character set
1638 that should be used when overall portability is an issue, the even more
1639 restricted subset named
1640 .Dq portable filename character set
1641 consisting of A-Z, a-z, 0-9, period
1650 .\" .Ss "Message states" {{{
1651 .Ss "Message states"
1653 \*(UA differentiates in between several different message states;
1654 the current state will be reflected in header summary displays if
1656 is configured to do so (via the internal variable
1658 and messages can also be selected and be acted upon depending on their
1660 .Sx "Specifying messages" ) .
1661 When operating on the system
1665 .Sx "primary system mailbox" ,
1666 special actions, like the automatic moving of messages to the
1668 .Sx "secondary mailbox"
1670 may be applied when the mailbox is left (also implicitly via
1671 a successful exit of \*(UA, but not if the special command
1673 is used) \(en however, because this may be irritating to users which
1676 mail-user-agents, the default global
1682 variables in order to suppress this behaviour.
1684 .Bl -tag -width ".It Ql BaNg"
1686 Message has neither been viewed nor moved to any other state.
1687 Such messages are retained even in the
1689 .Sx "primary system mailbox" .
1692 Message has neither been viewed nor moved to any other state, but the
1693 message was present already when the mailbox has been opened last:
1694 Such messages are retained even in the
1696 .Sx "primary system mailbox" .
1699 The message has been processed by one of the following commands:
1719 commands may also cause the next message to be marked as read, depending
1725 command is used, messages that are in a
1727 .Sx "primary system mailbox"
1730 state when the mailbox is left will be saved in
1732 unless the internal variable
1737 The message has been processed by one of the following commands:
1743 can be used to access such messages.
1746 The message has been processed by a
1748 command and it will be retained in its current location.
1751 The message has been processed by one of the following commands:
1757 command is used, messages that are in a
1759 .Sx "primary system mailbox"
1762 state when the mailbox is left will be deleted; they will be saved in
1764 when the internal variable
1770 .\" .Ss "Specifying messages" {{{
1771 .Ss "Specifying messages"
1778 can be given a list of message numbers as arguments to apply to a number
1779 of messages at once.
1782 deletes messages 1 and 2,
1785 will delete the messages 1 through 5.
1786 In sorted or threaded mode (see the
1790 will delete the messages that are located between (and including)
1791 messages 1 through 5 in the sorted/threaded order, as shown in the
1794 The following special message names exist:
1797 .Bl -tag -width ".It Ar BaNg"
1799 The current message, the so-called
1803 The message that was previously the current message.
1806 The parent message of the current message,
1807 that is the message with the Message-ID given in the
1809 field or the last entry of the
1811 field of the current message.
1814 The next previous undeleted message,
1815 or the next previous deleted message for the
1818 In sorted/threaded mode,
1819 the next previous such message in the sorted/threaded order.
1822 The next undeleted message,
1823 or the next deleted message for the
1826 In sorted/threaded mode,
1827 the next such message in the sorted/threaded order.
1830 The first undeleted message,
1831 or the first deleted message for the
1834 In sorted/threaded mode,
1835 the first such message in the sorted/threaded order.
1839 In sorted/threaded mode,
1840 the last message in the sorted/threaded order.
1844 selects the message addressed with
1848 is any other message specification,
1849 and all messages from the thread that begins at it.
1850 Otherwise it is identical to
1855 the thread beginning with the current message is selected.
1860 All messages that were included in the message list for the previous
1864 An inclusive range of message numbers.
1865 Selectors that may also be used as endpoints include any of
1870 .Dq any substring matches
1873 header, which will match addresses (too) even if
1875 is set (and POSIX says
1876 .Dq any address as shown in a header summary shall be matchable in this form ) ;
1879 variable is set, only the local part of the address is evaluated
1880 for the comparison, not ignoring case, and the setting of
1882 is completely ignored.
1883 For finer control and match boundaries use the
1887 .It Ar / Ns Ar string
1888 All messages that contain
1890 in the subject field (case ignored).
1897 the string from the previous specification of that type is used again.
1899 .It Xo Op Ar @ Ns Ar name-list Ns
1902 All messages that contain the given case-insensitive search
1904 ession; if the \*(OPal regular expression (see
1906 support is available
1908 will be interpreted as (an extended) one if any of the
1910 (extended) regular expression characters is seen.
1912 .Ar @ Ns Ar name-list
1913 part is missing, the search is restricted to the subject field body,
1916 specifies a comma-separated list of header fields to search, as in
1918 .Dl '@to,from,cc@Someone i ought to know'
1920 In order to search for a string that includes a
1922 (commercial at) character the
1924 is effectively non-optional, but may be given as the empty string.
1925 Some special header fields may be abbreviated:
1939 respectively and case-insensitively.
1944 can be used to search in (all of) the header(s) of the message, and the
1953 can be used to perform full text searches \(en whereas the former
1954 searches only the body, the latter also searches the message header.
1956 This message specification performs full text comparison, but even with
1957 regular expression support it is almost impossible to write a search
1958 expression that savely matches only a specific address domain.
1959 To request that the content of the header is treated as a list of
1960 addresses, and to strip those down to the plain email address which the
1961 search expression is to be matched against, prefix the header name
1962 (abbreviation) with a tilde
1965 .Dl @~f@@a\e.safe\e.domain\e.match$
1968 All messages of state
1972 is one or multiple of the following colon modifiers:
1974 .Bl -tag -compact -width ".It Ar :M"
1979 Old messages (any not in state
2005 Messages marked as draft.
2007 \*(OP Messages classified as spam.
2009 \*(OP Messages with unsure spam classification.
2015 \*(OP IMAP-style SEARCH expressions may also be used.
2016 This addressing mode is available with all types of folders;
2017 \*(UA will perform the search locally as necessary.
2018 Strings must be enclosed by double quotes
2020 in their entirety if they contain white space or parentheses;
2021 within the quotes, only reverse solidus
2023 is recognized as an escape character.
2024 All string searches are case-insensitive.
2025 When the description indicates that the
2027 representation of an address field is used,
2028 this means that the search string is checked against both a list
2031 .Bd -literal -offset indent
2032 (\*qname\*q \*qsource\*q \*qlocal-part\*q \*qdomain-part\*q)
2037 and the addresses without real names from the respective header field.
2038 These search expressions can be nested using parentheses, see below for
2042 .Bl -tag -compact -width ".It Ar _n_u"
2043 .It Ar ( criterion )
2044 All messages that satisfy the given
2046 .It Ar ( criterion1 criterion2 ... criterionN )
2047 All messages that satisfy all of the given criteria.
2049 .It Ar ( or criterion1 criterion2 )
2050 All messages that satisfy either
2055 To connect more than two criteria using
2057 specifications have to be nested using additional parentheses,
2059 .Ql (or a (or b c)) ,
2063 .Ql ((a or b) and c) .
2066 operation of independent criteria on the lowest nesting level,
2067 it is possible to achieve similar effects by using three separate
2071 .It Ar ( not criterion )
2072 All messages that do not satisfy
2074 .It Ar ( bcc \*q Ns Ar string Ns Ar \*q )
2075 All messages that contain
2077 in the envelope representation of the
2080 .It Ar ( cc \*q Ns Ar string Ns Ar \*q )
2081 All messages that contain
2083 in the envelope representation of the
2086 .It Ar ( from \*q Ns Ar string Ns Ar \*q )
2087 All messages that contain
2089 in the envelope representation of the
2092 .It Ar ( subject \*q Ns Ar string Ns Ar \*q )
2093 All messages that contain
2098 .It Ar ( to \*q Ns Ar string Ns Ar \*q )
2099 All messages that contain
2101 in the envelope representation of the
2104 .It Ar ( header name \*q Ns Ar string Ns Ar \*q )
2105 All messages that contain
2110 .It Ar ( body \*q Ns Ar string Ns Ar \*q )
2111 All messages that contain
2114 .It Ar ( text \*q Ns Ar string Ns Ar \*q )
2115 All messages that contain
2117 in their header or body.
2118 .It Ar ( larger size )
2119 All messages that are larger than
2122 .It Ar ( smaller size )
2123 All messages that are smaller than
2127 .It Ar ( before date )
2128 All messages that were received before
2130 which must be in the form
2134 denotes the day of the month as one or two digits,
2136 is the name of the month \(en one of
2137 .Ql Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec ,
2140 is the year as four digits, e.g.,
2144 All messages that were received on the specified date.
2145 .It Ar ( since date )
2146 All messages that were received since the specified date.
2147 .It Ar ( sentbefore date )
2148 All messages that were sent on the specified date.
2149 .It Ar ( senton date )
2150 All messages that were sent on the specified date.
2151 .It Ar ( sentsince date )
2152 All messages that were sent since the specified date.
2154 The same criterion as for the previous search.
2155 This specification cannot be used as part of another criterion.
2156 If the previous command line contained more than one independent
2157 criterion then the last of those criteria is used.
2161 .\" .Ss "On URL syntax and credential lookup" {{{
2162 .Ss "On URL syntax and credential lookup"
2164 \*(IN For accessing protocol-specific resources usage of Uniform
2165 Resource Locators (URL, RFC 1738) has become omnipresent.
2166 \*(UA expects and understands URLs in the following form;
2169 denote optional parts, optional either because there also exist other
2170 ways to define the information in question or because support of the
2171 part is protocol-specific (e.g.,
2173 is used by the IMAP protocol but not by POP3);
2178 are specified they must be given in URL percent encoded form (RFC 3986;
2184 .Dl PROTOCOL://[USER[:PASSWORD]@]server[:port][/path]
2187 Note that these \*(UA URLs most often do not conform to any real
2188 standard, but instead represent a normalized variant of RFC 1738 \(en
2189 they are not used in data exchange but only meant as a compact,
2190 easy-to-use way of defining and representing information in
2191 a well-known notation.
2194 Many internal variables of \*(UA exist in multiple versions, called
2195 variable chains for the rest of this document: the plain
2200 .Ql variable-USER@HOST .
2207 had been specified in the respective URL, otherwise it refers to the plain
2213 that had been found when doing the user chain lookup as is described
2216 will never be in URL percent encoded form, whether it came from an URL
2217 or not; i.e., variable chain name extensions of
2218 .Sx "INTERNAL VARIABLES"
2219 must not be URL percent encoded.
2222 For example, whether an hypothetical URL
2223 .Ql smtp://hey%3Ayou@our.house
2224 had been given that includes a user, or whether the URL was
2225 .Ql smtp://our.house
2226 and the user had been found differently, to lookup the variable chain
2227 .Va smtp-use-starttls
2228 \*(UA first looks for whether
2229 .Ql smtp-\:use-\:starttls-\:hey:you@our.house
2230 is defined, then whether
2231 .Ql smtp-\:use-\:starttls-\:our.house
2232 exists before finally ending up looking at the plain variable itself.
2235 \*(UA obeys the following logic scheme when dealing with the
2236 necessary credential information of an account:
2242 has been given in the URL the variables
2246 are looked up; if no such variable(s) can be found then \*(UA will,
2247 when enforced by the \*(OPal variables
2248 .Va netrc-lookup-HOST
2255 specific entry which provides a
2257 name: this lookup will only succeed if unambiguous (one possible matching
2260 It is possible to load encrypted
2265 If there is still no
2267 then \*(UA will fall back to the user who is supposed to run \*(UA,
2268 the identity of which has been fixated during \*(UA startup and is
2269 known to be a valid user on the current host.
2272 Authentication: unless otherwise noted this will lookup the
2273 .Va PROTOCOL-auth-USER@HOST , PROTOCOL-auth-HOST , PROTOCOL-auth
2274 variable chain, falling back to a protocol-specific default should this
2280 has been given in the URL, then if the
2282 has been found through the \*(OPal
2284 that may have already provided the password, too.
2285 Otherwise the variable chain
2286 .Va password-USER@HOST , password-HOST , password
2287 is looked up and used if existent.
2289 Afterwards the complete \*(OPal variable chain
2290 .Va netrc-lookup-USER@HOST , netrc-lookup-HOST , netrc-lookup
2294 cache is searched for a password only (multiple user accounts for
2295 a single machine may exist as well as a fallback entry without user
2296 but with a password).
2298 If at that point there is still no password available, but the
2299 (protocols') chosen authentication type requires a password, then in
2300 interactive mode the user will be prompted on the terminal.
2305 S/MIME verification works relative to the values found in the
2309 header field(s), which means that the values of
2310 .Va smime-sign , smime-sign-cert , smime-sign-include-certs
2312 .Va smime-sign-message-digest
2313 will not be looked up using the
2317 chains from above but instead use the corresponding values from the
2318 message that is being worked on.
2319 In unusual cases multiple and different
2323 combinations may therefore be involved \(en on the other hand those
2324 unusual cases become possible.
2325 The usual case is as short as:
2328 .Dl set mta=smtp://USER:PASS@HOST smtp-use-starttls \e
2329 .Dl \ \ \ \ smime-sign smime-sign-cert=+smime.pair
2334 contains complete example configurations.
2337 .\" .Ss "On terminal control and line editor" {{{
2338 .Ss "On terminal control and line editor"
2340 \*(OP Terminal control will be realized through one of the standard
2342 libraries, either the
2344 or, alternatively, the
2346 both of which will be initialized to work with the environment variable
2348 Terminal control will enhance or enable interactive usage aspects, e.g.,
2349 .Sx "Coloured display" ,
2350 and extend behaviour of the Mailx-Line-Editor (MLE), which may learn the
2351 byte-sequences of keys like the cursor and function keys, and which will
2352 automatically enter the so-called
2354 alternative screen shall the terminal support it.
2355 The internal variable
2357 can be used to overwrite settings or to learn (correct(ed)) keycodes.
2358 Actual interaction with the chosen library can be disabled completely by
2359 setting the internal variable
2360 .Va termcap-disable ;
2362 will be queried regardless, even if the \*(OPal support for the
2363 libraries has not been enabled at configuration time.
2366 \*(OP The builtin \*(UA Mailx-Line-Editor (MLE) should work in all
2367 environments which comply to the ISO C standard
2369 and will support wide glyphs if possible (the necessary functionality
2370 had been removed from ISO C, but was included in
2372 Prevent usage of a line editor in interactive mode by setting the
2374 .Va line-editor-disable .
2375 Especially if the \*(OPal terminal control support is missing setting
2376 entries in the internal variable
2378 will help shall the MLE misbehave, see there for more.
2379 The MLE can support a little bit of
2385 feature is available then input from line editor prompts will be saved
2386 in a history list that can be searched in and be expanded from.
2387 Such saving can be prevented by prefixing input with any amount of
2389 Aspects of history, like allowed content and maximum size, as well as
2390 whether history shall be saved persistently, can be configured with the
2394 .Va history-gabby-persist
2399 The MLE supports a set of editing and control commands.
2400 By default (as) many (as possible) of these will be assigned to a set of
2401 single-letter control codes, which should work on any terminal (and can
2402 be generated by holding the
2404 key while pressing the key of desire, e.g.,
2408 command is available then the MLE commands can also be accessed freely
2409 by assigning the command name, which is shown in parenthesis in the list
2410 below, to any desired key-sequence, and the MLE will instead and also use
2412 to establish its builtin key bindings
2413 (more of them if the \*(OPal terminal control is available),
2414 an action which can then be suppressed completely by setting
2415 .Va line-editor-no-defaults .
2416 The following uses the
2418 ell-style quote notation that is documented in the introduction of
2420 combinations not mentioned either cause job control signals or do not
2421 generate a (unique) keycode:
2425 .Bl -tag -compact -width ".It Ql Ba"
2427 Go to the start of the line
2428 .Pf ( Cd mle-go-home ) .
2431 Move the cursor backward one character
2432 .Pf ( Cd mle-go-bwd ) .
2435 Forward delete the character under the cursor;
2436 quits \*(UA if used on the empty line unless the internal variable
2439 .Pf ( Cd mle-del-fwd ) .
2442 Go to the end of the line
2443 .Pf ( Cd mle-go-end ) .
2446 Move the cursor forward one character
2447 .Pf ( Cd mle-go-fwd ) .
2450 Cancel current operation, full reset.
2451 If there is an active history search or tabulator expansion then this
2452 command will first reset that, reverting to the former line content;
2453 thus a second reset is needed for a full reset in this case
2454 .Pf ( Cd mle-reset ) .
2457 Backspace: backward delete one character
2458 .Pf ( Cd mle-del-bwd ) .
2462 Horizontal tabulator:
2463 try to expand the word before the cursor, supporting the usual \*(UA
2465 .Sx "filename transformations" ,
2468 .Pf ( Cd mle-complete ) .
2470 .Cd mle-quote-rndtrip .
2474 commit the current line
2475 .Pf ( Cd mle-commit ) .
2478 Cut all characters from the cursor to the end of the line
2479 .Pf ( Cd mle-snarf-end ) .
2483 .Pf ( Cd mle-repaint ) .
2486 \*(OP Go to the next history entry
2487 .Pf ( Cd mle-hist-fwd ) .
2490 (\*(OPally context-dependent) Invokes the command
2494 \*(OP Go to the previous history entry
2495 .Pf ( Cd mle-hist-bwd ) .
2498 Toggle roundtrip mode shell quotes, where produced,
2500 .Pf ( Cd mle-quote-rndtrip ) .
2501 This setting is temporary, and will be forgotten once the command line
2505 \*(OP Complete the current line from (the remaining) older history entries
2506 .Pf ( Cd mle-hist-srch-bwd ) .
2509 \*(OP Complete the current line from (the remaining) newer history entries
2510 .Pf ( Cd mle-hist-srch-fwd ) .
2513 Paste the snarf buffer
2514 .Pf ( Cd mle-paste ) .
2521 .Pf ( Cd mle-snarf-line ) .
2524 Prompts for a Unicode character (its hexadecimal number) to be inserted
2525 .Pf ( Cd mle-prompt-char ) .
2526 Note this command needs to be assigned to a single-letter control code
2527 in order to become recognized and executed during input of
2528 a key-sequence (only three single-letter control codes can be used for
2529 that shortcut purpose); this control code is special-treated and cannot
2530 be part of any other sequence, because any occurrence will perform the
2532 function immediately.
2535 Cut the characters from the one preceding the cursor to the preceding
2537 .Pf ( Cd mle-snarf-word-bwd ) .
2540 Move the cursor forward one word boundary
2541 .Pf ( Cd mle-go-word-fwd ) .
2544 Move the cursor backward one word boundary
2545 .Pf ( Cd mle-go-word-bwd ) .
2548 Escape: reset a possibly used multibyte character input state machine
2549 and \*(OPally a lingering, incomplete key binding
2550 .Pf ( Cd mle-cancel ) .
2551 This command needs to be assigned to a single-letter control code in
2552 order to become recognized and executed during input of a key-sequence
2553 (only three single-letter control codes can be used for that shortcut
2555 This control code may also be part of a multi-byte sequence, but if
2556 a sequence is active and the very control code is currently also an
2557 expected input, then it will first be consumed by the active sequence.
2560 (\*(OPally context-dependent) Invokes the command
2564 (\*(OPally context-dependent) Invokes the command
2568 (\*(OPally context-dependent) Invokes the command
2572 Cut the characters from the one after the cursor to the succeeding word
2574 .Pf ( Cd mle-snarf-word-fwd ) .
2584 this will immediately reset a possibly active search etc.
2588 ring the audible bell.
2592 .\" .Ss "Coloured display" {{{
2593 .Ss "Coloured display"
2595 \*(OP \*(UA can be configured to support a coloured display and font
2596 attributes by emitting ANSI / ISO 6429 SGR (select graphic rendition)
2598 Usage of colours and font attributes solely depends upon the
2599 capability of the detected terminal type that is defined by the
2600 environment variable
2602 and which can be fine-tuned by the user via the internal variable
2606 On top of what \*(UA knows about the terminal the boolean variable
2608 defines whether the actually applicable colour and font attribute
2609 sequences should also be generated when output is going to be paged
2610 through the external program defined by the environment variable
2615 This is not enabled by default because different pager programs need
2616 different command line switches or other configuration in order to
2617 support those sequences.
2618 \*(UA however knows about some widely used pagers and in a clean
2619 environment it is often enough to simply set
2621 please refer to that variable for more on this topic.
2626 is set then any active usage of colour and font attribute sequences
2627 is suppressed, but without affecting possibly established
2632 To define and control colours and font attributes a single multiplexer
2633 command family exists:
2635 shows or defines colour mappings for the given colour type (e.g.,
2638 can be used to remove mappings of a given colour type.
2639 Since colours are only available in interactive mode, it may make
2640 sense to conditionalize the colour setup by encapsulating it with
2643 .Bd -literal -offset indent
2644 if terminal && $features =@ +colour
2645 colour iso view-msginfo ft=bold,fg=green
2646 colour iso view-header ft=bold,fg=red "from,subject"
2647 colour iso view-header fg=red
2649 uncolour iso view-header from,subject
2650 colour iso view-header ft=bold,fg=magenta,bg=cyan
2651 colour 256 view-header ft=bold,fg=208,bg=230 subject,from
2652 colour mono view-header ft=bold
2653 colour mono view-header ft=bold,ft=reverse subject,from
2657 .\" }}} (DESCRIPTION)
2660 .\" .Sh COMMANDS {{{
2663 Each command is typed on a line by itself,
2664 and may take arguments following the command word.
2665 Command names may be abbreviated, in which case the first command that
2666 matches the given prefix will be used.
2669 can be used to show the list of all commands, either alphabetically
2670 sorted or in prefix search order (these do not match, also because the
2671 POSIX standard prescribes a set of abbreviations).
2672 \*(OPally the command
2676 when given an argument, will show a documentation string for the
2677 command matching the expanded argument, as in
2679 which should be a shorthand of
2681 Both commands support a more
2683 listing mode which includes the argument type of the command.
2686 For commands which take message lists as arguments, the next message
2687 forward that satisfies the command's requirements will be used shall no
2688 explicit message list have been specified.
2689 If there are no messages forward of the current message,
2690 the search proceeds backwards,
2691 and if there are no good messages at all,
2692 \*(UA shows an error message and aborts the command.
2693 \*(ID Non-message-list arguments can be quoted using the following methods:
2696 .Bl -bullet -compact -offset indent
2698 An argument can be enclosed between paired double-quotes
2703 any white space, shell word expansion, or reverse solidus characters
2704 (except as described next) within the quotes are treated literally as
2705 part of the argument.
2706 A double-quote will be treated literally within single-quotes and vice
2708 Inside such a quoted string the actually used quote character can be
2709 used nonetheless by escaping it with a reverse solidus
2715 An argument that is not enclosed in quotes, as above, can usually still
2716 contain space characters if those spaces are reverse solidus escaped, as in
2720 A reverse solidus outside of the enclosing quotes is discarded
2721 and the following character is treated literally as part of the argument.
2726 Some commands which do not take message-list arguments can also be
2727 prefixed with the special keyword
2729 to choose \*(INible argument quoting rules, and some new commands only
2730 support the new rules (without that keyword) and are flagged \*(NQ.
2731 In the future \*(UA will (mostly) use
2733 compatible argument parsing:
2734 Non-message-list arguments can be quoted using the following shell-style
2735 mechanisms: the escape character, single-quotes, double-quotes and
2736 dollar-single-quotes; any unquoted number sign
2738 that parses as a new token starts a comment that ends argument processing.
2739 The overall granularity of error reporting and diagnostics, also
2740 regarding function arguments and their content, will improve.
2744 .Bl -bullet -compact -offset indent
2746 The literal value of any character can be preserved by preceding it
2747 with the escape character reverse solidus
2751 will cause variable expansion of the given name: \*(UA
2752 .Sx "INTERNAL VARIABLES"
2755 (shell) variables can be accessed through this mechanism, brace
2756 enclosing the name is supported.
2759 Arguments which are enclosed in
2760 .Ql 'single-\:quotes'
2761 retain their literal value.
2762 A single-quote cannot occur within single-quotes.
2765 The literal value of all characters enclosed in
2766 .Ql \(dqdouble-\:quotes\(dq
2767 is retained, with the exception of dollar
2769 which will cause variable expansion, as above, backquote (grave accent)
2771 (which not yet means anything special), reverse solidus
2773 which will escape any of the characters dollar
2775 (to prevent variable expansion), backquote (grave accent)
2779 (to prevent ending the quote) and reverse solidus
2781 (to prevent escaping, i.e., to embed a reverse solidus character as-is),
2782 but has no special meaning otherwise.
2785 Arguments enclosed in
2786 .Ql $'dollar-\:single-\:quotes'
2787 extend normal single quotes in that reverse solidus escape sequences are
2788 expanded as follows:
2790 .Bl -tag -compact -width "Ql \eNNN"
2796 an escape character.
2798 an escape character.
2810 emits a reverse solidus character.
2814 double quote (escaping is optional).
2816 eight-bit byte with the octal value
2818 (one to three octal digits), optionally prefixed by an additional
2820 A 0 byte will suppress further output for the quoted argument.
2822 eight-bit byte with the hexadecimal value
2824 (one or two hexadecimal characters).
2825 A 0 byte will suppress further output for the quoted argument.
2827 the Unicode / ISO-10646 character with the hexadecimal codepoint value
2829 (one to eight hexadecimal digits) \(em note that Unicode defines the
2830 maximum codepoint to be ever supported as
2835 This escape is only supported in locales which support Unicode (see
2836 .Sx "Character sets" ) ,
2837 in other cases the sequence will remain unexpanded unless the given code
2838 point is ASCII compatible or can be represented in the current locale.
2839 The character NUL will suppress further output for the quoted argument.
2843 except it takes only one to four hexadecimal digits.
2845 A mechanism that allows usage of the non-printable (ASCII and
2846 compatible) control codes 0 to 31: to create the printable
2847 representation of a control code the numeric value 64 is added, and the
2848 resulting ASCII character set code point is then printed, e.g., BEL is
2849 .Ql 7 + 64 = 71 = G .
2850 Whereas historically circumflex notation has often been used for
2851 visualization purposes of control codes, e.g.,
2853 the reverse solidus notation has been standardized:
2855 Some control codes also have standardized (ISO 10646, ISO C) alias
2856 representations, as shown above (e.g.,
2860 whenever such an alias exists \*(UA will use it for display purposes.
2861 The control code NUL
2863 ends argument processing without producing further output.
2865 Non-standard extension: expand the given variable name, as above.
2866 Brace enclosing the name is supported.
2868 Not yet supported, just to raise awareness: Non-standard extension.
2874 .Sy Compatibility notes:
2875 \*(ID Note these are new mechanisms which are not supported by all
2877 Round-tripping (feeding in things shown in list modes again) are not yet
2878 stable or possible at all.
2879 On new-style command lines it is wise to quote semicolon
2883 characters in order to ensure upward compatibility: the author would
2884 like to see things like
2885 .Ql ? echo $'trouble\etahead' | cat >> in_the_shell.txt
2887 .Ql ? top 2 5 10; type 3 22
2889 Before \*(UA will switch entirely to shell-style argument parsing there
2890 will be a transition phase where using
2892 will emit obsoletion warnings.
2894 .Bd -literal -offset indent
2895 echo 'Quotes '${HOME}' and 'tokens" differ!"# no comment
2896 echo Quotes ${HOME} and tokens differ! # comment
2897 echo Don"'"t you worry$'\ex21' The sun shines on us. $'\eu263A'
2901 In any event an unquoted reverse solidus at the end of a command line is
2902 discarded and the next line continues the command.
2903 \*(ID Note that line continuation is handled before the above parsing is
2904 applied, i.e., the parsers documented above will see merged lines.
2905 Filenames, where expected, and unless documented otherwise, are
2906 subsequently subjected to the following
2907 .Mx -ix "filename transformations"
2908 filename transformations, in sequence:
2911 .Bl -bullet -offset indent
2913 If the given name is a registered
2915 it will be replaced with the expanded shortcut.
2918 The filename is matched against the following patterns or strings:
2920 .Bl -hang -compact -width ".Ar %user"
2922 (Number sign) is expanded to the previous file.
2924 (Percent sign) is replaced by the invoking
2925 .Mx -ix "primary system mailbox"
2926 user's primary system mailbox, which either is the (itself expandable)
2928 if that is set, the standardized absolute pathname indicated by
2930 if that is set, or a builtin compile-time default otherwise.
2932 Expands to the primary system mailbox of
2934 (and never the value of
2936 regardless of its actual setting).
2938 (Ampersand) is replaced with the invoking users
2939 .Mx -ix "secondary mailbox"
2940 secondary mailbox, the
2947 directory (if that variable is set).
2949 Expands to the same value as
2951 but has special meaning for when used with, e.g., the command
2953 the file will be treated as a primary system mailbox by, e.g., the
2957 commands, meaning that messages that have been read in the current
2958 session will be moved to the
2960 mailbox instead of simply being flagged as read.
2964 Meta expansions are applied to the resulting filename: a leading tilde
2966 character will be replaced by the expansion of
2968 except when followed by a valid user name, in which case the home
2969 directory of the given user is used instead.
2974 will be replaced by the expansion of the variable, if possible; \*(UA
2975 .Sx "INTERNAL VARIABLES"
2978 (shell) variables can be accessed through this mechanism, and the usual
2979 escape mechanism has to be applied to prevent interpretation.
2980 If the fully expanded filename results in multiple pathnames and the
2981 command is expecting only one file, an error results.
2983 In interactive context, in order to allow simple value acceptance (via
2985 arguments will usually be displayed in a properly quoted form, e.g., a file
2986 .Ql diet\e is \ecurd.txt
2988 .Ql 'diet\e is \ecurd.txt' .
2993 The following commands are available:
2995 .Bl -tag -width ".It Ic BaNg"
3000 command which follows, replacing unescaped exclamation marks with the
3001 previously executed command if the internal variable
3007 The comment-command causes the entire line to be ignored.
3009 this really is a normal command which' purpose is to discard its
3012 indicating special character, which means that, e.g., trailing comments
3013 on a line are not possible.
3017 Goes to the next message in sequence and types it
3023 Display the preceding message, or the n'th previous message if given
3024 a numeric argument n.
3028 Show the current message number (the
3033 Show a brief summary of commands.
3036 output is available.
3037 \*(OP Given an argument a synopsis for the command in question is
3038 shown instead; commands can be abbreviated in general and this command
3039 can be used to see the full expansion of an abbreviation including the
3040 synopsis, try, e.g.,
3045 and see how the output changes.
3055 Interprets the remainder of the word as a macro name and passes it
3060 is a shorter synonym for
3061 .Ql call Ar mymacro .
3065 (ac) Creates, selects or lists (an) account(s).
3066 Accounts are special incarnations of
3068 macros and group commands and variable settings which together usually
3069 arrange the environment for the purpose of creating an email account.
3070 Different to normal macros settings which are covered by
3072 \(en here by default enabled! \(en will not be reverted before the
3077 (case-insensitive) always exists, and all but it can be deleted via
3080 Without arguments a listing of all defined accounts is shown.
3081 With one argument the given account is activated: the system
3083 of that account will be activated (as via
3085 and a possibly installed
3088 The two argument form is identical to defining a macro as via
3090 .Bd -literal -offset indent
3092 set folder=~/mail inbox=+syste.mbox record=+sent.mbox
3093 set from='myname@myisp.example (My Name)'
3094 set mta=smtp://mylogin@smtp.myisp.example
3100 (a) With no arguments, shows all currently-defined aliases.
3101 With one argument, shows that alias.
3102 With more than one argument,
3103 creates a new alias or appends to an existing one.
3105 can be used to delete aliases.
3109 (alt) Manage a list of alternate addresses / names of the active user,
3110 members of which will be removed from recipient lists when replying to
3113 variable is not set).
3114 If arguments are given the set of alternate names is replaced by them,
3115 without arguments the current set is displayed.
3119 Takes a message list and marks each message as having been answered.
3120 This mark has no technical meaning in the mail system;
3121 it just causes messages to be marked in the header summary,
3122 and makes them specially addressable.
3127 \*(OP\*(NQ The bind command extends the MLE (see
3128 .Sx "On terminal control and line editor" )
3129 with freely configurable key bindings.
3130 With one argument all bindings for the given context are shown,
3131 specifying an asterisk
3133 will show the bindings of all contexts; a more verbose listing will be
3134 produced if either of
3139 With two or more arguments a binding is (re)established:
3140 the first argument is the context to which the binding shall apply,
3141 the second argument is a comma-separated list of the
3143 which form the binding, and any remaining arguments form the expansion.
3144 To indicate that a binding shall not be auto-committed, but that the
3145 expansion shall instead be furtherly editable by the user, an at-sign
3147 (that will be removed) can be placed last in the expansion, from which
3148 leading and trailing whitespace will finally be removed.
3149 Reverse solidus cannot be used as the last character of expansion.
3152 Contexts define when a binding applies, i.e., a binding will not be seen
3153 unless the context for which it is defined for is currently active.
3154 This is not true for the shared binding
3156 which is the foundation for all other bindings and as such always
3157 applies, its bindings, however, only apply secondarily.
3158 The available contexts are the shared
3162 context which is used in all not otherwise documented situations, and
3164 which applies to compose mode only.
3168 which form the binding are specified as a comma-separated list of
3169 byte-sequences, where each list entry corresponds to one key(press).
3170 \*(OPally a list entry may, indicated by a leading colon character
3172 also refer to the name of a terminal capability;
3173 several dozen names will be compiled into \*(UA and may be specified
3176 or, if existing, by their
3178 name, regardless of the actually used terminal control library.
3179 It is however possible to use any capability, as long as the name is
3180 resolvable by the control library or defined in the internal variable
3182 Input sequences are not case-normalized, so that an exact match is
3183 required to update or remove a binding.
3186 .Bd -literal -offset indent
3187 bind base $'\eE',d mle-snarf-word-fwd # Esc(ape)
3188 bind base $'\eE',$'\ec?' mle-snarf-word-bwd # Esc, Delete
3189 bind default $'\ecA',:khome,w 'echo An editable binding@'
3190 bind default a,b,c rm -rf / @ # Another editable binding
3191 bind default :kf1 File %
3192 bind compose :kf1 ~e
3196 Note that the entire comma-separated list is first parsed (over) as a
3197 shell-token with whitespace as the field separator, before being parsed
3198 and expanded for real with comma as the field separator, therefore
3199 whitespace needs to be properly quoted:
3200 shell-style quoting is documented in the introduction of
3202 Using Unicode reverse solidus escape sequences renders a binding
3203 defunctional if the locale does not support Unicode (see
3204 .Sx "Character sets" ) ,
3205 and using terminal capabilities does so if no terminal control support
3206 is (currently) available.
3209 The following terminal capability names are builtin and can be used in
3211 or (if available) the two-letter
3213 notation regardless of the actually used library.
3214 See the respective manual for a list of capabilities.
3217 can be used to show all the capabilities of
3219 or the given terminal type;
3222 flag will also show supported (non-standard) extensions.
3225 .Bl -tag -compact -width kcuuf_or_kcuuf
3226 .It Cd kbs Ns \0or Cd kb
3228 .It Cd kdch1 Ns \0or Cd kD
3230 .It Cd kDC Ns \0or Cd *4
3231 \(em shifted variant.
3232 .It Cd kel Ns \0or Cd kE
3233 Clear to end of line.
3234 .It Cd kext Ns \0or Cd @9
3236 .It Cd kich1 Ns \0or Cd kI
3238 .It Cd kIC Ns \0or Cd #3
3239 \(em shifted variant.
3240 .It Cd khome Ns \0or Cd kh
3242 .It Cd kHOM Ns \0or Cd #2
3243 \(em shifted variant.
3244 .It Cd kend Ns \0or Cd @7
3246 .It Cd knp Ns \0or Cd kN
3248 .It Cd kpp Ns \0or Cd kP
3250 .It Cd kcub1 Ns \0or Cd kl
3251 Left cursor (with more modifiers: see below).
3252 .It Cd kLFT Ns \0or Cd #4
3253 \(em shifted variant.
3254 .It Cd kcuf1 Ns \0or Cd kr
3255 Right cursor (ditto).
3256 .It Cd kRIT Ns \0or Cd %i
3257 \(em shifted variant.
3258 .It Cd kcud1 Ns \0or Cd kd
3259 Down cursor (ditto).
3261 \(em shifted variant (only terminfo).
3262 .It Cd kcuu1 Ns \0or Cd ku
3265 \(em shifted variant (only terminfo).
3266 .It Cd kf0 Ns \0or Cd k0
3268 Add one for each function key up to
3273 .It Cd kf10 Ns \0or Cd k;
3275 .It Cd kf11 Ns \0or Cd F1
3277 Add one for each function key up to
3285 Some terminals support key-modifier combination extensions, e.g.,
3287 For example, the delete key,
3289 in its shifted variant, the name is mutated to
3291 then a number is appended for the states
3303 .Ql Shift+Alt+Control
3305 The same for the left cursor key,
3307 .Cd KLFT , KLFT3 , KLFT4 , KLFT5 , KLFT6 , KLFT7 , KLFT8 .
3310 Key bindings can be removed with the command
3312 It is advisable to use an initial escape or other control character (e.g.,
3314 for bindings which describe user key combinations (as opposed to purely
3315 terminal capability based ones), in order to avoid ambiguities whether
3316 input belongs to key sequences or not; it also reduces search time.
3319 may help shall keys and sequences be falsely recognized.
3324 Calls a macro that has been created via
3329 (ch) Change the working directory to
3331 or the given argument.
3337 \*(OP Only applicable to S/MIME signed messages.
3338 Takes a message list and a file name and saves the certificates
3339 contained within the message signatures to the named file in both
3340 human-readable and PEM format.
3341 The certificates can later be used to send encrypted messages to the
3342 respective message senders by setting
3343 .Va smime-encrypt-USER@HOST
3348 (ch) Change the working directory to
3350 or the given argument.
3356 Only applicable to threaded mode.
3357 Takes a message list and makes all replies to these messages invisible
3358 in header summaries, unless they are in state
3364 \*(OP\*(NQ Manage colour mappings of and for a
3365 .Sx "Coloured display" .
3366 The type of colour is given as the (case-insensitive) first argument,
3367 which must be one of
3369 for 256-colour terminals,
3374 for the standard 8-colour ANSI / ISO 6429 color palette and
3378 for monochrome terminals.
3379 Monochrome terminals cannot deal with colours, but only (some) font
3383 Without further arguments the list of all currently defined mappings
3384 for the given colour type is shown (as a special case giving
3388 will show the mappings of all types).
3389 Otherwise the second argument defines the mappable slot, and the third
3390 argument a (comma-separated list of) colour and font attribute
3391 specification(s), and the optional fourth argument can be used to
3392 specify a precondition: if conditioned mappings exist they are tested in
3393 (creation) order unless a (case-insensitive) match has been found, and
3394 the default mapping (if any has been established) will only be chosen as
3396 The types of precondition available depend on the mappable slot (see
3397 .Sx "Coloured display"
3398 for some examples), the following of which exist:
3401 Mappings prefixed with
3403 are used for the \*(OPal builtin Mailx-Line-Editor (MLE, see
3404 .Sx "On terminal control and line editor" )
3405 and do not support preconditions.
3407 .Bl -tag -compact -width view-partinfo
3409 This mapping is used for the position indicator that is visible when
3410 a line cannot be fully displayed on the screen.
3417 Mappings prefixed with
3419 are used in header summaries, and they all understand the preconditions
3421 (the current message) and
3423 for elder messages (only honoured in conjunction with
3424 .Va datefield-markout-older ) .
3426 .Bl -tag -compact -width view-partinfo
3428 This mapping is used for the
3430 that can be created with the
3434 formats of the variable
3437 For the complete header summary line except the
3439 and the thread structure.
3441 For the thread structure which can be created with the
3443 format of the variable
3448 Mappings prefixed with
3450 are used when displaying messages.
3452 .Bl -tag -compact -width view-partinfo
3454 This mapping is used for so-called
3456 lines, which are MBOX file format specific header lines.
3459 A comma-separated list of headers to which the mapping applies may be
3460 given as a precondition; if the \*(OPal regular expression support is
3461 available then if any of the
3463 (extended) regular expression characters is seen the precondition will
3464 be evaluated as (an extended) one.
3466 For the introductional message info line.
3467 .It Ar view-partinfo
3468 For MIME part info lines.
3472 The following (case-insensitive) colour definitions and font attributes
3473 are understood, multiple of which can be specified in a comma-separated
3483 It is possible (and often applicable) to specify multiple font
3484 attributes for a single mapping.
3487 foreground colour attribute:
3497 To specify a 256-color mode a decimal number colour specification in
3498 the range 0 to 255, inclusive, is supported, and interpreted as follows:
3500 .Bl -tag -compact -width "999 - 999"
3502 the standard ISO 6429 colors, as above.
3504 high intensity variants of the standard colors.
3506 216 colors in tuples of 6.
3508 grayscale from black to white in 24 steps.
3510 .Bd -literal -offset indent
3512 fg() { printf "\e033[38;5;${1}m($1)"; }
3513 bg() { printf "\e033[48;5;${1}m($1)"; }
3515 while [ $i -lt 256 ]; do fg $i; i=$(($i + 1)); done
3516 printf "\e033[0m\en"
3518 while [ $i -lt 256 ]; do bg $i; i=$(($i + 1)); done
3519 printf "\e033[0m\en"
3523 background colour attribute (see
3525 for possible values).
3529 Mappings may be removed with the command
3531 For a generic overview see the section
3532 .Sx "Coloured display" .
3537 (C) Copy messages to files whose names are derived from the author of
3538 the respective message and do not mark them as being saved;
3539 otherwise identical to
3544 (c) Copy messages to the named file and do not mark them as being saved;
3545 otherwise identical to
3550 Show the name of the current working directory.
3554 \*(OP For unencrypted messages this command is identical to
3556 Encrypted messages are first decrypted, if possible, and then copied.
3560 \*(OP For unencrypted messages this command is identical to
3562 Encrypted messages are first decrypted, if possible, and then copied.
3566 Without arguments the current list of macros, including their content,
3567 is shown, otherwise a macro is defined.
3568 A macro definition is a sequence of commands in the following form:
3569 .Bd -literal -offset indent
3578 A defined macro can be invoked explicitly by using the
3582 commands, or implicitly if a macro hook is triggered, e.g., a
3584 Note that interpretation of
3586 depends on how (i.e.,
3588 normal macro, folder hook, hook, account switch) the macro is invoked.
3589 Macros can be deleted via
3593 Macro behaviour, including option localization, will change in v15.
3594 Please be aware of that and possibly embed a version check in a resource
3599 (d) Marks the given message list as
3601 Deleted messages will neither be saved in
3603 nor will they be available for most other commands.
3609 Superseded by the multiplexer
3615 Deletes the current message and displays the next message.
3616 If there is no next message, \*(UA says
3623 up or down by one message when given
3627 argument, respectively.
3631 Takes a message list and marks each given message as a draft.
3632 This mark has no technical meaning in the mail system;
3633 it just causes messages to be marked in the header summary,
3634 and makes them specially addressable.
3638 \*(NQ (ec) Echoes its arguments to standard output after applying
3640 expansions and filename transformations, as documented for
3647 except that is echoes to standard error.
3651 (e) Point the text editor (as defined in
3653 at each message from the given list in turn.
3654 Modified contents are discarded unless the
3661 .Ic if Ns / Ns Ic elif Ns / Ns Ic else Ns / Ns Ic endif
3662 conditional \(em if the condition of a preceding
3664 was false, check the following condition and execute the following block
3665 if it evaluates true.
3670 .Ic if Ns / Ns Ic elif Ns / Ns Ic else Ns / Ns Ic endif
3671 conditional \(em if none of the conditions of the preceding
3675 commands was true, the
3681 (en) Marks the end of an
3682 .Ic if Ns / Ns Ic elif Ns / Ns Ic else Ns / Ns Ic endif
3683 conditional execution block.
3688 \*(NQ \*(UA has a strict notion about which variables are
3689 .Sx "INTERNAL VARIABLES"
3690 and which are managed in the program
3692 Since some of the latter are a vivid part of \*(UAs functioning,
3693 however, they are transparently integrated into the normal handling of
3694 internal variables via
3698 To integrate other environment variables of choice into this
3699 transparent handling, and also to export internal variables into the
3700 process environment where they normally are not, a
3702 needs to become established with this command, as in, e.g.,
3705 .Dl environ link PERL5LIB from TZ
3708 Afterwards changing such variables with
3710 will cause automatic updates of the program environment, and therefore
3711 be inherited by newly created child processes.
3712 Sufficient system support provided (it was in BSD as early as 1987, and
3713 is standardized since Y2K) removing such variables with
3715 will remove them also from the program environment, but in any way
3716 the knowledge they ever have been
3719 Note this implies that
3721 may cause loss of links.
3726 will remove an existing link, but leaves the variables as such intact.
3727 Additionally the subcommands
3731 are provided, which work exactly the same as the documented commands
3735 but (additionally) link the variable(s) with the program environment and
3736 thus immediately export them to, or remove them from (if possible),
3737 respectively, the program environment.
3742 \*(OP Since \*(UA uses the console as a user interface it can happen
3743 that messages scroll by too fast to become recognized.
3744 Optionally an error message ring queue is available which stores
3745 duplicates of any error message and notifies the user in interactive
3746 sessions whenever a new error has occurred.
3747 The queue is finite: if its maximum size is reached any new message
3748 replaces the eldest.
3751 can be used to manage this message queue: if given
3753 or no argument the queue will be displayed and cleared,
3755 will only clear all messages from the queue.
3759 (ex or x) Exit from \*(UA without changing the active mailbox and skip
3760 any saving of messages in
3762 as well as a possibly tracked line editor history file.
3768 but open the mailbox readonly.
3772 (fi) The file command switches to a new mailbox.
3773 Without arguments it shows status information of the current mailbox.
3774 If an argument is given, it will write out changes (such as deletions)
3775 the user has made and open a new mailbox.
3778 .Sx "filename transformations"
3779 are recognized for the
3781 argument, as documented in the introduction of
3785 If the name ends with
3790 it is treated as being compressed with
3795 respectively, and transparently handled through an intermediate
3796 (un)compression step (using a temporary file) with the according
3797 facility, sufficient support provided.
3798 Likewise, if the named file does not exist, but a file with one of the
3799 mentioned compression extensions does, then the name is automatically
3800 expanded and the compressed file is used.
3802 Otherwise, if the name ends with an extension for which
3803 .Va file-hook-load-EXTENSION
3805 .Va file-hook-save-EXTENSION
3806 variables are set, then the given hooks will be used to load and save
3808 and \*(UA will work with an intermediate temporary file.
3810 MBOX files (flat file-based mailboxes) are generally locked during file
3811 operations in order to avoid inconsistencies due to concurrent
3813 \*(OPal Mailbox files which \*(UA treats as the system
3818 .Sx "primary system mailbox" Ns
3819 es in general will also be protected by so-called dotlock files, the
3820 traditional way of mail spool file locking: for any file
3824 will be created for the duration of the synchronization \(em
3825 as necessary a privilege-separated dotlock child process will be used
3826 to accommodate for necessary privilege adjustments in order to create
3827 the dotlock file in the same directory
3828 and with the same user and group identities as the file of interest.
3832 refers to a directory with the subdirectories
3837 then it is treated as a folder in
3839 format; \*(ID the variable
3841 can be used to control the format of yet non-existent folders.
3844 .Dl \*(IN protocol://[user[:password]@]host[:port][/path]
3845 .Dl \*(OU protocol://[user@]host[:port][/path]
3847 is taken as an Internet mailbox specification.
3848 The \*(OPally supported protocols are
3852 (POP3 with SSL/TLS encrypted transport).
3855 part is valid only for IMAP; there it defaults to
3857 Also see the section
3858 .Sx "On URL syntax and credential lookup" .
3862 contains special characters, in particular
3866 they must be escaped in URL notation \(en the command
3868 can be used to show the necessary conversion.
3872 Takes a message list and marks the messages as
3874 ged for urgent/special attention.
3875 This mark has no technical meaning in the mail system;
3876 it just causes messages to be highlighted in the header summary,
3877 and makes them specially addressable.
3886 With no arguments, list the names of the folders in the folder directory.
3887 With an existing folder as an argument,
3888 lists the names of folders below the named folder.
3894 but saves the message in a file named after the local part of the first
3895 recipient's address (instead of in
3902 but saves the message in a file named after the local part of the first
3903 recipient's address (instead of in
3910 but responds to all recipients regardless of the
3915 .It Ic followupsender
3918 but responds to the sender only regardless of the
3934 (f) Takes a list of message specifications and displays a summary of
3935 their message headers, exactly as via
3937 An alias of this command is
3940 .Sx "Specifying messages" .
3946 but saves the message in a file named after the local part of the
3947 recipient's address (instead of in
3952 Takes a message and the address of a recipient
3953 and forwards the message to him.
3954 The text of the original message is included in the new one,
3955 with the value of the
3957 variable preceding it.
3958 To filter the included header fields to the desired subset use the
3960 slot of the white- and blacklisting command
3962 Only the first part of a multipart message is included unless
3963 .Va forward-as-attachment ,
3964 and recipient addresses will be stripped from comments, names etc.
3965 unless the internal variable
3971 \*(OB Superseded by the multiplexer
3976 \*(OB Superseded by the multiplexer
3981 Define or list command aliases, so-called ghosts.
3982 Without arguments a list of all currently known aliases is shown.
3983 With one argument the expansion of the given alias is shown.
3984 With two or more arguments a command alias is defined or updated: the
3985 first argument is the name under which the remaining command line should
3986 be accessible, the content of which can be just about anything.
3987 A ghost can be used everywhere a normal command can be used, but always
3988 takes precedence; any arguments that are given to the command alias are
3989 joined onto the alias content, and the resulting string forms the
3990 command line that is, in effect, executed.
3993 .Bd -literal -offset indent
3995 `ghost': no such alias: "xx"
3998 ghost xx "echo hello,"
4008 \*(NQ Multiplexer command to establish white- and blacklisting
4009 selections of header fields for a variety of applications.
4010 Without any arguments the entire set of known contexts and their current
4011 settings is displayed.
4012 When given arguments, the first argument is the context to which the
4013 command applies, one of (case-insensitively)
4015 for display purposes (via, e.g.,
4018 for selecting which headers shall be stored persistently when
4024 ing messages (note that MIME related etc. header fields should not be
4025 ignored in order to not destroy usability of the message in this case),
4027 for stripping down messages when
4029 ing message (has no effect if
4030 .Va forward-as-attachment
4033 for defining user-defined set of fields for the command
4037 The current settings of the given context are displayed if only the
4038 first argument is given.
4039 A second argument denotes the type of restriction that is to be chosen,
4040 it may be (a case-insensitive prefix of)
4044 for white- and blacklisting purposes, respectively.
4045 Establishing a whitelist suppresses inspection of the corresponding
4047 If no further argument is given the current settings of the given type
4051 With four or more arguments the third denotes the action to be applied,
4056 for addition of fields, and
4060 for removal of fields from the given type of the given context.
4061 The fourth, and any following arguments are expected to specify the
4062 fields of desire, or \*(OPally, regular expression matches ought to
4064 The special wildcard field (asterisk,
4066 will establish a (fast) shorthand setting which covers all fields, or
4067 remove all fields in one operation, respectively.
4072 (h) Show the current group of headers, the size of which depends on
4075 and the style of which can be adjusted with the variable
4077 If a message-specification is given the group of headers containing the
4078 first message therein is shown and the message at the top of the screen
4093 the list of history entries;
4096 argument selects and shows the respective history entry \(en
4099 to accept it, and the history entry will become the new history top.
4100 The default mode if no arguments are given is
4107 Takes a message list and marks each message therein to be saved in the
4112 Does not override the
4115 \*(UA deviates from the POSIX standard with this command, because a
4117 command issued after
4119 will display the following message, not the current one.
4124 (i) Part of the nestable
4125 .Ic if Ns / Ns Ic elif Ns / Ns Ic else Ns / Ns Ic endif
4126 conditional execution construct \(em if the given condition is true then
4127 the encapsulated block is executed.
4128 POSIX only supports the (case-insensitive) conditions
4133 end, all remaining conditions are non-portable extensions; note that
4134 falsely specified conditions cause the execution of the entire
4135 conditional construct until the (matching) closing
4137 command to be suppressed.
4138 The syntax of the nestable
4140 conditional execution construct requires that each condition and syntax
4141 element is surrounded by whitespace.
4143 .Bd -literal -offset indent
4152 The (case-insensitive) condition
4154 erminal will evaluate to true if the standard input is a terminal, i.e.,
4155 in interactive sessions.
4156 Another condition can be any boolean value (see the section
4157 .Sx "INTERNAL VARIABLES"
4158 for textual boolean representations) to mark an enwrapped block as
4161 .Dq always execute .
4162 It is possible to check
4163 .Sx "INTERNAL VARIABLES"
4166 variables for existence or compare their expansion against a user given
4167 value or another variable by using the
4169 .Pf ( Dq variable next )
4170 conditional trigger character;
4171 a variable on the right hand side may be signalled using the same
4173 The variable names may be enclosed in a pair of matching braces.
4176 The available comparison operators are
4180 (less than or equal to),
4186 (greater than or equal to),
4190 (is substring of) and
4192 (is not substring of).
4193 The values of the left and right hand side are treated as strings and
4194 are compared 8-bit byte-wise, ignoring case according to the rules of
4195 the US-ASCII encoding (therefore, dependent on the active locale,
4196 possibly producing false results for strings in the locale encoding).
4197 Except for the substring checks the comparison will instead be performed
4198 arithmetically if both, the user given value as well as the variable
4199 content, can be parsed as numbers (integers).
4200 An unset variable is treated as the empty string.
4203 When the \*(OPal regular expression support is available, the additional
4209 They treat the right hand side as an extended regular expression that is
4210 matched case-insensitively and according to the active
4212 locale, meaning that strings in the locale encoding should be matched
4216 Conditions can be joined via AND-OR lists (where the AND operator is
4218 and the OR operator is
4220 which have equal precedence and will be evaluated with left
4221 associativity, thus using the same syntax that is known for the
4223 It is also possible to form groups of conditions and lists by enclosing
4224 them in pairs of brackets
4225 .Ql [\ \&.\&.\&.\ ] ,
4226 which may be interlocked within each other, and also be joined via
4230 The results of individual conditions and entire groups may be modified
4231 via unary operators: the unary operator
4233 will reverse the result.
4235 .Bd -literal -offset indent
4239 if $ttycharset == "UTF-8"
4240 echo *ttycharset* is set to UTF-8, case-insensitively
4244 echo These two variables are equal
4246 if $version-major >= 15
4247 echo Running a new version..
4248 if $features =@ +regex
4249 if $TERM =~ "^xterm\&.*"
4250 echo ..in an X terminal
4253 if [ [ true ] && [ [ ${debug} ] || [ $verbose ] ] ]
4256 if true && $debug || ${verbose}
4257 echo Left associativity, as is known from the shell
4259 if ! ! true && ! [ ! $debug && ! $verbose ]
4260 echo Unary operator support
4270 Superseded by the multiplexer
4275 Shows the names of all available commands, alphabetically sorted.
4276 If given any non-whitespace argument the list will be shown in the order
4277 in which command prefixes are searched.
4280 output is available.
4284 This command can be used to localize changes to variables, meaning that
4285 their state will be reverted to the former one once the covered scope
4287 It can only be used inside of macro definition blocks introduced by
4291 and is interpreted as a boolean (string, see
4292 .Sx "INTERNAL VARIABLES" ) ;
4295 of an account is left once it is switched off again.
4296 .Bd -literal -offset indent
4297 define temporary_settings {
4312 enables change localization and calls
4314 which explicitly resets localization, then any value changes within
4316 will still be reverted by
4318 \*(ID Once the outermost level, the one which enabled localization
4319 first, is left, but no earlier, all adjustments will be unrolled.
4320 \*(ID Likewise worth knowing, if in this example
4322 changes to a different
4324 which sets some variables that are yet covered by localizations, their
4325 scope will be extended, and in fact leaving the
4327 will (thus) restore settings in (likely) global scope which actually
4328 were defined in a local, private context.
4332 Reply to messages that come in via known
4335 .Pf ( Ic mlsubscribe )
4336 mailing lists, or pretend to do so (see
4337 .Sx "Mailing lists" ) :
4340 functionality this will actively resort and even remove message
4341 recipients in order to generate a message that is supposed to be sent to
4343 For example it will also implicitly generate a
4344 .Ql Mail-Followup-To:
4345 header if that seems useful, regardless of the setting of the variable
4352 but saves the message in a file named after the local part of the first
4353 recipient's address (instead of in
4358 (m) Takes a (list of) recipient address(es) as (an) argument(s),
4359 or asks on standard input if none were given;
4360 then collects the remaining mail content and sends it out.
4364 (mb) The given message list is to be sent to
4366 when \*(UA is quit; this is the default action unless the variable
4369 \*(ID This command can only be used in a
4371 .Sx "primary system mailbox" .
4375 Without any arguments the content of the MIME type cache will displayed.
4376 Otherwise each argument defines a complete MIME type specification of
4377 a type that shall be added (prepended) to the cache.
4378 In any event MIME type sources are loaded first as necessary \(en
4379 .Va mimetypes-load-control
4380 can be used to fine-tune which sources are actually loaded.
4381 Refer to the section on
4382 .Sx "The mime.types files"
4383 for more on MIME type specifications and this topic in general.
4384 MIME type unregistration and cache resets can be triggered with
4389 Without arguments the list of all currently defined mailing lists
4390 (and their attributes, if any) is shown; a more verbose listing will be
4391 produced if either of
4396 Otherwise all given arguments (which need not be quoted except for
4397 whitespace) will be added and henceforth be recognized as mailing lists.
4398 Mailing lists may be removed via the command
4401 If the \*(OPal regular expression support is available then mailing
4402 lists may also be specified as (extended) regular expressions (see
4408 Without arguments the list of all currently defined mailing lists which
4409 have a subscription attribute is shown; a more verbose listing will be
4410 produced if either of
4415 Otherwise this attribute will be set for all given mailing lists,
4416 newly creating them as necessary (as via
4418 Subscription attributes may be removed via the command
4427 but moves the messages to a file named after the local part of the
4428 sender address of the first message (instead of in
4435 but marks the messages for deletion if they were transferred
4442 but also displays header fields which would not pass the
4444 selection, and all MIME parts.
4452 on the given messages, even in non-interactive mode and as long as the
4453 standard output is a terminal.
4459 \*(OP When used without arguments or if
4461 has been given the content of the
4463 cache is shown, loading it first as necessary.
4466 then the cache will only be initialized and
4468 will remove its contents.
4469 Note that \*(UA will try to load the file only once, use
4470 .Ql Ic \&\&netrc Ns \:\0\:clear
4471 to unlock further attempts.
4476 .Sx "On URL syntax and credential lookup" ;
4478 .Sx "The .netrc file"
4479 documents the file format in detail.
4483 Checks for new mail in the current folder without committing any changes
4485 If new mail is present, a message is shown.
4489 the headers of each new message are also shown.
4490 This command is not available for all mailbox types.
4498 Goes to the next message in sequence and types it.
4499 With an argument list, types the next matching message.
4513 If the current folder is accessed via a network connection, a
4515 command is sent, otherwise no operation is performed.
4521 but also displays header fields which would not pass the
4523 selection, and all MIME parts.
4531 on the given messages, even in non-interactive mode and as long as the
4532 standard output is a terminal.
4540 but also pipes header fields which would not pass the
4542 selection, and all parts of MIME
4543 .Ql multipart/alternative
4548 (pi) Takes a message list and a shell command
4549 and pipes the messages through the command.
4550 Without an argument the current message is piped through the command
4557 every message is followed by a formfeed character.
4578 (q) Terminates the session, saving all undeleted, unsaved messages in
4581 preserving all messages marked with
4585 or never referenced in the system
4587 and removing all other messages from the
4589 .Sx "primary system mailbox" .
4590 If new mail has arrived during the session,
4592 .Dq You have new mail
4594 If given while editing a mailbox file with the command line flag
4596 then the edit file is rewritten.
4597 A return to the shell is effected,
4598 unless the rewrite of edit file fails,
4599 in which case the user can escape with the exit command.
4603 \*(NQ Read a line from standard input, and assign the splitted and
4604 trimmed line data to the given variables.
4605 If there are more fields than variables, assign successive fields to the
4606 last given variable.
4607 If there are less fields than variables, assign the empty string to the
4609 \*(ID This command will likely be extended towards more
4611 compatibility: for now splitting always occurs at whitespace, reverse
4612 solidus newline escaping is always supported, and the \*(OPal line
4613 editing features are always available when on an interactive terminal.
4614 .Bd -literal -offset indent
4617 ? echo "<$a> <$b> <$c>"
4633 Removes the named files or directories.
4634 If a name refer to a mailbox, e.g., a Maildir mailbox, then a mailbox
4635 type specific removal will be performed, deleting the complete mailbox.
4636 The user is asked for confirmation in interactive mode.
4640 Takes the name of an existing folder
4641 and the name for the new folder
4642 and renames the first to the second one.
4643 Both folders must be of the same type.
4647 (R) Reply to originator.
4648 Does not reply to other recipients of the original message.
4650 will exchange this command with
4652 Unless the internal variable
4654 is set the recipient address will be stripped from comments, names etc.
4658 (r) Take a message and group-responds to it by addressing the sender
4661 .Va followup-to-honour ,
4664 .Va recipients-in-cc
4665 influence response behaviour.
4668 offers special support for replying to mailing lists.
4669 Unless the internal variable
4671 is set recipient addresses will be stripped from comments, names etc.
4684 but initiates a group-reply regardless of the value of
4691 but responds to the sender only regardless of the value of
4698 but does not add any header lines.
4699 This is not a way to hide the sender's identity,
4700 but useful for sending a message again to the same recipients.
4704 Takes a list of messages and a user name
4705 and sends each message to the named user.
4707 and related header fields are prepended to the new copy of the message.
4725 .It Ic respondsender
4731 (ret) Superseded by the multiplexer
4738 but saves the messages in a file named after the local part of the
4739 sender of the first message instead of (in
4741 and) taking a filename argument.
4745 (s) Takes a message list and a filename and appends each message in turn
4746 to the end of the file.
4747 If no filename is given, the
4750 The filename in quotes, followed by the generated character count
4751 is echoed on the user's terminal.
4754 .Sx "primary system mailbox"
4755 the messages are marked for deletion.
4758 .Sx "filename transformations"
4759 are recognized, as documented in the introduction of
4764 \*(OB Superseded by the multiplexer
4769 \*(OB Superseded by the multiplexer
4774 \*(OB Superseded by the multiplexer
4779 Takes a message specification (list) and displays a header summary of
4780 all matching messages, as via
4782 This command is an alias of
4785 .Sx "Specifying messages" .
4789 Takes a message list and marks all messages as having been read.
4793 (se) Without arguments this command shows all internal variables which
4794 are currently known to \*(UA (they have been set).
4795 A more verbose listing will be produced if either of
4799 are set, in which case variables may be preceded with a comment line
4800 that gives some context of what \*(UA knows about the given variable.
4802 Otherwise the given variables (and arguments) are set or adjusted.
4803 Arguments are of the form
4805 (no space before or after
4809 if there is no value, i.e., a boolean variable.
4810 Quotation marks may be placed around any part of the assignment
4811 statement to quote blanks or tabs, e.g.,
4813 .Dl set indentprefix='->'
4815 If an argument begins with
4819 the effect is the same as invoking the
4821 command with the remaining part of the variable
4822 .Pf ( Ql unset save ) .
4826 that is known to map to an environment variable will automatically cause
4827 updates in the program environment (unsetting a variable in the
4828 environment requires corresponding system support).
4829 Please use the command
4831 for further environmental control.
4836 .Sx "INTERNAL VARIABLES"
4842 (sh) Invokes an interactive version of the shell.
4846 Without arguments the list of all currently defined shortcuts is
4848 Otherwise all given arguments (which need not be quoted except for
4849 whitespace) are treated as pairs of shortcuts and their expansions,
4850 creating new or changing already existing shortcuts, as necessary.
4851 Shortcuts may be removed via the command
4858 but performs neither MIME decoding nor decryption, so that the raw
4859 message text is shown.
4863 (si) Shows the size in characters of each message of the given
4868 Shows the current sorting criterion when used without an argument.
4869 Otherwise creates a sorted representation of the current folder,
4872 command and the addressing modes such that they refer to messages in
4874 Message numbers are the same as in regular mode.
4878 a header summary in the new order is also displayed.
4879 Automatic folder sorting can be enabled by setting the
4881 variable, as in, e.g.,
4882 .Ql set autosort=thread .
4883 Possible sorting criterions are:
4885 .Bl -tag -compact -width "subject"
4887 Sort the messages by their
4889 field, that is by the time they were sent.
4891 Sort messages by the value of their
4893 field, that is by the address of the sender.
4896 variable is set, the sender's real name (if any) is used.
4898 Sort the messages by their size.
4900 \*(OP Sort the message by their spam score, as has been classified by
4903 Sort the messages by their message status.
4905 Sort the messages by their subject.
4907 Create a threaded display.
4909 Sort messages by the value of their
4911 field, that is by the address of the recipient.
4914 variable is set, the recipient's real name (if any) is used.
4919 (so) The source command reads commands from the given file, which is
4920 subject to the usual filename expansions (see introductional words of
4922 If the given argument ends with a vertical bar
4924 then the argument will instead be interpreted as a shell command and
4925 \*(UA will read the output generated by it.
4926 Interpretation of commands read is stopped when an error is encountered.
4929 cannot be used from within macros that execute as
4930 .Va folder-hook Ns s
4933 i.e., it can only be called from macros that were
4940 (beside not supporting pipe syntax aka shell command input) is that
4941 this command will not generate an error if the given file argument
4942 cannot be opened successfully.
4946 \*(OP Takes a list of messages and clears their
4952 \*(OP Takes a list of messages and causes the
4954 to forget it has ever used them to train its Bayesian filter.
4955 Unless otherwise noted the
4957 flag of the message is inspected to chose whether a message shall be
4965 \*(OP Takes a list of messages and informs the Bayesian filter of the
4969 This also clears the
4971 flag of the messages in question.
4975 \*(OP Takes a list of messages and rates them using the configured
4976 .Va spam-interface ,
4977 without modifying the messages, but setting their
4979 flag as appropriate; because the spam rating headers are lost the rate
4980 will be forgotten once the mailbox is left.
4981 Refer to the manual section
4983 for the complete picture of spam handling in \*(UA.
4987 \*(OP Takes a list of messages and sets their
4993 \*(OP Takes a list of messages and informs the Bayesian filter of the
4999 flag of the messages in question.
5008 Create a threaded representation of the current folder,
5009 i.\|e. indent messages that are replies to other messages in the header
5010 display and change the
5012 command and the addressing modes such that they refer to messages in the
5014 Message numbers are the same as in unthreaded mode.
5018 a header summary in threaded order is also displayed.
5027 slot for white- and blacklisting header fields.
5031 (to) Takes a message list and types out the first
5033 lines of each message on the users' terminal.
5034 Unless a special selection has been established for the
5038 command, the only header fields that are displayed are
5049 It is possible to apply compression to what is displayed by setting
5051 Messages are decrypted and converted to the terminal character set
5056 (tou) Takes a message list and marks the messages for saving in
5058 \*(UA deviates from the POSIX standard with this command,
5061 command will display the following message instead of the current one.
5067 but also displays header fields which would not pass the
5069 selection, and all parts of MIME
5070 .Ql multipart/alternative
5075 (t) Takes a message list and types out each message on the users'
5079 For MIME multipart messages, all parts with a content type of
5083 are shown, the other are hidden except for their headers.
5084 Messages are decrypted and converted to the terminal character set
5089 Delete all given accounts.
5090 An error message is shown if a given account is not defined.
5093 will discard all existing accounts.
5097 (una) Takes a list of names defined by alias commands
5098 and discards the remembered groups of users.
5101 will discard all existing aliases.
5105 Takes a message list and marks each message as not having been answered.
5111 ing, specified by its context and input sequence, both of which may be
5112 specified as a wildcard (asterisk,
5116 will remove all bindings of all contexts.
5120 Only applicable to threaded mode.
5121 Takes a message list and makes the message and all replies to it visible
5122 in header summaries again.
5123 When a message becomes the current message,
5124 it is automatically made visible.
5125 Also when a message with collapsed replies is displayed,
5126 all of these are automatically uncollapsed.
5132 mapping for the given colour type (see
5134 for a list of types) and mapping; if the optional precondition argument
5135 is used then only the exact tuple of mapping and precondition is removed.
5138 will remove all mappings (no precondition allowed).
5140 .Sx "Coloured display"
5141 for the general picture.
5145 Undefine all given macros.
5146 An error message is shown if a given macro is not defined.
5149 will discard all existing macros.
5153 (u) Takes a message list and marks each message as not being deleted.
5157 Takes a message list and
5163 Takes a message list and marks each message as not being
5168 \*(OB Superseded by the multiplexer
5173 \*(OB Superseded by the multiplexer
5178 Remove all the given command
5182 will remove all ghosts.
5186 Superseded by the multiplexer
5191 Delete all given MIME types, e.g.,
5192 .Ql unmimetype text/plain
5193 will remove all registered specifications for the MIME type
5197 will discard all existing MIME types, just as will
5199 but which also reenables cache initialization via
5200 .Va mimetypes-load-control .
5204 Forget about all the given mailing lists.
5207 will remove all lists.
5212 .It Ic unmlsubscribe
5213 Remove the subscription attribute from all given mailing lists.
5216 will clear the attribute from all lists which have it set.
5227 Takes a message list and marks each message as not having been read.
5231 Superseded by the multiplexer
5236 \*(OB Superseded by the multiplexer
5241 \*(OB Superseded by the multiplexer
5246 (uns) Takes a list of internal variable names and discards their
5247 remembered values; the reverse of
5254 Deletes the shortcut names given as arguments.
5257 will remove all shortcuts.
5261 Disable sorted or threaded mode
5267 return to normal message order and,
5271 displays a header summary.
5281 Perform URL percent codec operations, rather according to RFC 3986,
5282 on all given strings.
5283 This is character set agnostic and thus locale dependent, and it may
5284 decode bytes which are invalid in the current locale, unless the input
5285 solely consists of characters in the portable character set, see
5286 .Sx "Character sets" .
5287 The first argument specifies the operation:
5291 perform plain URL percent en- and decoding, respectively.
5295 perform a slightly modified operation which should be better for
5296 pathnames: it does not allow a tilde
5298 and will neither accept hyphen
5302 as an initial character.
5306 Edit the values of or create the given variable(s) in the
5308 Boolean variables cannot be edited.
5312 This command produces the same output as the listing mode of
5316 ity adjustments, but only for the given variables.
5320 \*(OP Takes a message list and verifies each message.
5321 If a message is not a S/MIME signed message,
5322 verification will fail for it.
5323 The verification process checks if the message was signed using a valid
5325 if the message sender's email address matches one of those contained
5326 within the certificate,
5327 and if the message content has been altered.
5339 (v) Takes a message list and invokes the display editor on each message.
5340 Modified contents are discarded unless the
5346 (w) For conventional messages the body without all headers is written.
5347 The original message is never marked for deletion in the originating
5349 The output is decrypted and converted to its native format as necessary.
5350 If the output file exists, the text is appended.
5351 If a message is in MIME multipart format its first part is written to
5352 the specified file as for conventional messages, handling of the remains
5353 depends on the execution mode.
5354 No special handling of compressed files is performed.
5356 In interactive mode the user is consecutively asked for the filenames of
5357 the processed parts.
5358 For convience saving of each part may be skipped by giving an empty
5359 value, the same result as writing it to
5361 Shell piping the part content by specifying a leading vertical bar
5363 character for the filename is supported.
5364 Other user input is expanded as usually for folders, e.g., tilde
5365 expansion is performed, and contents of the destination file are
5366 overwritten if the file previously existed.
5368 \*(ID In non-interactive mode any part which does not specify a filename
5369 is ignored, and suspicious parts of filenames of the remaining parts are
5370 URL percent encoded (as via
5372 to prevent injection of malicious character sequences, resulting in
5373 a filename that will be written into the current directory.
5374 Existing files will not be overwritten, instead the part number or
5375 a dot are appended after a number sign
5377 to the name until file creation succeeds (or fails due to other
5387 \*(UA presents message headers in
5389 fuls as described under the
5392 Without arguments this command scrolls to the next window of messages,
5393 likewise if the argument is
5397 scrolls to the last,
5399 scrolls to the first, and
5404 A number argument prefixed by
5408 indicates that the window is calculated in relation to the current
5409 position, and a number without a prefix specifies an absolute position.
5415 but scrolls to the next or previous window that contains at least one
5424 .\" .Sh COMMAND ESCAPES {{{
5425 .Sh "COMMAND ESCAPES"
5427 Here is a summary of the command escapes available in compose mode,
5428 which are used to perform special functions when composing messages.
5429 Command escapes are only recognized at the beginning of lines.
5430 The actual escape character can be set via the internal variable
5432 it defaults to the tilde
5436 .Bl -tag -width ".It Ic BaNg"
5439 Insert the string of text in the message prefaced by a single
5441 (If the escape character has been changed,
5442 that character must be doubled
5443 in order to send it at the beginning of a line.)
5446 .It Ic ~! Ar command
5447 Execute the indicated shell
5449 which follows, replacing unescaped exclamation marks with the previously
5450 executed command if the internal variable
5452 is set, then return to the message.
5456 Same effect as typing the end-of-file character.
5459 .It Ic ~: Ar \*(UA-command Ns \0or Ic ~_ Ar \*(UA-command
5460 Execute the given \*(UA command.
5461 Not all commands, however, are allowed.
5465 Write a summary of command escapes.
5468 .It Ic ~< Ar filename
5473 .It Ic ~<! Ar command
5475 is executed using the shell.
5476 Its standard output is inserted into the message.
5479 .It Ic ~@ Op Ar filename...
5480 Append or edit the list of attachments.
5483 arguments are specified they are treated as a
5487 token-separating commas are ignored) list of filenames, to be
5488 interpreted as documented for the command line option
5490 with the message number exception as below.
5493 arguments the attachment list is edited, entry by entry;
5494 if a filename is left empty, that attachment is deleted from the list;
5495 once the end of the list is reached either new attachments may be
5496 entered or the session can be quit by committing an empty
5499 For each mode, if a given file name solely consists of the number sign
5501 followed by a valid message number of the currently active mailbox, then
5502 the given message is attached as a MIME
5504 part (note the number sign is the comment character and must be quoted).
5508 Inserts the string contained in the
5511 .Ql Ic ~i Ns \0Sign ) .
5516 ting the variable(s) instead!) The escape sequences tabulator
5524 Inserts the string contained in the
5527 .Ql Ic ~i Ns \0sign ) .
5532 ting the variable(s) instead!) The escape sequences tabulator
5539 .It Ic ~b Ar name ...
5540 Add the given names to the list of blind carbon copy recipients.
5543 .It Ic ~c Ar name ...
5544 Add the given names to the list of carbon copy recipients.
5548 Read the file specified by the
5550 variable into the message.
5554 Invoke the text editor on the message collected so far.
5555 After the editing session is finished,
5556 the user may continue appending text to the message.
5559 .It Ic ~F Ar messages
5560 Read the named messages into the message being sent, including all
5561 message headers and MIME parts.
5562 If no messages are specified, read in the current message.
5565 .It Ic ~f Ar messages
5566 Read the named messages into the message being sent.
5567 If no messages are specified, read in the current message.
5568 Strips down the list of header fields according to the
5570 white- and blacklist selection of
5572 For MIME multipart messages,
5573 only the first displayable part is included.
5577 Edit the message header fields
5582 by typing each one in turn and allowing the user to edit the field.
5583 The default values for these fields originate from the
5591 Edit the message header fields
5597 by typing each one in turn and allowing the user to edit the field.
5600 .It Ic ~i Ar variable
5601 Insert the value of the specified variable into the message,
5602 adding a newline character at the end.
5603 The message remains unaltered if the variable is unset or empty.
5608 ting the variable(s) instead!) The escape sequences tabulator
5615 .It Ic ~M Ar messages
5616 Read the named messages into the message being sent,
5619 If no messages are specified, read the current message.
5622 .It Ic ~m Ar messages
5623 Read the named messages into the message being sent,
5626 If no messages are specified, read the current message.
5627 Strips down the list of header fields according to the
5629 white- and blacklist selection of
5631 For MIME multipart messages,
5632 only the first displayable part is included.
5636 Display the message collected so far,
5637 prefaced by the message header fields
5638 and followed by the attachment list, if any.
5642 Abort the message being sent,
5643 copying it to the file specified by the
5650 .It Ic ~R Ar filename
5651 Read the named file into the message, indented by
5655 .It Ic ~r Ar filename
5656 Read the named file into the message.
5660 Cause the named string to become the current subject field.
5661 Newline (NL) and carriage-return (CR) bytes are invalid and will be
5662 normalized to space (SP) characters.
5665 .It Ic ~t Ar name ...
5666 Add the given name(s) to the direct recipient list.
5669 .It Ic ~U Ar messages
5670 Read in the given / current message(s) excluding all headers, indented by
5674 .It Ic ~u Ar messages
5675 Read in the given / current message(s), excluding all headers.
5679 Invoke an alternate editor (defined by the
5681 environment variable) on the message collected so far.
5682 Usually, the alternate editor will be a screen editor.
5683 After the editor is quit,
5684 the user may resume appending text to the end of the message.
5687 .It Ic ~w Ar filename
5688 Write the message onto the named file.
5690 the message is appended to it.
5696 except that the message is not saved at all.
5699 .It Ic ~| Ar command
5700 Pipe the message through the specified filter command.
5701 If the command gives no output or terminates abnormally,
5702 retain the original text of the message.
5705 is often used as a rejustifying filter.
5709 .It Ic ~^ Ar cmd Op Ar subcmd Op Ar arg3 Op Ar arg4
5710 Low-level command ment for scripted message access, i.e., for
5711 .Va on-compose-done-shell
5713 .Va on-compose-done .
5714 The used protocol is likely subject to changes, and therefore the
5715 mentioned hooks receive the used protocol version as an initial line.
5716 In general the first field of a response line represents a status code
5717 which specifies whether a command was successful or not, whether result
5718 data is to be expected, and if, the format of the result data.
5719 The status codes are:
5722 .Bl -tag -compact -width _210_
5724 Status ok; the remains of the line are the result.
5726 Status ok; the rest of the line is optionally used for more status.
5727 What follows are lines of result addresses, terminated by an empty line.
5728 The address lines consist of two fields, the first of which is the
5729 plain address, e.g.,
5731 separated by a single ASCII SP space from the second which contains the
5732 unstripped address, even if that is identical to the first field, e.g.,
5733 .Ql (Lovely) Bob <bob@exam.ple> .
5735 Status ok; the rest of the line is optionally used for more status.
5736 What follows are lines of furtherly unspecified string content,
5737 terminated by an empty line.
5739 Syntax error; invalid command.
5741 Syntax error in parameters or arguments.
5743 Error: an argument fails verification.
5744 For example an invalid address has been specified.
5746 Error: an otherwise valid argument is rendered invalid due to context.
5747 For example, a second address is added to a header which may consist of
5748 a single address only.
5752 If a command indicates failure then the message will have remained
5754 Most commands can fail with
5756 if required arguments are missing (false command usage).
5757 The following commands are supported, and, as usual, case-insensitive:
5760 .Bl -hang -width header
5762 This command allows listing, inspection, and editing of message headers.
5763 The second argument specifies the subcommand to apply, one of:
5766 .Bl -hang -compact -width remove
5768 Without a third argument a list of all yet existing headers is given via
5770 this command is the default command of
5772 if no second argument has been given.
5773 A third argument restricts output to the given header only, which may
5776 if no such field is defined.
5779 Shows the content of the header given as the third argument.
5780 Dependent on the header type this may respond with
5784 any failure results in
5788 This will remove all instances of the header given as the third
5793 if no such header can be found.
5796 Create a new or an additional instance of the header given in the third
5797 argument, with the header body content as given in the fourth argument
5798 (the remains of the line).
5801 if the third argument specifies a free-form header field name that is
5802 invalid, or if body content extraction fails to succeed,
5804 if any extracted address does not pass syntax and/or security checks, and
5806 to indicate prevention of excessing a single-instance header \(em note that
5808 can be appended to (a space separator will be added automatically first).
5810 is returned upon success.
5815 This command allows listing, removal and addition of message attachments.
5816 The second argument specifies the subcommand to apply, one of:
5819 .Bl -hang -compact -width remove
5821 List all attachments via
5825 if no attachments exist.
5826 This command is the default command of
5828 if no second argument has been given.
5831 This will remove the attachment given as the third argument, and report
5835 if no such attachment can be found.
5836 If there exists any path component in the given argument, then an exact
5837 match of the path which has been used to create the attachment is used
5838 directly, but if only the basename of that path matches then all
5839 attachments are traversed to find an exact match first, and the removal
5840 occurs afterwards; if multiple basenames match, a
5843 Message attachments are treated as absolute pathnames.
5845 If no path component exists in the given argument, then all attachments
5846 will be searched for
5848 parameter matches as well as for matches of the basename of the path
5849 which has been used when the attachment has been created; multiple
5854 This will interpret the third argument as a number and remove the
5855 attachment at that list position (counting from one!), reporting
5859 if the argument is not a number or
5861 if no such attachment exists.
5864 Adds the attachment given as the third argument, specified exactly as
5865 documented for the command line flag
5867 and supporting the message number extension as documented for
5871 upon success, with the index of the new attachment following,
5873 if the given file cannot be opened,
5875 if an on-the-fly performed character set conversion fails, otherwise
5877 is reported; this is also reported if character-set conversion is
5878 requested but not available.
5881 This uses the same search mechanism as described for
5883 and prints any known attributes of the first found attachment via
5887 if no such attachment can be found.
5888 The attributes are written as lines of keyword and value tuples, the
5889 keyword being separated from the rest of the line with an ASCII SP space
5893 This uses the same search mechanism as described for
5895 and is otherwise identical to
5898 .It Ar attribute-set
5899 This uses the same search mechanism as described for
5901 and will assign the attribute given as the fourth argument, which is
5902 expected to be a value tuple of keyword and other data, separated by
5903 a ASCII SP space or TAB tabulator character.
5904 If the value part is empty, then the given attribute is removed, or
5905 reset to a default value if existence of the attribute is crucial.
5908 upon success, with the index of the found attachment following,
5910 for message attachments or if the given keyword is invalid, and
5912 if no such attachment can be found.
5913 The following keywords may be used (case-insensitively):
5915 .Bl -hang -compact -width ".Ql filename"
5917 Sets the filename of the MIME part, i.e., the name that is used for
5918 display and when (suggesting a name for) saving (purposes).
5919 .It Ql content-description
5920 Associate some descriptive information to the attachment's content, used
5921 in favour of the plain filename by some MUAs.
5923 May be used for uniquely identifying MIME entities in several contexts.
5925 Specifies the media type and subtype of the part; managed automatically.
5926 .It Ql content-disposition
5927 Automatically set to the string
5931 .It Ar attribute-set-at
5932 This uses the same search mechanism as described for
5934 and is otherwise identical to
5944 .\" .Sh INTERNAL VARIABLES {{{
5945 .Sh "INTERNAL VARIABLES"
5947 Internal \*(UA variables are controlled via the
5951 commands; prefixing a variable name with the string
5955 has the same effect as using
5961 Creation or editing of variables can be performed in the
5966 will give more insight on the given variable(s), and
5968 when called without arguments, will show a listing of all variables.
5969 Both commands support a more
5972 Some well-known variables will also become inherited from the
5975 implicitly, others can be explicitly imported with the command
5977 and henceforth share the said properties.
5980 Two different kind of internal variables exist.
5981 There are boolean variables, which can only be in one of the two states
5985 and value variables with a(n optional) string value.
5986 For the latter proper quoting is necessary upon assignment time, the
5987 introduction of the section
5989 documents the supported quoting rules.
5991 .Bd -literal -offset indent
5992 wysh set one=val\e 1 two="val 2" \e
5993 three='val "3"' four=$'val \e'4\e''
5994 varshow one two three four
5995 unset one two three four
5999 Dependent upon the actual option the string values will be interpreted
6000 as numbers, colour names, normal text etc., but there also exists
6001 a special kind of string value, the
6002 .Dq boolean string ,
6003 which must either be a decimal integer (in which case
6007 and any other value is true) or any of the (case-insensitive) strings
6013 for a false boolean and
6019 for a true boolean; a special kind of boolean string is the
6021 which is a boolean string that can optionally be prefixed with the
6022 (case-insensitive) term
6026 which causes prompting of the user in interactive mode, with the given
6027 boolean as the default value.
6029 .\" .Ss "Initial settings" {{{
6030 .\" (Keep in SYNC: ./nail.h:okeys, ./nail.rc, ./nail.1:"Initial settings")
6031 .Ss "Initial Settings"
6033 The standard POSIX 2008/Cor 2-2016 mandates the following initial
6039 .Pf no Va autoprint ,
6053 .Pf no Va ignoreeof ,
6055 .Pf no Va keepsave ,
6057 .Pf no Va outfolder ,
6065 .Pf no Va sendwait ,
6074 Notes: \*(UA does not support the
6076 variable \(en use command line options or
6078 to pass options through to a
6080 And the default global
6082 file (which is loaded unless the
6084 command line flag has been used or the
6085 .Ev NAIL_NO_SYSTEM_RC
6086 environment variable is set) bends those initial settings a bit, e.g.,
6087 it sets the variables
6092 to name a few, establishes a default
6094 selection etc., and should thus be taken into account.
6097 .\" .Ss "Variables" {{{
6100 .Bl -tag -width ".It Va BaNg"
6102 .It Va -account-name
6103 \*(RO Is set to the active
6108 \*(RO The status of the last command.
6111 .It Va -folder-resolved
6112 \*(RO Set to the fully resolved path of
6114 once that evaluation has occurred; rather internal.
6117 .It Va -mailbox-display
6118 \*(RO The name of the current mailbox
6120 possibly abbreviated for display purposes.
6123 .It Va -mailbox-resolved
6124 \*(RO The fully resolved path of the current mailbox.
6127 .It Va add-file-recipients
6128 \*(BO When file or pipe recipients have been specified,
6129 mention them in the corresponding address fields of the message instead
6130 of silently stripping them from their recipient list.
6131 By default such addressees are not mentioned.
6135 \*(BO Causes only the local part to be evaluated
6136 when comparing addresses.
6140 \*(BO Causes messages saved in
6142 to be appended to the end rather than prepended.
6143 This should always be set.
6147 \*(BO Causes \*(UA to prompt for the subject of each message sent.
6148 If the user responds with simply a newline,
6149 no subject field will be sent.
6153 \*(BO Causes the prompts for
6157 lists to appear after the message has been edited.
6161 \*(BO If set, \*(UA asks for files to attach at the end of each message,
6162 shall the list be found empty at that time.
6163 An empty line finalizes the list.
6167 \*(BO Causes the user to be prompted for carbon copy recipients
6168 (at the end of each message if
6172 are set) shall the list be found empty (at that time).
6173 An empty line finalizes the list.
6177 \*(BO Causes the user to be prompted for blind carbon copy
6178 recipients (at the end of each message if
6182 are set) shall the list be found empty (at that time).
6183 An empty line finalizes the list.
6187 \*(BO\*(OP Causes the user to be prompted if the message is to be
6188 signed at the end of each message.
6191 variable is ignored when this variable is set.
6195 \*(BO Alternative name for
6200 A sequence of characters to display in the
6204 as shown in the display of
6206 each for one type of messages (see
6207 .Sx "Message states" ) ,
6208 with the default being
6211 .Ql NU\ \ *HMFAT+\-$~
6214 variable is set, in the following order:
6216 .Bl -tag -compact -width ".It Ql _"
6238 start of a collapsed thread.
6240 an uncollapsed thread (TODO ignored for now).
6244 classified as possible spam.
6250 Specifies a list of recipients to which a blind carbon copy of each
6251 outgoing message will be sent automatically.
6255 Specifies a list of recipients to which a carbon copy of each outgoing
6256 message will be sent automatically.
6260 \*(BO Causes threads to be collapsed automatically when threaded mode
6267 \*(BO Causes the delete command to behave like
6269 thus, after deleting a message the next one will be typed automatically.
6273 \*(BO\*(OB Causes threaded mode (see the
6275 command) to be entered automatically when a folder is opened.
6277 .Ql autosort=thread .
6281 Causes sorted mode (see the
6283 command) to be entered automatically with the value of this variable as
6284 sorting method when a folder is opened, e.g.,
6285 .Ql set autosort=thread .
6289 \*(BO Enables the substitution of all not (reverse-solidus) escaped
6292 characters by the contents of the last executed command for the
6294 shell escape command and
6296 one of the compose mode
6297 .Sx "COMMAND ESCAPES" .
6298 If this variable is not set no reverse solidus stripping is performed.
6301 .It Va batch-exit-on-error
6302 \*(BO If the batch mode has been enabled via the
6304 command line option, then this variable will be consulted whenever \*(UA
6305 completes one operation (returns to the command prompt); if it is set
6306 then \*(UA will terminate if the last operation generated an error.
6310 \*(OP Terminals generate multi-byte sequences for certain forms of
6311 input, for example for function and other special keys.
6312 Some terminals however do not write these multi-byte sequences as
6313 a whole, but byte-by-byte, and the latter is what \*(UA actually reads.
6314 This variable specifies the timeout in milliseconds that the MLE (see
6315 .Sx "On terminal control and line editor" )
6316 waits for more bytes to arrive unless it considers a sequence
6322 \*(BO Causes automatic display of a header summary after executing a
6324 command, and thus complements the standard variable
6326 which controls header summary display on program startup.
6327 It is only meaningful if
6333 \*(BO Sets some cosmetical features to traditional BSD style;
6334 has the same affect as setting
6336 and all other variables prefixed with
6338 it also changes the behaviour of
6340 (which does not exist in BSD).
6344 \*(BO Changes the letters shown in the first column of a header
6345 summary to traditional BSD style.
6349 \*(BO Changes the display of columns in a header summary to traditional
6354 \*(BO Changes some informational messages to traditional BSD style.
6360 field to appear immediately after the
6362 field in message headers and with the
6364 .Sx "COMMAND ESCAPES" .
6368 The value that should appear in the
6372 MIME header fields when no character set conversion of the message data
6374 This defaults to US-ASCII, and the chosen character set should be
6375 US-ASCII compatible.
6379 \*(OP The default 8-bit character set that is used as an implicit last
6380 member of the variable
6382 This defaults to UTF-8 if character-set conversion capabilities are
6383 available, and to ISO-8859-1 otherwise, in which case the only supported
6386 and this variable is effectively ignored.
6387 Refer to the section
6388 .Sx "Character sets"
6389 for the complete picture of character set conversion in \*(UA.
6392 .It Va charset-unknown-8bit
6393 \*(OP RFC 1428 specifies conditions when internet mail gateways shall
6395 the content of a mail message by using a character set with the name
6397 Because of the unclassified nature of this character set \*(UA will not
6398 be capable to convert this character set to any other character set.
6399 If this variable is set any message part which uses the character set
6401 is assumed to really be in the character set given in the value,
6402 otherwise the (final) value of
6404 is used for this purpose.
6406 This variable will also be taken into account if a MIME type (see
6407 .Sx "The mime.types files" )
6408 of a MIME message part that uses the
6410 character set is forcefully treated as text.
6414 The default value for the
6419 .It Va colour-disable
6420 \*(BO\*(OP Forcefully disable usage of colours.
6421 Also see the section
6422 .Sx "Coloured display" .
6426 \*(BO\*(OP Whether colour shall be used for output that is paged through
6428 Note that pagers may need special flags, e.g.,
6436 in order to support colours.
6437 Often doing manual adjustments is unnecessary since \*(UA may perform
6438 adjustments dependent on the value of the environment variable
6440 (see there for more).
6444 In a(n interactive) terminal session, then if this valued variable is
6445 set it will be used as a threshold to determine how many lines the given
6446 output has to span before it will be displayed via the configured
6450 can be forced by setting this to the value
6452 setting it without a value will deduce the current height of the
6453 terminal screen to compute the treshold (see
6461 Define a set of custom headers to be injected into newly composed or
6462 forwarded messages; it is also possible to create custom headers in
6465 which can be automated by setting one of the hooks
6466 .Va on-compose-done-shell
6468 .Va on-compose-done .
6469 The value is interpreted as a comma-separated list of custom headers to
6470 be injected, to include commas in the header bodies escape them with
6472 \*(ID Overwriting of automatically managed headers is neither supported
6475 .Dl set customhdr='Hdr1: Body1-1\e, Body1-2, Hdr2: Body2'
6481 the message date, if any is to be displayed according to the format of
6483 is by default taken from the
6485 line of the message.
6486 If this variable is set the date as given in the
6488 header field is used instead, converted to local time.
6489 To control the display format of the date assign a valid
6494 format should not be used, because \*(UA does not take embedded newlines
6495 into account when calculating how many lines fit onto the screen.)
6497 .Va datefield-markout-older .
6500 .It Va datefield-markout-older
6501 This variable, when set in addition to
6505 messages (concept is rather comparable to the
6507 option of the POSIX utility
6509 The content interpretation is identical to
6514 \*(BO Enables debug messages and obsoletion warnings, disables the
6515 actual delivery of messages and also implies
6521 .It Va disposition-notification-send
6523 .Ql Disposition-Notification-To:
6524 header (RFC 3798) with the message.
6528 .\" TODO .It Va disposition-notification-send-HOST
6530 .\".Va disposition-notification-send
6531 .\" for SMTP accounts on a specific host.
6532 .\" TODO .It Va disposition-notification-send-USER@HOST
6534 .\".Va disposition-notification-send
6535 .\"for a specific account.
6539 \*(BO When dot is set, a period
6541 on a line by itself during message input in (interactive) compose mode
6542 will be treated as end-of-message (in addition to the normal end-of-file
6551 .It Va dotlock-ignore-error
6552 \*(BO\*(OP Synchronization of mailboxes which \*(UA treats as
6554 .Sx "primary system mailbox" Ns
6555 es (see, e.g., the notes on
6557 .Sx "filename transformations"
6560 sections as well as the documentation of
6562 will be protected with so-called dotlock files\(emthe traditional mail
6563 spool file locking method\(emin addition to system file locking.
6564 Because \*(UA ships with a privilege-separated dotlock creation program
6565 that should always be able to create such a dotlock file there is no
6566 good reason to ignore dotlock file creation errors, and thus these are
6567 fatal unless this variable is set.
6571 \*(BO If this variable is set then the editor is started automatically
6572 when a message is composed in interactive mode, as if the
6574 .Sx "COMMAND ESCAPES"
6578 variable is implied for this automatically spawned editor session.
6582 \*(BO When a message is edited while being composed,
6583 its header is included in the editable text.
6593 fields are accepted within the header, other fields are ignored.
6597 \*(BO When entering interactive mode \*(UA normally writes
6598 .Dq \&No mail for user
6599 and exits immediately if a mailbox is empty or does not exist.
6600 If this variable is set \*(UA starts even with an empty or nonexistent
6601 mailbox (the latter behaviour furtherly depends upon
6608 .Ql Content-Transfer-Encoding
6609 to use in outgoing text messages and message parts, where applicable.
6610 (7-bit clean text messages are sent as-is, without a transfer encoding.)
6613 .Bl -tag -compact -width "_%%_"
6616 8-bit transport effectively causes the raw data be passed through
6617 unchanged, but may cause problems when transferring mail messages over
6618 channels that are not ESMTP (RFC 1869) compliant.
6619 Also, several input data constructs are not allowed by the
6620 specifications and may cause a different transfer-encoding to be used.
6621 .It Ql quoted-printable
6623 Quoted-printable encoding is 7-bit clean and has the property that ASCII
6624 characters are passed through unchanged, so that an english message can
6625 be read as-is; it is also acceptible for other single-byte locales that
6626 share many characters with ASCII, like, e.g., ISO-8859-1.
6627 The encoding will cause a large overhead for messages in other character
6628 sets: e.g., it will require up to twelve (12) bytes to encode a single
6629 UTF-8 character of four (4) bytes.
6631 .Pf (Or\0 Ql b64 . )
6632 The default encoding, it is 7-bit clean and will always be used for
6634 This encoding has a constant input:output ratio of 3:4, regardless of
6635 the character set of the input data it will encode three bytes of input
6636 to four bytes of output.
6637 This transfer-encoding is not human readable without performing
6643 If defined, the first character of the value of this variable
6644 gives the character to use in place of tilde
6647 .Sx "COMMAND ESCAPES" .
6648 If set to the empty string, command escapes are disabled.
6652 If not set then file and command pipeline targets are not allowed,
6653 and any such address will be filtered out, giving a warning message.
6654 If set without a value then all possible recipient address
6655 specifications will be accepted \(en see the section
6656 .Sx "On sending mail, and non-interactive mode"
6658 To accept them, but only in interactive mode, or when tilde commands
6659 were enabled explicitly by using one of the command line options
6663 set this to the (case-insensitive) value
6665 (it actually acts like
6666 .Ql restrict,-all,+name,+addr ,
6667 so that care for ordering issues must be taken) .
6669 In fact the value is interpreted as a comma-separated list of values.
6672 then the existence of disallowed specifications is treated as a hard
6673 send error instead of only filtering them out.
6674 The remaining values specify whether a specific type of recipient
6675 address specification is allowed (optionally indicated by a plus sign
6677 prefix) or disallowed (prefixed with a hyphen
6681 addresses all possible address specifications,
6685 command pipeline targets,
6687 plain user names and (MTA) aliases (\*(OB
6689 may be used as an alternative syntax to
6694 These kind of values are interpreted in the given order, so that
6695 .Ql restrict,\:fail,\:+file,\:-all,\:+addr
6696 will cause hard errors for any non-network address recipient address
6697 unless \*(UA is in interactive mode or has been started with the
6701 command line option; in the latter case(s) any address may be used, then.
6703 Historically invalid network addressees are silently stripped off.
6704 To change this and ensure that any encountered invalid email address
6705 instead causes a hard error, ensure the string
6707 is an entry in the above list.
6708 Setting this automatically enables network addressees
6709 (it actually acts like
6710 .Ql failinvaddr,+addr ,
6711 so that care for ordering issues must be taken) .
6715 Unless this variable is set additional
6717 (Mail-Transfer-Agent)
6718 arguments from the command line, as can be given after a
6720 separator, are ignored due to safety reasons.
6721 However, if set to the special (case-insensitive) value
6723 then the presence of additional MTA arguments is treated as a hard
6724 error that causes \*(UA to exit with failure status.
6725 A lesser strict variant is the otherwise identical
6727 which does accept such arguments in interactive mode, or if tilde
6728 commands were enabled explicitly by using one of the command line options
6735 \*(RO String giving a list of features \*(UA, preceded with a plus-sign
6737 if the feature is available, and a minus-sign
6740 The output of the command
6742 will include this information.
6746 \*(BO This setting reverses the meanings of a set of reply commands,
6747 turning the lowercase variants, which by default address all recipients
6748 included in the header of a message
6749 .Pf ( Ic reply , respond , followup )
6750 into the uppercase variants, which by default address the sender only
6751 .Pf ( Ic Reply , Respond , Followup )
6754 .Ic replysender , respondsender , followupsender
6756 .Ic replyall , respondall , followupall
6757 are not affected by the current setting of
6762 .It Va file-hook-load-EXTENSION , file-hook-save-EXTENSION
6763 It is possible to install file hooks which will be used by the
6765 command in order to be able to transparently handle (through an
6766 intermediate temporary file) files with specific
6768 s: the variable values can include shell snippets and are expected to
6769 write data to standard output / read data from standard input,
6771 \*(ID The variables may not be changed while there is a mailbox
6773 .Bd -literal -offset indent
6774 set file-hook-load-xy='echo >&2 XY-LOAD; gzip -cd' \e
6775 file-hook-save-xy='echo >&2 XY-SAVE; gzip -c' \e
6776 record=+null-sent.xy
6781 The default path under which mailboxes are to be saved:
6782 file names that begin with the plus-sign
6784 will have the plus-sign replaced with the value of this variable if set,
6785 otherwise the plus-sign will remain unchanged when doing
6787 .Sx "filename transformations" ;
6788 see the introduction of
6790 as well as the documentation of
6792 for more on this topic.
6793 The value supports a subset of transformations itself, and if the
6794 non-empty value does not start with a solidus
6798 will be prefixed automatically.
6802 This variable can be set to the name of a
6804 macro which will be called whenever a
6807 The macro will also be invoked when new mail arrives,
6808 but message lists for commands executed from the macro
6809 only include newly arrived messages then.
6811 are activated by default in a folder hook, causing the covered settings
6812 to be reverted once the folder is left again.
6815 Macro behaviour, including option localization, will change in v15.
6816 Please be aware of that and possibly embed a version check in a resource
6820 .It Va folder-hook-FOLDER
6825 Unlike other folder specifications, the fully expanded name of a folder,
6826 without metacharacters, is used to avoid ambiguities.
6827 However, if the mailbox resides under
6831 specification is tried in addition, e.g., if
6835 (and thus relative to the user's home directory) then
6836 .Pa /home/usr1/mail/sent
6838 .Ql folder-hook-/home/usr1/mail/sent
6839 first, but then followed by
6840 .Ql folder-hook-+sent .
6844 \*(BO Controls whether a
6845 .Ql Mail-Followup-To:
6846 header is generated when sending messages to known mailing lists.
6848 .Va followup-to-honour
6850 .Ic mlist , mlsubscribe , reply
6855 .It Va followup-to-honour
6857 .Ql Mail-Followup-To:
6858 header is honoured when group-replying to a message via
6862 This is a quadoption; if set without a value it defaults to
6872 .It Va forward-as-attachment
6873 \*(BO Original messages are normally sent as inline text with the
6876 and only the first part of a multipart message is included.
6877 With this setting enabled messages are sent as unmodified MIME
6879 attachments with all of their parts included.
6883 The address (or a list of addresses) to put into the
6885 field of the message header, quoting RFC 5322:
6886 the author(s) of the message, that is, the mailbox(es) of the person(s)
6887 or system(s) responsible for the writing of the message.
6890 ing to messages these addresses are handled as if they were in the
6894 If the machine's hostname is not valid at the Internet (for example at
6895 a dialup machine) then either this variable or
6897 (\*(IN and with a defined SMTP protocol in
6900 adds even more fine-tuning capabilities),
6904 contains more than one address,
6907 variable is required (according to the standard RFC 5322).
6909 If a file-based MTA is used, then
6911 (or, if that contains multiple addresses,
6913 can nonetheless be enforced to appear as the envelope sender address at
6914 the MTA protocol level (the RFC 5321 reverse-path), either by using the
6916 command line option (with an empty argument; see there for the complete
6917 picture on this topic), or by setting the internal variable
6918 .Va r-option-implicit .
6922 \*(BO When replying to or forwarding a message \*(UA normally removes
6923 the comment and name parts of email addresses.
6924 If this variable is set such stripping is not performed,
6925 and comments, names etc. are retained.
6929 The string to put before the text of a message with the
6933 .Va forward-as-attachment
6936 .Dq -------- Original Message --------
6937 if unset; No heading is put if it is set to the empty string.
6941 \*(BO Causes the header summary to be written at startup and after
6942 commands that affect the number of messages or the order of messages in
6943 the current folder; enabled by default.
6944 The command line option
6950 complements this and controls header summary display on folder changes.
6955 A format string to use for the summary of
6957 similar to the ones used for
6960 Format specifiers in the given string start with a percent character
6962 and may be followed by an optional decimal number indicating the field
6963 width \(em if that is negative, the field is to be left-aligned.
6964 Valid format specifiers are:
6967 .Bl -tag -compact -width "_%%_"
6969 A plain percent character.
6972 a space character but for the current message
6974 for which it expands to
6978 a space character but for the current message
6980 for which it expands to
6983 \*(OP The spam score of the message, as has been classified via the
6986 Shows only a replacement character if there is no spam support.
6988 Message attribute character (status flag); the actual content can be
6992 The date when the message was received, or the date found in the
6996 variable is set (optionally to a date display format string).
6998 The indenting level in threaded mode.
7000 The address of the message sender.
7002 The message thread tree structure.
7003 (Note that this format does not support a field width.)
7005 The number of lines of the message, if available.
7009 The number of octets (bytes) in the message, if available.
7011 Message subject (if any).
7013 Message subject (if any) in double quotes.
7015 Message recipient flags: is the addressee of the message a known or
7016 subscribed mailing list \(en see
7021 The position in threaded/sorted order.
7025 .Ql %>\&%a\&%m\ %-18f\ %16d\ %4l/%\-5o\ %i%-s ,
7027 .Ql %>\&%a\&%m\ %20-f\ \ %16d\ %3l/%\-5o\ %i%-S
7038 .It Va headline-bidi
7039 Bidirectional text requires special treatment when displaying headers,
7040 because numbers (in dates or for file sizes etc.) will not affect the
7041 current text direction, in effect resulting in ugly line layouts when
7042 arabic or other right-to-left text is to be displayed.
7043 On the other hand only a minority of terminals is capable to correctly
7044 handle direction changes, so that user interaction is necessary for
7046 Note that extended host system support is required nonetheless, e.g.,
7047 detection of the terminal character set is one precondition;
7048 and this feature only works in an Unicode (i.e., UTF-8) locale.
7050 In general setting this variable will cause \*(UA to encapsulate text
7051 fields that may occur when displaying
7053 (and some other fields, like dynamic expansions in
7055 with special Unicode control sequences;
7056 it is possible to fine-tune the terminal support level by assigning
7058 no value (or any value other than
7063 will make \*(UA assume that the terminal is capable to properly deal
7064 with Unicode version 6.3, in which case text is embedded in a pair of
7065 U+2068 (FIRST STRONG ISOLATE) and U+2069 (POP DIRECTIONAL ISOLATE)
7067 In addition no space on the line is reserved for these characters.
7069 Weaker support is chosen by using the value
7071 (Unicode 6.3, but reserve the room of two spaces for writing the control
7072 sequences onto the line).
7077 select Unicode 1.1 support (U+200E, LEFT-TO-RIGHT MARK); the latter
7078 again reserves room for two spaces in addition.
7082 \*(OP If a line editor is available then this can be set to
7083 name the (expandable) path of the location of a permanent history file.
7086 .It Va history-gabby
7087 \*(BO\*(OP Add more entries to the history as is normally done.
7090 .It Va history-gabby-persist
7091 \*(BO\*(OP \*(UA's own MLE will not save the additional
7093 entries in persistent storage unless this variable is set.
7094 On the other hand it will not loose the knowledge of whether
7095 a persistent entry was gabby or not.
7101 \*(OP If a line editor is available this value restricts the
7102 amount of history entries that are saved into a set and valid
7104 A value of less than 0 disables this feature;
7105 note that loading and incorporation of
7107 upon program startup can also be suppressed by doing this.
7108 If unset or 0, a default value will be used.
7109 Dependent on the available line editor this will also define the
7110 number of history entries in memory;
7111 it is also editor-specific whether runtime updates of this value will
7116 \*(BO This setting controls whether messages are held in the system
7118 and it is set by default.
7122 Use this string as hostname when expanding local addresses instead of
7123 the value obtained from
7132 Note that when SMTP transport is not used (via
7134 then it is normally the responsibility of the MTA to create these
7135 fields, \*(IN in conjunction with SMTP however
7137 also influences the results:
7138 you should produce some test messages with the desired combination of
7147 \*(BO\*(OP Can be used to turn off the automatic conversion of domain
7148 names according to the rules of IDNA (internationalized domain names
7150 Since the IDNA code assumes that domain names are specified with the
7152 character set, an UTF-8 locale charset is required to represent all
7153 possible international domain names (before conversion, that is).
7157 \*(BO Ignore interrupt signals from the terminal while entering
7158 messages; instead echo them as
7160 characters and discard the current line.
7164 \*(BO Ignore end-of-file conditions
7165 .Pf ( Ql control-D )
7166 in compose mode on message input and in interactive command input.
7167 If set an interactive command input session can only be left by
7168 explicitly using one of the commands
7172 and message input in compose mode can only be terminated by entering
7175 on a line by itself or by using the
7177 .Sx "COMMAND ESCAPES" ;
7179 overrides a setting of
7184 If this is set to a non-empty string it will specify the users
7186 .Sx "primary system mailbox" ,
7189 and the system-dependent default, and (thus) be used to replace
7193 .Sx "filename transformations" ;
7194 see the introduction of
7196 as well as the command
7198 for more on this topic.
7199 The value supports a subset of transformations itself.
7207 .Sx "COMMAND ESCAPES"
7210 option for indenting messages,
7211 in place of the normal tabulator character
7213 which is the default.
7214 Be sure to quote the value if it contains spaces or tabs.
7218 \*(BO If set, an empty system (MBOX) mailbox file is not removed.
7219 Note that, in conjunction with
7222 .Ev POSIXLY_CORRECT )
7223 any empty file will be removed unless this variable is set.
7224 This may improve the interoperability with other mail user agents
7225 when using a common folder directory, and prevents malicious users
7226 from creating fake mailboxes in a world-writable spool directory.
7227 \*(ID Only local regular (MBOX) files are covered, Maildir or other
7228 mailbox types will never be removed, even if empty.
7231 .It Va keep-content-length
7232 \*(BO When (editing messages and) writing
7234 mailbox files \*(UA can be told to keep the
7238 header fields that some MUAs generate by setting this variable.
7239 Since \*(UA does neither use nor update these non-standardized header
7240 fields (which in itself shows one of their conceptual problems),
7241 stripping them should increase interoperability in between MUAs that
7242 work with with same mailbox files.
7243 Note that, if this is not set but
7244 .Va writebackedited ,
7245 as below, is, a possibly performed automatic stripping of these header
7246 fields already marks the message as being modified.
7250 \*(BO When a message is saved it is usually discarded from the
7251 originating folder when \*(UA is quit.
7252 This setting causes all saved message to be retained.
7255 .It Va line-editor-disable
7256 \*(BO Turn off any enhanced line editing capabilities (see
7257 .Sx "On terminal control and line editor"
7261 .It Va line-editor-no-defaults
7262 \*(BO\*(OP Do not establish any default key binding.
7266 \*(BO When a message is replied to and this variable is set,
7267 it is marked as having been answered.
7268 This mark has no technical meaning in the mail system;
7269 it just causes messages to be marked in the header summary,
7270 and makes them specially addressable.
7274 \*(BO Internal development variable.
7277 .It Va message-id-disable
7278 \*(BO By setting this variable the generation of
7280 can be completely suppressed, effectively leaving this task up to the
7282 (Mail-Transfer-Agent) or the SMTP server.
7283 (According to RFC 5321 your SMTP server is not required to add this
7284 field by itself, so you should ensure that it accepts messages without a
7288 .It Va message-inject-head
7289 A string to put at the beginning of each new message.
7290 The escape sequences tabulator
7297 .It Va message-inject-tail
7298 A string to put at the end of each new message.
7299 The escape sequences tabulator
7307 \*(BO Usually, when an
7309 expansion contains the sender, the sender is removed from the expansion.
7310 Setting this option suppresses these removals.
7315 option to be passed through to the
7317 (Mail-Transfer-Agent); though most of the modern MTAs no longer document
7318 this flag, no MTA is known which does not support it (for historical
7322 .It Va mime-allow-text-controls
7323 \*(BO When sending messages, each part of the message is MIME-inspected
7324 in order to classify the
7327 .Ql Content-Transfer-Encoding:
7330 that is required to send this part over mail transport, i.e.,
7331 a computation rather similar to what the
7333 command produces when used with the
7337 This classification however treats text files which are encoded in
7338 UTF-16 (seen for HTML files) and similar character sets as binary
7339 octet-streams, forcefully changing any
7344 .Ql application/octet-stream :
7345 If that actually happens a yet unset charset MIME parameter is set to
7347 effectively making it impossible for the receiving MUA to automatically
7348 interpret the contents of the part.
7350 If this variable is set, and the data was unambiguously identified as
7351 text data at first glance (by a
7355 file extension), then the original
7357 will not be overwritten.
7360 .It Va mime-alternative-favour-rich
7361 \*(BO If this variable is set then rich MIME alternative parts (e.g.,
7362 HTML) will be preferred in favour of included plain text versions when
7363 displaying messages, provided that a handler exists which produces
7364 output that can be (re)integrated into \*(UA's normal visual display.
7365 (E.g., at the time of this writing some newsletters ship their full
7366 content only in the rich HTML part, whereas the plain text part only
7367 contains topic subjects.)
7370 .It Va mime-counter-evidence
7373 field is used to decide how to handle MIME parts.
7374 Some MUAs however do not use
7376 or a similar mechanism to correctly classify content, but simply specify
7377 .Ql application/octet-stream ,
7378 even for plain text attachments like
7380 If this variable is set then \*(UA will try to classify such MIME
7381 message parts on its own, if possible, for example via a possibly
7382 existing attachment filename.
7383 A non-empty value may also be given, in which case a number is expected,
7384 actually a carrier of bits.
7385 Creating the bit-carrying number is a simple addition:
7386 .Bd -literal -offset indent
7387 ? !echo Value should be set to $((2 + 4 + 8))
7388 Value should be set to 14
7391 .Bl -bullet -compact
7393 If bit two is set (2) then the detected
7395 content-type will be carried along with the message and be used for
7397 .Va pipe-TYPE/SUBTYPE
7398 is responsible for the MIME part, shall that question arise;
7399 when displaying such a MIME part the part-info will indicate the
7400 overridden content-type by showing a plus-sign
7403 If bit three is set (4) then the counter-evidence is always produced
7404 and a positive result will be used as the MIME type, even forcefully
7405 overriding the parts given MIME type.
7407 If bit four is set (8) then as a last resort the actual content of
7408 .Ql application/octet-stream
7409 parts will be inspected, so that data which looks like plain text can be
7414 .It Va mimetypes-load-control
7415 Can be used to control which of the
7417 databases are loaded by \*(UA, as furtherly described in the section
7418 .Sx "The mime.types files" .
7421 is part of the option value, then the user's personal
7423 file will be loaded (if it exists); likewise the letter
7425 controls loading of the system wide
7426 .Pa /etc/mime.types ;
7427 directives found in the user file take precedence, letter matching is
7429 If this variable is not set \*(UA will try to load both files.
7430 Incorporation of the \*(UA-builtin MIME types cannot be suppressed,
7431 but they will be matched last (the order can be listed via
7434 More sources can be specified by using a different syntax: if the
7435 value string contains an equals sign
7437 then it is instead parsed as a comma-separated list of the described
7440 pairs; the given filenames will be expanded and loaded, and their
7441 content may use the extended syntax that is described in the section
7442 .Sx "The mime.types files" .
7443 Directives found in such files always take precedence (are prepended to
7444 the MIME type cache).
7449 To choose an alternate Mail-Transfer-Agent, set this option to either
7450 the full pathname of an executable (optionally prefixed with a
7452 protocol indicator), or \*(OPally a SMTP protocol URL, e.g., \*(IN
7454 .Dl smtps?://[user[:password]@]server[:port]
7457 .Ql [smtp://]server[:port] . )
7458 The default has been chosen at compie time.
7459 All supported data transfers are executed in child processes, which
7460 run asynchronously, and without supervision, unless either the
7465 If such a child receives a TERM signal, it will abort and
7472 For a file-based MTA it may be necessary to set
7474 in in order to choose the right target of a modern
7477 It will be passed command line arguments from several possible sources:
7480 if set, from the command line if given and the variable
7483 Argument processing of the MTA will be terminated with a
7488 The otherwise occurring implicit usage of the following MTA command
7489 line arguments can be disabled by setting the boolean variable
7490 .Va mta-no-default-arguments
7491 (which will also disable passing
7495 (for not treating a line with only a dot
7497 character as the end of input),
7505 variable is set); in conjunction with the
7507 command line option \*(UA will also (not) pass
7513 \*(OP \*(UA can send mail over SMTP network connections to a single
7514 defined SMTP smarthost, the access URL of which has to be assigned to
7516 To use this mode it is helpful to read
7517 .Sx "On URL syntax and credential lookup" .
7518 It may be necessary to set the
7520 variable in order to use a specific combination of
7525 with some mail providers.
7528 .Bl -bullet -compact
7530 The plain SMTP protocol (RFC 5321) that normally lives on the
7531 server port 25 and requires setting the
7532 .Va smtp-use-starttls
7533 variable to enter a SSL/TLS encrypted session state.
7534 Assign a value like \*(IN
7535 .Ql smtp://[user[:password]@]server[:port]
7537 .Ql smtp://server[:port] )
7538 to choose this protocol.
7540 The so-called SMTPS which is supposed to live on server port 465
7541 and is automatically SSL/TLS secured.
7542 Unfortunately it never became a standardized protocol and may thus not
7543 be supported by your hosts network service database
7544 \(en in fact the port number has already been reassigned to other
7547 SMTPS is nonetheless a commonly offered protocol and thus can be
7548 chosen by assigning a value like \*(IN
7549 .Ql smtps://[user[:password]@]server[:port]
7551 .Ql smtps://server[:port] ) ;
7552 due to the mentioned problems it is usually necessary to explicitly
7557 Finally there is the SUBMISSION protocol (RFC 6409), which usually
7558 lives on server port 587 and is practically identically to the SMTP
7559 protocol from \*(UA's point of view beside that; it requires setting the
7560 .Va smtp-use-starttls
7561 variable to enter a SSL/TLS secured session state.
7562 Assign a value like \*(IN
7563 .Ql submission://[user[:password]@]server[:port]
7565 .Ql submission://server[:port] ) .
7570 .It Va mta-arguments
7571 Arguments to pass through to a file-based
7573 can be given via this variable, the content of which will be split up in
7574 a vector of arguments, to be joined onto other possible MTA options:
7576 .Dl set mta-arguments='-t -X \&"/tmp/my log\&"'
7579 .It Va mta-no-default-arguments
7580 \*(BO Unless this variable is set \*(UA will pass some well known
7581 standard command line options to a file-based
7583 (Mail-Transfer-Agent), see there for more.
7587 Many systems use a so-called
7589 environment to ensure compatibility with
7591 This works by inspecting the name that was used to invoke the mail
7593 If this variable is set then the mailwrapper (the program that is
7594 actually executed when calling the file-based
7596 will treat its contents as that name.
7601 .It Va NAIL_EXTRA_RC
7602 The name of an optional startup file to be read last.
7603 This variable has an effect only if it is set in any of the
7604 .Sx "Resource files" ,
7605 it is not imported from the environment.
7606 Use this file for commands that are not understood by other POSIX
7611 .It Va netrc-lookup-USER@HOST , netrc-lookup-HOST , netrc-lookup
7612 \*(BO\*(IN\*(OP Used to control usage of the users
7614 file for lookup of account credentials, as documented in the section
7615 .Sx "On URL syntax and credential lookup"
7619 .Sx "The .netrc file"
7620 documents the file format.
7632 then \*(UA will read the output of a shell pipe instead of the users
7634 file if this variable is set (to the desired shell command).
7635 This can be used to, e.g., store
7639 .Dl set netrc-pipe='gpg -qd ~/.netrc.pgp'
7643 If this variable has the value
7645 newly created local folders will be in Maildir format.
7649 Checks for new mail in the current folder each time the prompt is shown.
7650 A Maildir folder must be re-scanned to determine if new mail has arrived.
7651 If this variable is set to the special value
7653 then a Maildir folder will not be rescanned completely, but only
7654 timestamp changes are detected.
7658 .It Va on-compose-done-shell , on-compose-done
7659 These hooks run once the normal compose mode is finished, but before the
7660 .Va on-compose-leave
7661 macro hook is called, the
7664 Both hooks will be executed in a subprocess, with their input and output
7665 connected to \*(UA such that they can act as if they would be an
7667 The difference in between them is that the former is a
7669 command, whereas the latter is a normal \*(UA macro, but which is
7670 restricted to a small set of commands (the
7674 will indicate the said capability), just enough for the purpose of
7675 controlling the real \*(UA instance sufficiently.
7677 are by default enabled (in the parent) for (the lifetime of) these
7678 hooks, causing covered setting to be forgotten after the message has
7681 During execution of these hook \*(UA will temporarily forget whether it
7682 has been started in interactive mode, (a restricted set of)
7683 .Sx "COMMAND ESCAPES"
7684 will always be available, and for guaranteed reproduceabilities sake
7686 will be set to its default.
7687 The compose mode command
7689 has been especially designed for scriptability (via these hooks).
7690 The first line the hook will read on its standard input is the protocol
7691 version of said command escape, currently
7693 backward incompatible protocol changes are to be expected in the
7694 future, and it is advisable to make use of the protocol version.
7695 \*(ID because most \*(UA commands do not take this new functionality
7696 into account but are ment for human interaction special care must be
7697 taken to avoid deadlocks because of unexpected control flow; i.e., that
7698 both involved processes wait for more input to happen at the same time,
7699 or one doesn't expect more input but the other is stuck waiting for
7700 consumation of its output.
7701 .Bd -literal -offset indent
7702 wysh set on-compose-done-shell=$'\e
7704 printf "hello $version! Headers: ";\e
7705 echo \e'~^header list\e';\e
7706 read status result;\e
7707 echo "status=$status result=$result";\e
7710 set on-compose-done=ocdm
7713 echo version is $ver, escape=$escape
7714 if $features !@ +regex
7715 echoerr 'Need regular-expression support, aborting send'
7718 echo '~^header list'
7721 echoerr 'Failed to read header list, bailing out'
7725 echo '~^header insert cc Diet is your <mirr.or>'
7728 echoerr 'Failed to insert Cc: header, bailing out'
7737 .It Va on-compose-enter , on-compose-leave
7738 Macro hooks which will be executed before compose mode is entered, and
7739 after composing has been finished (but before the
7741 is injected, etc.), respectively.
7743 are by default enabled for these hooks, causing any setting to be
7744 forgotten after the message has been sent.
7745 The following variables will be set temporarily during execution of the
7748 .Bl -tag -compact -width ".It Va compose_subject"
7751 .It Va compose-sender
7753 .It Va compose-to , compose-cc , compose-bcc
7754 The list of receiver addresses as a space-separated list.
7755 .It Va compose-subject
7761 \*(BO Causes the filename given in the
7764 and the sender-based filenames for the
7768 commands to be interpreted relative to the directory given in the
7770 variable rather than to the current directory,
7771 unless it is set to an absolute pathname.
7775 \*(BO If set, each message feed through the command given for
7777 is followed by a formfeed character
7781 .It Va password-USER@HOST , password-HOST , password
7782 \*(IN Variable chain that sets a password, which is used in case none has
7783 been given in the protocol and account-specific URL;
7784 as a last resort \*(UA will ask for a password on the user's terminal if
7785 the authentication method requires a password.
7786 Specifying passwords in a startup file is generally a security risk;
7787 the file should be readable by the invoking user only.
7789 .It Va password-USER@HOST
7790 \*(OU (see the chain above for \*(IN)
7791 Set the password for
7795 If no such variable is defined for a host,
7796 the user will be asked for a password on standard input.
7797 Specifying passwords in a startup file is generally a security risk;
7798 the file should be readable by the invoking user only.
7802 \*(BO Send messages to the
7804 command without performing MIME and character set conversions.
7808 .It Va pipe-TYPE/SUBTYPE
7809 When a MIME message part of type
7811 (case-insensitive) is displayed or quoted,
7812 its text is filtered through the value of this variable interpreted as
7816 forces interpretation of the message part as plain text, e.g.,
7817 .Ql set pipe-application/xml=@
7818 will henceforth display XML
7820 (The same could also be achieved by adding a MIME type marker with the
7823 And \*(OPally MIME type handlers may be defined via
7824 .Sx "The Mailcap files"
7825 \(em corresponding flag strings are shown in parenthesis below.)
7830 can in fact be used to adjust usage and behaviour of a following shell
7831 command specification by appending trigger characters to it, e.g., the
7832 following hypothetical command specification could be used:
7833 .Bd -literal -offset indent
7834 set pipe-X/Y='@*!++=@vim ${NAIL_FILENAME_TEMPORARY}'
7838 .Bl -tag -compact -width ".It Ql __"
7840 Simply by using the special
7842 prefix the MIME type (shell command) handler will only be invoked to
7843 display or convert the MIME part if the message is addressed directly
7844 and alone by itself.
7845 Use this trigger to disable this and always invoke the handler
7846 .Pf ( Cd x-mailx-always ) .
7849 If set the handler will not be invoked when a message is to be quoted,
7850 but only when it will be displayed
7851 .Pf ( Cd x-mailx-noquote ) .
7854 The command will be run asynchronously, i.e., without blocking \*(UA,
7855 which may be a handy way to display a, e.g., PDF file while also
7856 continuing to read the mail message
7857 .Pf ( Cd x-mailx-async ) .
7858 Asynchronous execution implies
7862 The command must be run on an interactive terminal, \*(UA will
7863 temporarily release the terminal to it
7864 .Pf ( Cd needsterminal ) .
7865 This flag is mutual exclusive with
7867 will only be used in interactive mode and implies
7871 Request creation of a zero-sized temporary file, the absolute pathname
7872 of which will be made accessible via the environment variable
7873 .Ev NAIL_FILENAME_TEMPORARY
7874 .Pf ( Cd x-mailx-tmpfile ) .
7875 If this trigger is given twice then the file will be unlinked
7876 automatically by \*(UA when the command loop is entered again at latest
7877 .Pf ( Cd x-mailx-tmpfile-unlink ) .
7878 (Do not use this for asynchronous handlers.)
7881 Normally the MIME part content is passed to the handler via standard
7882 input; if this flag is set then the data will instead be written into
7883 .Ev NAIL_FILENAME_TEMPORARY
7884 .Pf ( Cd x-mailx-tmpfile-fill ) ,
7885 the creation of which is implied; note however that in order to cause
7886 deletion of the temporary file you still have to use two plus signs
7891 To avoid ambiguities with normal shell command content you can use
7892 another at-sign to forcefully terminate interpretation of remaining
7894 (Any character not in this list will have the same effect.)
7898 Some information about the MIME part to be displayed is embedded into
7899 the environment of the shell command:
7902 .Bl -tag -compact -width ".It Ev _AIL__ILENAME__ENERATED"
7905 The MIME content-type of the part, if known, the empty string otherwise.
7908 .It Ev NAIL_CONTENT_EVIDENCE
7910 .Va mime-counter-evidence
7911 includes the carry-around-bit (2), then this will be set to the detected
7912 MIME content-type; not only then identical to
7913 .Ev \&\&NAIL_CONTENT
7917 .It Ev NAIL_FILENAME
7918 The filename, if any is set, the empty string otherwise.
7921 .It Ev NAIL_FILENAME_GENERATED
7925 .It Ev NAIL_FILENAME_TEMPORARY
7926 If temporary file creation has been requested through the command prefix
7927 this variable will be set and contain the absolute pathname of the
7932 The temporary directory that \*(UA uses.
7933 Usually identical to
7935 but guaranteed to be set and usable by child processes;
7936 to ensure the latter condition for
7938 also, it will be set.
7943 .It Va pipe-EXTENSION
7944 This is identical to
7945 .Va pipe-TYPE/SUBTYPE
7948 (normalized to lowercase using character mappings of the ASCII charset)
7949 names a file extension, e.g.,
7951 Handlers registered using this method take precedence.
7954 .It Va pop3-auth-USER@HOST , pop3-auth-HOST , pop3-auth
7955 \*(OP\*(IN Variable chain that sets the POP3 authentication method.
7956 The only possible value as of now is
7958 which is thus the default.
7961 .Mx Va pop3-bulk-load
7962 .It Va pop3-bulk-load-USER@HOST , pop3-bulk-load-HOST , pop3-bulk-load
7963 \*(BO\*(OP When accessing a POP3 server \*(UA loads the headers of
7964 the messages, and only requests the message bodies on user request.
7965 For the POP3 protocol this means that the message headers will be
7967 If this variable is set then \*(UA will download only complete messages
7968 from the given POP3 server(s) instead.
7970 .Mx Va pop3-keepalive
7971 .It Va pop3-keepalive-USER@HOST , pop3-keepalive-HOST , pop3-keepalive
7972 \*(OP POP3 servers close the connection after a period of inactivity;
7973 the standard requires this to be at least 10 minutes,
7974 but practical experience may vary.
7975 Setting this variable to a numeric value greater than
7979 command to be sent each value seconds if no other operation is performed.
7982 .It Va pop3-no-apop-USER@HOST , pop3-no-apop-HOST , pop3-no-apop
7983 \*(BO\*(OP Unless this variable is set the
7985 authentication method will be used when connecting to a POP3 server that
7989 is that the password is not sent in clear text over the wire and that
7990 only a single packet is sent for the user/password tuple.
7992 .Va pop3-no-apop-HOST
7995 .Mx Va pop3-use-starttls
7996 .It Va pop3-use-starttls-USER@HOST , pop3-use-starttls-HOST , pop3-use-starttls
7997 \*(BO\*(OP Causes \*(UA to issue a
7999 command to make an unencrypted POP3 session SSL/TLS encrypted.
8000 This functionality is not supported by all servers,
8001 and is not used if the session is already encrypted by the POP3S method.
8003 .Va pop3-use-starttls-HOST
8008 \*(BO This flag enables POSIX mode, which changes behaviour of \*(UA
8009 where that deviates from standardized behaviour.
8010 It will be set implicitly before the
8011 .Sx "Resource files"
8012 are loaded if the environment variable
8014 is set, and adjusting any of those two will be reflected by the other
8018 .It Va print-alternatives
8019 \*(BO When a MIME message part of type
8020 .Ql multipart/alternative
8021 is displayed and it contains a subpart of type
8023 other parts are normally discarded.
8024 Setting this variable causes all subparts to be displayed,
8025 just as if the surrounding part was of type
8026 .Ql multipart/mixed .
8030 The string used as a prompt in interactive mode.
8031 Whenever the variable is evaluated the value is shell-expanded using
8032 dollar-single-quote expansion mode (see
8034 and it is an error if the prompt expands to more than a single token.
8035 This (post-assignment, i.e., second) expansion can be used to embed
8036 status information, for example
8040 .Va -mailbox-display .
8041 In order to embed characters which should not be counted when
8042 calculating the visual width of the resulting string, enclose the
8043 characters of interest in a pair of reverse solidus escaped brackets:
8045 Prompting may be prevented by setting this to the null string
8047 .Ql set noprompt ) .
8051 This string is used for secondary prompts, but is otherwise identical to
8058 \*(BO Suppresses the printing of the version when first invoked.
8062 If set, \*(UA starts a replying message with the original message
8063 prefixed by the value of the variable
8065 Normally, a heading consisting of
8066 .Dq Fromheaderfield wrote:
8067 is put before the quotation.
8072 variable, this heading is omitted.
8075 is assigned, only the headers selected by the
8078 selection are put above the message body,
8081 acts like an automatic
8083 .Sx "COMMAND ESCAPES"
8087 is assigned, all headers are put above the message body and all MIME
8088 parts are included, making
8090 act like an automatic
8093 .Va quote-as-attachment .
8096 .It Va quote-as-attachment
8097 \*(BO Add the original message in its entirety as a
8099 MIME attachment when replying to a message.
8100 Note this works regardless of the setting of
8105 \*(OP Can be set in addition to
8107 Setting this turns on a more fancy quotation algorithm in that leading
8108 quotation characters are compressed and overlong lines are folded.
8110 can be set to either one or two (space separated) numeric values,
8111 which are interpreted as the maximum (goal) and the minimum line length,
8112 respectively, in a spirit rather equal to the
8114 program, but line-, not paragraph-based.
8115 If not set explicitly the minimum will reflect the goal algorithmically.
8116 The goal cannot be smaller than the length of
8118 plus some additional pad.
8119 Necessary adjustments take place silently.
8122 .It Va r-option-implicit
8123 \*(BO Setting this option evaluates the contents of
8125 (or, if that contains multiple addresses,
8127 and passes the results onto the used (file-based) MTA as described for the
8129 option (empty argument case).
8132 .It Va recipients-in-cc
8133 \*(BO On group replies, specify only the sender of the original mail in
8135 and mention the other recipients in the secondary
8137 By default all recipients of the original mail will be addressed via
8142 If defined, gives the pathname of the folder used to record all outgoing
8144 If not defined, then outgoing mail is not saved.
8145 When saving to this folder fails the message is not sent,
8146 but instead saved to
8150 .It Va record-resent
8151 \*(BO If both this variable and the
8158 commands save messages to the
8160 folder as it is normally only done for newly composed messages.
8163 .It Va reply-in-same-charset
8164 \*(BO If this variable is set \*(UA first tries to use the same
8165 character set of the original message for replies.
8166 If this fails, the mechanism described in
8167 .Sx "Character sets"
8168 is evaluated as usual.
8171 .It Va reply_strings
8172 Can be set to a comma-separated list of (case-insensitive according to
8173 ASCII rules) strings which shall be recognized in addition to the
8176 reply message indicators \(en builtin are
8178 which is mandated by RFC 5322, as well as the german
8183 A list of addresses to put into the
8185 field of the message header.
8186 Members of this list are handled as if they were in the
8191 .It Va reply-to-honour
8194 header is honoured when replying to a message via
8198 This is a quadoption; if set without a value it defaults to
8202 .It Va rfc822-body-from_
8203 \*(BO This variable can be used to force displaying a so-called
8205 line for messages that are embedded into an envelope mail via the
8207 MIME mechanism, for more visual convenience.
8211 \*(BO Enable saving of (partial) messages in
8213 upon interrupt or delivery error.
8217 The number of lines that represents a
8226 line display and scrolling via
8228 If this variable is not set \*(UA falls back to a calculation based upon
8229 the detected terminal window size and the baud rate: the faster the
8230 terminal, the more will be shown.
8231 Overall screen dimensions and pager usage is influenced by the
8232 environment variables
8240 .It Va searchheaders
8241 \*(BO Expand message-list specifiers in the form
8243 to all messages containing the substring
8247 The string search is case insensitive.
8251 \*(OP A comma-separated list of character set names that can be used in
8252 outgoing internet mail.
8253 The value of the variable
8255 is automatically appended to this list of character-sets.
8256 If no character set conversion capabilities are compiled into \*(UA then
8257 the only supported charset is
8260 .Va sendcharsets-else-ttycharset
8261 and refer to the section
8262 .Sx "Character sets"
8263 for the complete picture of character set conversion in \*(UA.
8266 .It Va sendcharsets-else-ttycharset
8267 \*(BO\*(OP If this variable is set, but
8269 is not, then \*(UA acts as if
8271 had been set to the value of the variable
8273 In effect this combination passes through the message data in the
8274 character set of the current locale (given that
8276 has not been set manually), i.e., without converting it to the
8278 fallback character set.
8279 Thus, mail message text will be in ISO-8859-1 encoding when send from
8280 within a ISO-8859-1 locale, and in UTF-8 encoding when send from within
8282 If no character set conversion capabilities are available in \*(UA then
8283 the only supported character set is
8288 An address that is put into the
8290 field of outgoing messages, quoting RFC 5322: the mailbox of the agent
8291 responsible for the actual transmission of the message.
8292 This field should normally not be used unless the
8294 field contains more than one address, on which case it is required.
8297 address is handled as if it were in the
8301 .Va r-option-implicit .
8305 \*(OB Predecessor of
8309 .It Va sendmail-arguments
8310 \*(OB Predecessor of
8314 .It Va sendmail-no-default-arguments
8315 \*(OB\*(BO Predecessor of
8316 .Va mta-no-default-arguments .
8319 .It Va sendmail-progname
8320 \*(OB Predecessor of
8325 \*(BO When sending a message wait until the
8327 (including the builtin SMTP one) exits before accepting further commands.
8329 with this variable set errors reported by the MTA will be recognizable!
8330 If the MTA returns a non-zero exit status,
8331 the exit status of \*(UA will also be non-zero.
8335 \*(BO This setting causes \*(UA to start at the last message
8336 instead of the first one when opening a mail folder.
8340 \*(BO Causes \*(UA to use the sender's real name instead of the plain
8341 address in the header field summary and in message specifications.
8345 \*(BO Causes the recipient of the message to be shown in the header
8346 summary if the message was sent by the user.
8350 The string to expand
8353 .Sx "COMMAND ESCAPES" ) .
8357 The string to expand
8360 .Sx "COMMAND ESCAPES" ) .
8364 Must correspond to the name of a readable file if set.
8365 The file's content is then appended to each singlepart message
8366 and to the first part of each multipart message.
8367 Be warned that there is no possibility to edit the signature for an
8371 .It Va skipemptybody
8372 \*(BO If an outgoing message does not contain any text in its first or
8373 only message part, do not send it but discard it silently (see also the
8379 \*(OP Specifies a directory with CA certificates in PEM (Privacy
8380 Enhanced Mail) format for verification of S/MIME signed messages.
8383 .It Va smime-ca-file
8384 \*(OP Specifies a file with CA certificates in PEM format for
8385 verification of S/MIME signed messages.
8388 .It Va smime-cipher-USER@HOST , smime-cipher
8389 \*(OP Specifies the cipher to use when generating S/MIME encrypted
8390 messages (for the specified account).
8391 RFC 5751 mandates a default of
8394 Possible values are (case-insensitive and) in decreasing cipher strength:
8402 (DES EDE3 CBC, 168 bits; default if
8404 is not available) and
8408 The actually available cipher algorithms depend on the cryptographic
8409 library that \*(UA uses.
8410 \*(OP Support for more cipher algorithms may be available through
8411 dynamic loading via, e.g.,
8412 .Xr EVP_get_cipherbyname 3
8413 (OpenSSL) if \*(UA has been compiled to support this.
8416 .It Va smime-crl-dir
8417 \*(OP Specifies a directory that contains files with CRLs in PEM format
8418 to use when verifying S/MIME messages.
8421 .It Va smime-crl-file
8422 \*(OP Specifies a file that contains a CRL in PEM format to use when
8423 verifying S/MIME messages.
8426 .It Va smime-encrypt-USER@HOST
8427 \*(OP If this variable is set, messages send to the given receiver are
8428 encrypted before sending.
8429 The value of the variable must be set to the name of a file that
8430 contains a certificate in PEM format.
8432 If a message is sent to multiple recipients,
8433 each of them for whom a corresponding variable is set will receive an
8434 individually encrypted message;
8435 other recipients will continue to receive the message in plain text
8437 .Va smime-force-encryption
8439 It is recommended to sign encrypted messages, i.e., to also set the
8444 .It Va smime-force-encryption
8445 \*(BO\*(OP Causes \*(UA to refuse sending unencrypted messages.
8448 .It Va smime-no-default-ca
8449 \*(BO\*(OP Do not load default CA locations when verifying S/MIME
8454 \*(BO\*(OP S/MIME sign outgoing messages with the user's private key
8455 and include the user's certificate as a MIME attachment.
8456 Signing a message enables a recipient to verify that the sender used
8457 a valid certificate,
8458 that the email addresses in the certificate match those in the message
8459 header and that the message content has not been altered.
8460 It does not change the message text,
8461 and people will be able to read the message as usual.
8463 .Va smime-sign-cert , smime-sign-include-certs
8465 .Va smime-sign-message-digest .
8467 .Mx Va smime-sign-cert
8468 .It Va smime-sign-cert-USER@HOST , smime-sign-cert
8469 \*(OP Points to a file in PEM format.
8470 For the purpose of signing and decryption this file needs to contain the
8471 user's private key as well as his certificate.
8475 is always derived from the value of
8477 (or, if that contains multiple addresses,
8479 For the purpose of encryption the recipient's public encryption key
8480 (certificate) is expected; the command
8482 can be used to save certificates of signed messages (the section
8483 .Sx "Signed and encrypted messages with S/MIME"
8484 gives some details).
8485 This mode of operation is usually driven by the specialized form.
8487 When decrypting messages the account is derived from the recipient
8492 of the message, which are searched for addresses for which such
8494 \*(UA always uses the first address that matches,
8495 so if the same message is sent to more than one of the user's addresses
8496 using different encryption keys, decryption might fail.
8498 .Mx Va smime-sign-include-certs
8499 .It Va smime-sign-include-certs-USER@HOST , smime-sign-include-certs
8500 \*(OP If used, this is supposed to a consist of a comma-separated list
8501 of files, each of which containing a single certificate in PEM format to
8502 be included in the S/MIME message in addition to the
8505 This is most useful for long certificate chains if it is desired to aid
8506 the receiving parties verification process.
8507 Note that top level certificates may also be included in the chain but
8508 do not play a role for verification.
8510 .Va smime-sign-cert .
8511 Remember that for this
8513 refers to the variable
8515 (or, if that contains multiple addresses,
8518 .Mx Va smime-sign-message-digest
8519 .It Va smime-sign-message-digest-USER@HOST , smime-sign-message-digest
8520 \*(OP Specifies the message digest to use when signing S/MIME messages.
8521 RFC 5751 mandates a default of
8523 Possible values are (case-insensitive and) in decreasing cipher strength:
8531 The actually available message digest algorithms depend on the
8532 cryptographic library that \*(UA uses.
8533 \*(OP Support for more message digest algorithms may be available
8534 through dynamic loading via, e.g.,
8535 .Xr EVP_get_digestbyname 3
8536 (OpenSSL) if \*(UA has been compiled to support this.
8537 Remember that for this
8539 refers to the variable
8541 (or, if that contains multiple addresses,
8546 \*(OB\*(OP To use the builtin SMTP transport, specify a SMTP URL in
8548 \*(ID For compatibility reasons a set
8550 is used in preference of
8554 .It Va smtp-auth-USER@HOST , smtp-auth-HOST , smtp-auth
8555 \*(OP Variable chain that controls the SMTP
8557 authentication method, possible values are
8563 as well as the \*(OPal methods
8569 method does not need any user credentials,
8571 requires a user name and all other methods require a user name and
8579 .Va smtp-auth-password
8581 .Va smtp-auth-user ) .
8586 .Va smtp-auth-USER@HOST :
8587 may override dependent on sender address in the variable
8590 .It Va smtp-auth-password
8591 \*(OP\*(OU Sets the global fallback password for SMTP authentication.
8592 If the authentication method requires a password, but neither
8593 .Va smtp-auth-password
8595 .Va smtp-auth-password-USER@HOST
8597 \*(UA will ask for a password on the user's terminal.
8599 .It Va smtp-auth-password-USER@HOST
8601 .Va smtp-auth-password
8602 for specific values of sender addresses, dependent upon the variable
8605 .It Va smtp-auth-user
8606 \*(OP\*(OU Sets the global fallback user name for SMTP authentication.
8607 If the authentication method requires a user name, but neither
8610 .Va smtp-auth-user-USER@HOST
8612 \*(UA will ask for a user name on the user's terminal.
8614 .It Va smtp-auth-user-USER@HOST
8617 for specific values of sender addresses, dependent upon the variable
8621 .It Va smtp-hostname
8622 \*(OP\*(IN Normally \*(UA uses the variable
8624 to derive the necessary
8626 information in order to issue a
8633 can be used to use the
8635 from the SMTP account
8642 from the content of this variable (or, if that is the empty string,
8644 or the local hostname as a last resort).
8645 This often allows using an address that is itself valid but hosted by
8646 a provider other than which (in
8648 is about to send the message.
8649 Setting this variable also influences the generated
8652 .Mx Va smtp-use-starttls
8653 .It Va smtp-use-starttls-USER@HOST , smtp-use-starttls-HOST , smtp-use-starttls
8654 \*(BO\*(OP Causes \*(UA to issue a
8656 command to make an SMTP
8658 session SSL/TLS encrypted, i.e., to enable transport layer security.
8662 .It Va spam-interface
8663 \*(OP In order to use any of the spam-related commands (like, e.g.,
8665 the desired spam interface must be defined by setting this variable.
8666 Please refer to the manual section
8668 for the complete picture of spam handling in \*(UA.
8669 All or none of the following interfaces may be available:
8671 .Bl -tag -width ".It Ql _ilte_"
8677 .Pf ( Lk http://spamassassin.apache.org SpamAssassin )
8679 Different to the generic filter interface \*(UA will automatically add
8680 the correct arguments for a given command and has the necessary
8681 knowledge to parse the program's output.
8684 will have been compiled into the \*(UA binary if
8689 Shall it be necessary to define a specific connection type (rather than
8690 using a configuration file for that), the variable
8692 can be used as in, e.g.,
8693 .Ql -d server.example.com -p 783 .
8694 It is also possible to specify a per-user configuration via
8696 Note that this interface does not inspect the
8698 flag of a message for the command
8702 generic spam filter support via freely configurable hooks.
8703 This interface is meant for programs like
8705 and requires according behaviour in respect to the hooks' exit
8706 status for at least the command
8709 meaning a message is spam,
8713 for unsure and any other return value indicating a hard error);
8714 since the hooks can include shell code snippets diverting behaviour
8715 can be intercepted as necessary.
8717 .Va spamfilter-ham , spamfilter-noham , spamfilter-nospam , \
8720 .Va spamfilter-spam ;
8723 contains examples for some programs.
8724 The process environment of the hooks will have the variables
8725 .Ev NAIL_TMPDIR , TMPDIR
8727 .Ev NAIL_FILENAME_GENERATED
8729 Note that spam score support for
8731 is not supported unless the \*(OPtional regular expression support is
8733 .Va spamfilter-rate-scanscore
8740 \*(OP Messages that exceed this size will not be passed through to the
8742 .Va spam-interface .
8743 If unset or 0, the default of 420000 bytes is used.
8746 .It Va spamc-command
8747 \*(OP The path to the
8751 .Va spam-interface .
8752 Note that the path is not expanded, but used
8754 A fallback path will have been compiled into the \*(UA binary if the
8755 executable had been found during compilation.
8758 .It Va spamc-arguments
8759 \*(OP Even though \*(UA deals with most arguments for the
8762 automatically, it may at least sometimes be desirable to specify
8763 connection-related ones via this variable, e.g.,
8764 .Ql -d server.example.com -p 783 .
8768 \*(OP Specify a username for per-user configuration files for the
8770 .Va spam-interface .
8771 If this is set to the empty string then \*(UA will use the name of the
8780 .It Va spamfilter-ham , spamfilter-noham , \
8781 spamfilter-nospam , spamfilter-rate , spamfilter-spam
8782 \*(OP Command and argument hooks for the
8784 .Va spam-interface .
8787 contains examples for some programs.
8790 .It Va spamfilter-rate-scanscore
8791 \*(OP Because of the generic nature of the
8794 spam scores are not supported for it by default, but if the \*(OPtional
8795 regular expression support is available then setting this variable can
8796 be used to overcome this restriction.
8797 It is interpreted as follows: first a number (digits) is parsed that
8798 must be followed by a semicolon
8800 and an extended regular expression.
8801 Then the latter is used to parse the first output line of the
8803 hook, and, in case the evaluation is successful, the group that has been
8804 specified via the number is interpreted as a floating point scan score.
8808 \*(OP Specifies a directory with CA certificates in PEM (Pricacy
8809 Enhanced Mail) for verification of of SSL/TLS server certificates.
8811 .Xr SSL_CTX_load_verify_locations 3
8812 for more information.
8816 \*(OP Specifies a file with CA certificates in PEM format for
8817 verification of SSL/TLS server certificates.
8819 .Xr SSL_CTX_load_verify_locations 3
8820 for more information.
8823 .It Va ssl-cert-USER@HOST , ssl-cert-HOST , ssl-cert
8824 \*(OP Variable chain that sets the file name for a SSL/TLS client
8825 certificate required by some servers.
8826 This is a direct interface to the
8830 function of the OpenSSL library, if available.
8832 .Mx Va ssl-cipher-list
8833 .It Va ssl-cipher-list-USER@HOST , ssl-cipher-list-HOST , ssl-cipher-list
8834 \*(OP Specifies a list of ciphers for SSL/TLS connections.
8835 This is a direct interface to the
8839 function of the OpenSSL library, if available; see
8841 for more information.
8842 By default \*(UA does not set a list of ciphers, in effect using a
8844 specific cipher (protocol standards ship with a list of acceptable
8845 ciphers), possibly cramped to what the actually used SSL/TLS library
8846 supports \(en the manual section
8847 .Sx "An example configuration"
8848 also contains a SSL/TLS use case.
8851 .It Va ssl-config-file
8852 \*(OP If this variable is set \*(UA will call
8853 .Xr CONF_modules_load_file 3
8854 to allow OpenSSL to be configured according to the host system wide
8856 If a non-empty value is given then this will be used to specify the
8857 configuration file to be used instead of the global OpenSSL default;
8858 note that in this case it is an error if the file cannot be loaded.
8859 The application name will always be passed as
8864 \*(OP Specifies a file that contains a CRL in PEM format to use when
8865 verifying SSL/TLS server certificates.
8869 \*(OP Specifies a directory that contains files with CRLs in PEM format
8870 to use when verifying SSL/TLS server certificates.
8873 .It Va ssl-key-USER@HOST , ssl-key-HOST , ssl-key
8874 \*(OP Variable chain that sets the file name for the private key of
8875 a SSL/TLS client certificate.
8876 If unset, the name of the certificate file is used.
8877 The file is expected to be in PEM format.
8878 This is a direct interface to the
8882 function of the OpenSSL library, if available.
8885 .It Va ssl-method-USER@HOST , ssl-method-HOST , ssl-method
8886 \*(OB\*(OP Please use the newer and more flexible
8888 instead: if both values are set,
8890 will take precedence!
8891 Can be set to the following values, the actually used
8893 specification to which it is mapped is shown in parenthesis:
8895 .Pf ( Ql -ALL, TLSv1.2 ) ,
8897 .Pf ( Ql -ALL, TLSv1.1 ) ,
8899 .Pf ( Ql -ALL, TLSv1 )
8902 .Pf ( Ql -ALL, SSLv3 ) ;
8907 and thus includes the SSLv3 protocol.
8908 Note that SSLv2 is no longer supported at all.
8911 .It Va ssl-no-default-ca
8912 \*(BO\*(OP Do not load default CA locations to verify SSL/TLS server
8916 .It Va ssl-protocol-USER@HOST , ssl-protocol-HOST , ssl-protocol
8917 \*(OP Specify the used SSL/TLS protocol.
8918 This is a direct interface to the
8922 function of the OpenSSL library, if available;
8923 otherwise an \*(UA internal parser is used which understands the
8924 following subset of (case-insensitive) command strings:
8930 as well as the special value
8932 Multiple specifications may be given via a comma-separated list which
8933 ignores any whitespace.
8936 plus prefix will enable a protocol, a
8938 minus prefix will disable it, so that
8940 will enable only the TLSv1.2 protocol.
8942 It depends upon the used TLS/SSL library which protocols are actually
8943 supported and which protocols are used if
8945 is not set, but note that SSLv2 is no longer supported at all and
8947 Especially for older protocols explicitly securing
8949 may be worthwile, see
8950 .Sx "An example configuration" .
8954 \*(OP Gives the pathname to an entropy daemon socket, see
8956 Not all SSL/TLS libraries support this.
8959 .It Va ssl-rand-file
8960 \*(OP Gives the filename to a file with random entropy data, see
8961 .Xr RAND_load_file 3 .
8962 If this variable is not set, or set to the empty string, or if the
8963 filename expansion failed, then
8964 .Xr RAND_file_name 3
8965 will be used to create the filename if, and only if,
8967 documents that the SSL PRNG is not yet sufficiently seeded.
8968 If \*(UA successfully seeded the SSL PRNG then it will update the file
8969 .Pf ( Xr RAND_write_file 3 ) .
8970 This variable is only used if
8972 is not set (or not supported by the SSL/TLS library).
8975 .It Va ssl-verify-USER@HOST , ssl-verify-HOST , ssl-verify
8976 \*(OP Variable chain that sets the action to be performed if an error
8977 occurs during SSL/TLS server certificate validation.
8978 Valid (case-insensitive) values are
8980 (fail and close connection immediately),
8982 (ask whether to continue on standard input),
8984 (show a warning and continue),
8986 (do not perform validation).
8992 If only set without an assigned value, then this setting inhibits the
8997 header fields that include obvious references to \*(UA.
8998 There are two pitfalls associated with this:
8999 First, the message id of outgoing messages is not known anymore.
9000 Second, an expert may still use the remaining information in the header
9001 to track down the originating mail user agent.
9006 suppression does not occur.
9011 (\*(OP) This specifies a comma-separated list of
9016 .Sx "On terminal control and line editor" ,
9017 escape commas with reverse solidus) to be used to overwrite or define
9019 Note that this variable will only be queried once at program startup and
9020 can thus only be specified in resource files or on the command line.
9023 String capabilities form
9025 pairs and are expected unless noted otherwise.
9026 Numerics have to be notated as
9028 where the number is expected in normal decimal notation.
9029 Finally, booleans do not have any value but indicate a true or false
9030 state simply by being defined or not; this indeed means that \*(UA
9031 does not support undefining an existing boolean.
9032 String capability values will undergo some expansions before use:
9033 for one notations like
9036 .Ql control-LETTER ,
9037 and for clarification purposes
9039 can be used to specify
9041 (the control notation
9043 could lead to misreadings when a left bracket follows, which it does for
9044 the standard CSI sequence);
9045 finally three letter octal sequences, as in
9048 To specify that a terminal supports 256-colours, and to define sequences
9049 that home the cursor and produce an audible bell, one might write:
9051 .Bd -literal -offset indent
9052 set termcap='Co#256,home=\eE[H,bel=^G'
9056 The following terminal capabilities are or may be meaningful for the
9057 operation of the builtin line editor or \*(UA in general:
9060 .Bl -tag -compact -width yay
9062 .It Cd colors Ns \0or Cd Co
9064 numeric capability specifying the maximum number of colours.
9065 Note that \*(UA does not actually care about the terminal beside that,
9066 but always emits ANSI / ISO 6429 escape sequences.
9069 .It Cd rmcup Ns \0or Cd te Ns \0/ Cd smcup Ns \0or Cd ti
9073 respectively: exit and enter the alternative screen
9075 effectively turning \*(UA into a fullscreen application.
9076 To disable that, set (at least) one to the empty string.
9078 .It Cd smkx Ns \0or Cd ks Ns \0/ Cd rmkx Ns \0or Cd ke
9082 respectively: enable and disable the keypad.
9083 This is always enabled if available, because it seems even keyboards
9084 without keypads generate other key codes for, e.g., cursor keys in that
9085 case, and only if enabled we see the codes that we are interested in.
9087 .It Cd ed Ns \0or Cd cd
9091 .It Cd clear Ns \0or Cd cl
9093 clear the screen and home cursor.
9094 (Will be simulated via
9099 .It Cd home Ns \0or Cd ho
9104 .It Cd el Ns \0or Cd ce
9106 clear to the end of line.
9107 (Will be simulated via
9109 plus repetitions of space characters.)
9111 .It Cd hpa Ns \0or Cd ch
9112 .Cd column_address :
9113 move the cursor (to the given column parameter) in the current row.
9114 (Will be simulated via
9120 .Cd carriage_return :
9121 move to the first column in the current row.
9122 The default builtin fallback is
9125 .It Cd cub1 Ns \0or Cd le
9127 move the cursor left one space (non-destructively).
9128 The default builtin fallback is
9131 .It Cd cuf1 Ns \0or Cd nd
9133 move the cursor right one space (non-destructively).
9134 The default builtin fallback is
9136 which is used by most terminals.
9144 Many more capabilities which describe key-sequences are documented for
9148 .It Va termcap-disable
9149 \*(OP Disable any interaction with a terminal control library.
9150 If set only some generic fallback builtins and possibly the content of
9152 describe the terminal to \*(UA.
9154 that this variable will only be queried once at program startup and can
9155 thus only be specified in resource files or on the command line.
9159 If defined, gives the number of lines of a message to be displayed
9162 if unset, the first five lines are printed, if set to 0 the variable
9165 If the value is negative then its absolute value will be used for right
9168 height; (shifting bitwise is like dividing algorithmically, but since
9169 it takes away bits the value decreases pretty fast).
9173 \*(BO If set then the
9175 command series will strip adjacent empty lines and quotations.
9179 The character set of the terminal \*(UA operates on,
9180 and the one and only supported character set that \*(UA can use if no
9181 character set conversion capabilities have been compiled into it,
9182 in which case it defaults to ISO-8859-1 unless it can deduce a value
9186 It defaults to UTF-8 if conversion is available.
9187 Refer to the section
9188 .Sx "Character sets"
9189 for the complete picture about character sets.
9192 .It Va typescript-mode
9193 \*(BO A special multiplex variable that disables all variables and
9194 settings which result in behaviour that interferes with running \*(UA in
9197 .Va colour-disable ,
9198 .Va line-editor-disable
9199 and (before startup completed only)
9200 .Va termcap-disable .
9201 Unsetting it does not restore the former state of the covered settings.
9205 For a safety-by-default policy \*(UA sets its process
9209 but this variable can be used to override that:
9210 set it to an empty value to do not change the (current) setting,
9211 otherwise the process file mode creation mask is updated to the new value.
9212 Child processes inherit the process file mode creation mask.
9215 .It Va user-HOST , user
9216 \*(IN Variable chain that sets a global fallback user name, which is
9217 used in case none has been given in the protocol and account-specific
9219 This variable defaults to the name of the user who runs \*(UA.
9223 \*(BO Setting this enables upward compatibility with \*(UA
9224 version 15.0 in respect to which configuration options are available and
9225 how they are handled.
9226 This manual uses \*(IN and \*(OU to refer to the new and the old way of
9227 doing things, respectively.
9231 \*(BO This setting, also controllable via the command line option
9233 causes \*(UA to be more verbose, e.g., it will display obsoletion
9234 warnings and SSL/TLS certificate chains.
9235 Even though marked \*(BO this option may be set twice in order to
9236 increase the level of verbosity even more, in which case even details of
9237 the actual message delivery and protocol conversations are shown.
9240 is sufficient to disable verbosity as such.
9246 .It Va version , version-major , version-minor , version-update
9247 \*(RO \*(UA version information: the first variable contains a string
9248 containing the complete version identification, the latter three contain
9249 only digits: the major, minor and update version numbers.
9250 The output of the command
9252 will include this information.
9255 .It Va writebackedited
9256 If this variable is set messages modified using the
9260 commands are written back to the current folder when it is quit;
9261 it is only honoured for writable folders in MBOX format, though.
9262 Note that the editor will be pointed to the raw message content in that
9263 case, i.e., neither MIME decoding nor decryption will have been
9264 performed, and proper RFC 4155
9266 quoting of newly added or edited content is also left as an excercise to
9270 .\" }}} (INTERNAL VARIABLES)
9273 .\" .Sh ENVIRONMENT {{{
9277 .Dq environment variable
9278 should be considered an indication that these variables are either
9279 standardized as vivid parts of process environments, or that they are
9280 commonly found in there.
9281 The process environment is inherited from the
9283 once \*(UA is started, and unless otherwise explicitly noted handling of
9284 the following variables transparently integrates into that of the
9285 .Sx "INTERNAL VARIABLES"
9286 from \*(UA's point of view.
9287 This means that, e.g., they can be managed via
9291 causing automatic program environment updates (to be inherited by
9292 newly created child processes).
9295 In order to transparently integrate other environment variables equally
9296 they need to be imported (linked) with the command
9298 This command can also be used to set and unset non-integrated
9299 environment variables from scratch, sufficient system support provided.
9300 The following example, applicable to a POSIX shell, sets the
9302 environment variable for \*(UA only, and beforehand exports the
9304 in order to affect any further processing in the running shell:
9306 .Bd -literal -offset indent
9307 $ EDITOR="vim -u ${HOME}/.vimrc"
9309 $ COLUMNS=80 \*(uA -R
9312 .Bl -tag -width ".It Ev BaNg"
9315 The user's preferred width in column positions for the terminal screen
9317 Queried and used once on program startup, actively managed for child
9318 processes and the MLE (see
9319 .Sx "On terminal control and line editor" )
9320 in interactive mode thereafter.
9324 The name of the (mailbox)
9326 to use for saving aborted messages if
9328 is set; this defaults to
9335 is set no output will be generated, otherwise the contents of the file
9340 Pathname of the text editor to use in the
9344 .Sx "COMMAND ESCAPES" .
9345 A default editor is used if this value is not defined.
9349 The user's home directory.
9350 This variable is only used when it resides in the process environment.
9357 .It Ev LANG , LC_ALL , LC_COLLATE , LC_CTYPE , LC_MESSAGES
9361 .Sx "Character sets" .
9365 The user's preferred number of lines on a page or the vertical screen
9366 or window size in lines.
9367 Queried and used once on program startup, actively managed for child
9368 processes in interactive mode thereafter.
9372 Pathname of the directory lister to use in the
9374 command when operating on local mailboxes.
9377 (path search through
9382 Upon startup \*(UA will actively ensure that this variable refers to the
9383 name of the user who runs \*(UA, in order to be able to pass a verified
9384 name to any newly created child process.
9388 Is used as the users
9390 .Sx "primary system mailbox"
9394 This is assumed to be an absolute pathname.
9398 \*(OP Overrides the default path search for
9399 .Sx "The Mailcap files" ,
9400 which is defined in the standard RFC 1524 as
9401 .Ql ~/.mailcap:\:/etc/mailcap:\:/usr/etc/mailcap:\:/usr/local/etc/mailcap .
9402 .\" TODO we should have a mailcaps-default virtual RDONLY option!
9403 (\*(UA makes it a configuration option, however.)
9404 Note this is not a search path, but a path search.
9408 Is used as a startup file instead of
9411 When \*(UA scripts are invoked on behalf of other users,
9412 either this variable should be set to
9416 command line option should be used in order to avoid side-effects from
9417 reading their configuration files.
9418 This variable is only used when it resides in the process environment.
9422 The name of the users mbox file.
9423 A logical subset of the special
9425 .Sx "filename transformations"
9426 that are documented for
9431 The fallback default is
9438 .Sx "secondary mailbox"
9439 is used as the file to save messages from the
9441 .Sx "primary system mailbox"
9442 that have been read.
9444 .Sx "Message states" .
9447 .It Ev NAIL_NO_SYSTEM_RC
9448 If this variable is set then reading of
9450 at startup is inhibited, i.e., the same effect is achieved as if \*(UA
9451 had been started up with the option
9453 This variable is only used when it resides in the process environment.
9457 \*(IN\*(OP This variable overrides the default location of the user's
9463 Pathname of the program to use for backing the command
9467 variable enforces usage of a pager for output.
9468 The default paginator is
9470 (path search through
9473 \*(UA inspects the contents of this variable: if its contains the string
9475 then a non-existing environment variable
9482 dependent on whether terminal control support is available and whether
9483 that supports full (alternative) screen mode or not (also see
9484 .Sx "On terminal control and line editor" ) .
9488 will optionally be set to
9495 A colon-separated list of directories that is searched by the shell when
9496 looking for commands, e.g.,
9497 .Ql /bin:/usr/bin:/usr/local/bin .
9500 .It Ev POSIXLY_CORRECT
9501 This variable is automatically looked for upon startup, see
9507 The shell to use for the commands
9512 .Sx "COMMAND ESCAPES"
9513 and when starting subprocesses.
9514 A default shell is used if this environment variable is not defined.
9517 .It Ev SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH
9518 If set, this specifies a time in seconds since the Unix epoch
9519 (1970-01-01) to be used in place of the current time.
9520 This is for the sake of reproduceability of tests, to be used during
9521 development or by software packagers.
9525 \*(OP The terminal type for which output is to be prepared.
9526 For extended colour and font control please refer to
9527 .Sx "Coloured display" ,
9528 and for terminal management in general to
9529 .Sx "On terminal control and line editor" .
9533 Used as directory for temporary files instead of
9536 This variable is only used when it resides in the process environment.
9542 (see there), but this variable is not standardized, should therefore not
9543 be used, and is only corrected if already set.
9547 Pathname of the text editor to use in the
9551 .Sx "COMMAND ESCAPES" .
9559 .Bl -tag -width ".It Pa BaNg"
9561 File giving initial commands.
9564 System wide initialization file.
9568 \*(OP Personal MIME type handler definition file, see
9569 .Sx "The Mailcap files" .
9570 (RFC 1524 location, the actual path is a configuration option.)
9574 \*(OP System wide MIME type handler definition file, see
9575 .Sx "The Mailcap files" .
9576 (RFC 1524 location, the actual path is a configuration option.)
9579 .It Pa ~/.mime.types
9580 Personal MIME types, see
9581 .Sx "The mime.types files" .
9584 .It Pa /etc/mime.types
9585 System wide MIME types, see
9586 .Sx "The mime.types files" .
9590 \*(IN\*(OP The default location of the users
9592 file \(en the section
9593 .Sx "The .netrc file"
9594 documents the file format.
9597 .\" .Ss "The mime.types files" {{{
9598 .Ss "The mime.types files"
9600 When sending messages \*(UA tries to determine the content type of all
9602 When displaying message content or attachments \*(UA uses the content
9603 type to decide whether it can directly display data or whether it needs
9604 to deal with content handlers.
9605 It learns about M(ultipurpose) I(nternet) M(ail) E(xtensions) types and
9606 how to treat them by reading
9608 files, the loading of which can be controlled by setting the variable
9609 .Va mimetypes-load-control .
9612 can also be used to deal with MIME types.)
9614 files have the following syntax:
9617 .Dl type/subtype extension [extension ...]
9622 are strings describing the file contents, and one or multiple
9624 s, separated by whitespace, name the part of a filename starting after
9625 the last dot (of interest).
9626 Comments may be introduced anywhere on a line with a number sign
9628 causing the remaining line to be discarded.
9630 \*(UA also supports an extended, non-portable syntax in specially
9631 crafted files, which can be loaded via the alternative value syntax of
9632 .Va mimetypes-load-control
9633 and prepends an optional
9637 .Dl [type-marker ]type/subtype extension [extension ...]
9640 The following type markers are supported:
9643 .Bl -tag -compact -width ".It Ar _n_u"
9645 Treat message parts with this content as plain text.
9650 Treat message parts with this content as HTML tagsoup.
9651 If the \*(OPal HTML-tagsoup-to-text converter is not available treat
9652 the content as plain text instead.
9656 but instead of falling back to plain text require an explicit content
9657 handler to be defined.
9662 for sending messages:
9664 .Va mime-allow-text-controls ,
9665 .Va mimetypes-load-control .
9666 For reading etc. messages:
9667 .Sx "HTML mail and MIME attachments" ,
9668 .Sx "The Mailcap files" ,
9670 .Va mime-counter-evidence ,
9671 .Va mimetypes-load-control ,
9672 .Va pipe-TYPE/SUBTYPE ,
9673 .Va pipe-EXTENSION .
9676 .\" .Ss "The Mailcap files" {{{
9677 .Ss "The Mailcap files"
9680 .Dq User Agent Configuration Mechanism
9681 which \*(UA \*(OPally supports.
9682 It defines a file format to be used to inform mail user agent programs
9683 about the locally-installed facilities for handling various data
9684 formats, i.e., about commands and how they can be used to display, edit
9685 etc. MIME part contents, as well as a default path search that includes
9686 multiple possible locations of
9690 environment variable that can be used to overwrite that (repeating here
9691 that it is not a search path, but instead a path search specification).
9692 Any existing files will be loaded in sequence, appending any content to
9693 the list of MIME type handler directives.
9697 files consist of a set of newline separated entries.
9698 Comment lines start with a number sign
9700 (in the first column!) and are ignored.
9701 Empty lines are also ignored.
9702 All other lines form individual entries that must adhere to the syntax
9704 To extend a single entry (not comment) its line can be continued on
9705 follow lines if newline characters are
9707 by preceding them with the reverse solidus character
9709 The standard does not specify how leading whitespace of follow lines
9710 is to be treated, therefore \*(UA retains it.
9714 entries consist of a number of semicolon
9716 separated fields, and the reverse solidus
9718 character can be used to escape any following character including
9719 semicolon and itself.
9720 The first two fields are mandatory and must occur in the specified
9721 order, the remaining fields are optional and may appear in any order.
9722 Leading and trailing whitespace of content is ignored (removed).
9725 The first field defines the MIME
9727 the entry is about to handle (case-insensitively, and no reverse solidus
9728 escaping is possible in this field).
9729 If the subtype is specified as an asterisk
9731 the entry is meant to match all subtypes of the named type, e.g.,
9733 would match any audio type.
9734 The second field defines the shell command which shall be used to
9736 MIME parts of the given type; it is implicitly called the
9743 shell commands message (MIME part) data is passed via standard input
9744 unless the given shell command includes one or more instances of the
9747 in which case these instances will be replaced with a temporary filename
9748 and the data will have been stored in the file that is being pointed to.
9751 shell commands data is assumed to be generated on standard output unless
9752 the given command includes (one ore multiple)
9754 In any case any given
9756 format is replaced with a(n already) properly quoted filename.
9757 Note that when a command makes use of a temporary file via
9759 then \*(UA will remove it again, as if the
9760 .Cd x-mailx-tmpfile ,
9761 .Cd x-mailx-tmpfile-fill
9763 .Cd x-mailx-tmpfile-unlink
9764 flags had been set; see below for more.
9767 The optional fields either define a shell command or an attribute (flag)
9768 value, the latter being a single word and the former being a keyword
9769 naming the field followed by an equals sign
9771 succeeded by a shell command, and as usual for any
9773 content any whitespace surrounding the equals sign will be removed, too.
9774 Optional fields include the following:
9777 .Bl -tag -width ".It Cd BaNg"
9779 A program that can be used to compose a new body or body part in the
9786 field, but is to be used when the composing program needs to specify the
9788 header field to be applied to the composed data.
9792 A program that can be used to edit a body or body part in the given
9797 A program that can be used to print a message or body part in the given
9802 Specifies a program to be run to test some condition, e.g., the machine
9803 architecture, or the window system in use, to determine whether or not
9804 this mailcap entry applies.
9805 If the test fails, a subsequent mailcap entry should be sought; also see
9806 .Cd x-mailx-test-once .
9808 .It Cd needsterminal
9809 This flag field indicates that the given shell command must be run on
9810 an interactive terminal.
9811 \*(UA will temporarily release the terminal to the given command in
9812 interactive mode, in non-interactive mode this entry will be entirely
9813 ignored; this flag implies
9814 .Cd x-mailx-noquote .
9816 .It Cd copiousoutput
9817 A flag field which indicates that the output of the
9819 command will be an extended stream of textual output that can be
9820 (re)integrated into \*(UA's normal visual display.
9821 It is mutually exclusive with
9824 .Cd x-mailx-always .
9826 .It Cd textualnewlines
9827 A flag field which indicates that this type of data is line-oriented and
9830 all newlines should be converted to canonical form (CRLF) before
9831 encoding, and will be in that form after decoding.
9835 This field gives a file name format, in which
9837 will be replaced by a random string, the joined combination of which
9838 will be used as the filename denoted by
9839 .Ev NAIL_FILENAME_TEMPORARY .
9840 One could specify that a GIF file being passed to an image viewer should
9841 have a name ending in
9844 .Ql nametemplate=%s.gif .
9845 Note that \*(UA ignores the name template unless that solely specifies
9846 a filename suffix that consists of (ASCII) alphabetic and numeric
9847 characters, the underscore and dot only.
9850 Names a file, in X11 bitmap (xbm) format, which points to an appropriate
9851 icon to be used to visually denote the presence of this kind of data.
9852 This field is not used by \*(UA.
9855 A textual description that describes this type of data.
9857 .It Cd x-mailx-always
9858 Extension flag field that denotes that the given
9860 command shall be executed even if multiple messages will be displayed
9862 Normally messages which require external viewers that produce output
9863 which does not integrate into \*(UA's visual display (i.e., do not have
9865 set) have to be addressed directly and individually.
9866 (To avoid cases where, e.g., a thousand PDF viewer instances are spawned
9869 .It Cd x-mailx-even-if-not-interactive
9870 An extension flag test field \(em by default handlers without
9872 are entirely ignored in non-interactive mode, but if this flag is set
9873 then their use will be considered.
9874 It is an error if this flag is set for commands that use the flag
9877 .It Cd x-mailx-noquote
9878 An extension flag field that indicates that even a
9881 command shall not be used to generate message quotes
9882 (as it would be by default).
9884 .It Cd x-mailx-async
9885 Extension flag field that denotes that the given
9887 command shall be executed asynchronously, without blocking \*(UA.
9888 Cannot be used in conjunction with
9891 .It Cd x-mailx-test-once
9892 Extension flag which denotes whether the given
9894 command shall be evaluated once only and the (boolean) result be cached.
9895 This is handy if some global unchanging condition is to be queried, like
9896 .Dq running under the X Window System .
9898 .It Cd x-mailx-tmpfile
9899 Extension flag field that requests creation of a zero-sized temporary
9900 file, the name of which is to be placed in the environment variable
9901 .Ev NAIL_FILENAME_TEMPORARY .
9902 It is an error to use this flag with commands that include a
9906 .It Cd x-mailx-tmpfile-fill
9907 Normally the MIME part content is passed to the handler via standard
9908 input; if this flag is set then the data will instead be written into
9910 .Cd x-mailx-tmpfile .
9911 In order to cause deletion of the temporary file you will have to set
9912 .Cd x-mailx-tmpfile-unlink
9914 It is an error to use this flag with commands that include a
9918 .It Cd x-mailx-tmpfile-unlink
9919 Extension flag field that requests that the temporary file shall be
9920 deleted automatically when the command loop is entered again at latest.
9921 (Do not use this for asynchronous handlers.)
9922 It is an error to use this flag with commands that include a
9924 format, or without also setting
9927 .Cd x-mailx-tmpfile-fill .
9929 .It Cd x-mailx-tmpfile-keep
9932 implies the three tmpfile related flags above, but if you want, e.g.,
9934 and deal with the temporary file yourself, you can add in this flag to
9936 .Cd x-mailx-tmpfile-unlink .
9941 The standard includes the possibility to define any number of additional
9942 entry fields, prefixed by
9944 Flag fields apply to the entire
9946 entry \(em in some unusual cases, this may not be desirable, but
9947 differentiation can be accomplished via separate entries, taking
9948 advantage of the fact that subsequent entries are searched if an earlier
9949 one does not provide enough information.
9952 command needs to specify the
9956 command shall not, the following will help out the latter (with enabled
9960 level \*(UA will show information about handler evaluation):
9962 .Bd -literal -offset indent
9963 application/postscript; ps-to-terminal %s; needsterminal
9964 application/postscript; ps-to-terminal %s; compose=idraw %s
9968 In fields any occurrence of the format string
9970 will be replaced by the
9973 Named parameters from the
9975 field may be placed in the command execution line using
9977 followed by the parameter name and a closing
9980 The entire parameter should appear as a single command line argument,
9981 regardless of embedded spaces; thus:
9983 .Bd -literal -offset indent
9985 Content-type: multipart/mixed; boundary=42
9988 multipart/*; /usr/local/bin/showmulti \e
9989 %t %{boundary} ; composetyped = /usr/local/bin/makemulti
9991 # Executed shell command
9992 /usr/local/bin/showmulti multipart/mixed 42
9996 .\" TODO v15: Mailcap: %n,%F
9997 Note that \*(UA does not support handlers for multipart MIME parts as
9998 shown in this example (as of today).
9999 \*(UA does not support the additional formats
10003 An example file, also showing how to properly deal with the expansion of
10005 which includes any quotes that are necessary to make it a valid shell
10006 argument by itself and thus will cause undesired behaviour when placed
10007 in additional user-provided quotes:
10009 .Bd -literal -offset indent
10011 text/richtext; richtext %s; copiousoutput
10013 text/x-perl; perl -cWT %s
10015 application/pdf; \e
10017 trap "rm -f ${infile}" EXIT\e; \e
10018 trap "exit 75" INT QUIT TERM\e; \e
10020 x-mailx-async; x-mailx-tmpfile-keep
10022 application/*; echo "This is \e"%t\e" but \e
10023 is 50 \e% Greek to me" \e; < %s head -c 1024 | cat -vET; \e
10024 copiousoutput; x-mailx-noquote
10029 .Sx "HTML mail and MIME attachments" ,
10030 .Sx "The mime.types files" ,
10033 .Va mime-counter-evidence ,
10034 .Va pipe-TYPE/SUBTYPE ,
10035 .Va pipe-EXTENSION .
10038 .\" .Ss "The .netrc file" {{{
10039 .Ss "The .netrc file"
10043 file contains user credentials for machine accounts.
10044 The default location in the user's
10046 directory may be overridden by the
10048 environment variable.
10049 The file consists of space, tabulator or newline separated tokens.
10050 \*(UA implements a parser that supports a superset of the original BSD
10051 syntax, but users should nonetheless be aware of portability glitches
10052 of that file format, shall their
10054 be usable across multiple programs and platforms:
10057 .Bl -bullet -compact
10059 BSD does not support single, but only double quotation marks, e.g.,
10060 .Ql password="pass with spaces" .
10062 BSD (only?) supports escaping of single characters via a reverse solidus
10063 (e.g., a space can be escaped via
10065 in- as well as outside of a quoted string.
10067 BSD does not require a final quotation mark of the last user input token.
10069 The original BSD (Berknet) parser also supported a format which allowed
10070 tokens to be separated with commas \(en whereas at least Hewlett-Packard
10071 still seems to support this syntax, \*(UA does not!
10073 As a non-portable extension some widely-used programs support
10074 shell-style comments: if an input line starts, after any amount of
10075 whitespace, with a number sign
10077 then the rest of the line is ignored.
10079 Whereas other programs may require that the
10081 file is accessible by only the user if it contains a
10083 token for any other
10087 \*(UA will always require these strict permissions.
10091 Of the following list of supported tokens \*(UA only uses (and caches)
10096 At runtime the command
10098 can be used to control \*(UA's
10102 .Bl -tag -width ".It Cd BaNg"
10103 .It Cd machine Ar name
10104 The hostname of the entries' machine, lowercase-normalized by \*(UA
10106 Any further file content, until either end-of-file or the occurrence
10111 first-class token is bound (only related) to the machine
10114 As an extension that should not be the cause of any worries
10115 \*(UA supports a single wildcard prefix for
10117 .Bd -literal -offset indent
10118 machine *.example.com login USER password PASS
10119 machine pop3.example.com login USER password PASS
10120 machine smtp.example.com login USER password PASS
10126 .Ql pop3.example.com ,
10130 .Ql local.smtp.example.com .
10131 Note that in the example neither
10132 .Ql pop3.example.com
10134 .Ql smtp.example.com
10135 will be matched by the wildcard, since the exact matches take
10136 precedence (it is however faster to specify it the other way around).
10139 This is the same as
10141 except that it is a fallback entry that is used shall none of the
10142 specified machines match; only one default token may be specified,
10143 and it must be the last first-class token.
10145 .It Cd login Ar name
10146 The user name on the remote machine.
10148 .It Cd password Ar string
10149 The user's password on the remote machine.
10151 .It Cd account Ar string
10152 Supply an additional account password.
10153 This is merely for FTP purposes.
10155 .It Cd macdef Ar name
10157 A macro is defined with the specified
10159 it is formed from all lines beginning with the next line and continuing
10160 until a blank line is (consecutive newline characters are) encountered.
10163 entries cannot be utilized by multiple machines, too, but must be
10164 defined following the
10166 they are intended to be used with.)
10169 exists, it is automatically run as the last step of the login process.
10170 This is merely for FTP purposes.
10177 .\" .Sh EXAMPLES {{{
10180 .\" .Ss "An example configuration" {{{
10181 .Ss "An example configuration"
10183 .Bd -literal -offset indent
10184 # This example assumes v15.0 compatibility mode
10187 # Where are the up-to-date SSL certificates?
10188 #set ssl-ca-dir=/etc/ssl/certs
10189 set ssl-ca-file=/etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt
10191 # (Since we manage up-to-date ones explicitly, do not use any,
10192 # possibly outdated, default certificates shipped with OpenSSL)
10193 set ssl-no-default-ca
10195 # Do not use protocols older than TLS v1.2.
10196 # Change this only when the remote server does not support it:
10197 # maybe use ssl-protocol-HOST (or -USER@HOST) syntax to define
10198 # such explicit exceptions, then
10199 set ssl-protocol='-ALL,+TLSv1.2'
10201 # Explicitly define the list of ciphers, which may improve security,
10202 # especially with protocols older than TLS v1.2. See ciphers(1).
10203 # Including "@STRENGTH" will sort the final list by algorithm strength.
10204 # In reality it is possibly best to only use ssl-cipher-list-HOST
10205 # (or -USER@HOST), as necessary, again..
10206 set ssl-cipher-list=TLSv1.2:!aNULL:!eNULL:!MEDIUM:!LOW:!EXPORT:@STRENGTH
10207 # ALL:!aNULL:!MEDIUM:!LOW:!MD5:!RC4:!EXPORT:@STRENGTH
10209 # Request strict transport security checks!
10210 set ssl-verify=strict
10212 # Essential setting: select allowed character sets
10213 set sendcharsets=utf-8,iso-8859-1
10215 # A very kind option: when replying to a message, first try to
10216 # use the same encoding that the original poster used herself!
10217 set reply-in-same-charset
10219 # When replying to or forwarding a message the comment and name
10220 # parts of email addresses are removed unless this variable is set
10223 # When sending messages, wait until the Mail-Transfer-Agent finishs.
10224 # Only like this you will be able to see errors reported through the
10225 # exit status of the MTA (including the builtin SMTP one)!
10228 # Only use builtin MIME types, no mime.types(5) files
10229 set mimetypes-load-control
10231 # Default directory where we act in (relative to $HOME)
10233 # A leading "+" (often) means: under *folder*
10234 # *record* is used to save copies of sent messages
10235 set MBOX=+mbox.mbox record=+sent.mbox DEAD=+dead.txt
10237 # Make "file mymbox" and "file myrec" go to..
10238 shortcut mymbox %:+mbox.mbox myrec +sent.mbox
10240 # Not really optional, e.g., for S/MIME
10241 set from='Your Name <address@exam.ple>'
10243 # It may be necessary to set hostname and/or smtp-hostname
10244 # if the "SERVER" of mta and "domain" of from do not match.
10245 # The `urlencode' command can be used to encode USER and PASS
10246 set mta=(smtps?|submission)://[USER[:PASS]@]SERVER[:PORT] \e
10247 smtp-auth=login/plain... \e
10250 # Never refuse to start into interactive mode, and more
10252 colour-pager crt= \e
10253 followup-to followup-to-honour=ask-yes \e
10254 history-file=+.\*(uAhist history-size=-1 history-gabby \e
10255 mime-counter-evidence=0xE \e
10256 prompt='[\e${-account-name} \e${-mailbox-display}]? ' \e
10257 reply-to-honour=ask-yes \e
10260 # Only include the selected header fields when typing messages
10261 headerpick type retain add from_ date from to cc subject \e
10262 message-id mail-followup-to reply-to
10263 # ...when forwarding messages
10264 headerpick forward retain add subject date from to cc
10265 # ...when saving message, etc.
10266 #headerpick save ignore add ^Original-.*$ ^X-.*$
10268 # Some mailing lists
10269 mlist '@xyz-editor\e.xyz$' '@xyzf\e.xyz$'
10270 mlsubscribe '^xfans@xfans\e.xyz$'
10272 # A real life example of a very huge free mail provider
10274 set folder=~/spool/XooglX inbox=+syste.mbox sent=+sent
10275 set from='Your Name <address@examp.ple>'
10276 set mta=smtp://USER:PASS@smtp.gmXil.com smtp-use-starttls
10279 # Here is a pretty large one which does not allow sending mails
10280 # if there is a domain name mismatch on the SMTP protocol level,
10281 # which would bite us if the value of from does not match, e.g.,
10282 # for people who have a sXXXXeforge project and want to speak
10283 # with the mailing list under their project account (in from),
10284 # still sending the message through their normal mail provider
10286 set folder=~/spool/XandeX inbox=+syste.mbox sent=+sent
10287 set from='Your Name <address@exam.ple>'
10288 set mta=smtps://USER:PASS@smtp.yaXXex.ru:465 \e
10289 hostname=yaXXex.com smtp-hostname=
10292 # Create some new commands so that, e.g., `ls /tmp' will..
10293 wysh ghost lls '!ls ${LS_COLOR_FLAG} -aFlrS'
10294 wysh ghost llS '!ls ${LS_COLOR_FLAG} -aFlS'
10295 wysh ghost ls '!ls ${LS_COLOR_FLAG} -aFrS'
10296 wysh ghost lS '!ls ${LS_COLOR_FLAG} -aFS'
10297 wysh ghost lla '!ls ${LS_COLOR_FLAG} -aFlr'
10298 wysh ghost llA '!ls ${LS_COLOR_FLAG} -aFl'
10299 wysh ghost la '!ls ${LS_COLOR_FLAG} -aFr'
10300 wysh ghost lA '!ls ${LS_COLOR_FLAG} -aF'
10301 wysh ghost ll '!ls ${LS_COLOR_FLAG} -aFltr'
10302 wysh ghost lL '!ls ${LS_COLOR_FLAG} -aFlt'
10303 wysh ghost l '!ls ${LS_COLOR_FLAG} -aFtr'
10304 wysh ghost L '!ls ${LS_COLOR_FLAG} -aFt'
10306 # We do not support gpg(1) directly yet. But simple --clearsign'd
10307 # message parts can be dealt with as follows:
10309 wysh set pipe-text/plain=$'@*#++=@\e
10310 < "${NAIL_FILENAME_TEMPORARY}" awk \e
10311 -v TMPFILE="${NAIL_FILENAME_TEMPORARY}" \e'\e
10313 /^-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----/,/^$/{\e
10316 print "--- GPG --verify ---";\e
10317 system("gpg --verify " TMPFILE " 2>&1");\e
10318 print "--- GPG --verify ---";\e
10322 /^-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----/,\e
10323 /^-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----/{\e
10333 !printf 'Key IDs to gpg --recv-keys: ';\e
10335 gpg --recv-keys ${keyids};
10341 When storing passwords in
10343 appropriate permissions should be set on this file with
10344 .Ql $ chmod 0600 \*(ur .
10347 is available user credentials can be stored in the central
10349 file instead; e.g., here is a different version of the example account
10350 that sets up SMTP and POP3:
10352 .Bd -literal -offset indent
10354 set folder=~/spool/XandeX inbox=+syste.mbox sent=+sent
10355 set from='Your Name <address@exam.ple>'
10357 # Load an encrypted ~/.netrc by uncommenting the next line
10358 #set netrc-pipe='gpg -qd ~/.netrc.pgp'
10360 set mta=smtps://smtp.yXXXXx.ru:465 \e
10361 smtp-hostname= hostname=yXXXXx.com
10362 set pop3-keepalive=240 pop3-no-apop-pop.yXXXXx.ru
10363 ghost xp fi pop3s://pop.yXXXXx.ru
10372 .Bd -literal -offset indent
10373 machine *.yXXXXx.ru login USER password PASS
10377 This configuration should now work just fine:
10380 .Dl $ echo text | \*(uA -vv -AXandeX -s Subject user@exam.ple
10383 .\" .Ss "Signed and encrypted messages with S/MIME" {{{
10384 .Ss "Signed and encrypted messages with S/MIME"
10386 \*(OP S/MIME provides two central mechanisms:
10387 message signing and message encryption.
10388 A signed message contains some data in addition to the regular text.
10389 The data can be used to verify that the message was sent using a valid
10390 certificate, that the sender's address in the message header matches
10391 that in the certificate, and that the message text has not been altered.
10392 Signing a message does not change its regular text;
10393 it can be read regardless of whether the recipient's software is able to
10397 It is thus usually possible to sign all outgoing messages if so desired.
10398 Encryption, in contrast, makes the message text invisible for all people
10399 except those who have access to the secret decryption key.
10400 To encrypt a message, the specific recipient's public encryption key
10402 It is therefore not possible to send encrypted mail to people unless their
10403 key has been retrieved from either previous communication or public key
10405 A message should always be signed before it is encrypted.
10406 Otherwise, it is still possible that the encrypted message text is
10410 A central concept to S/MIME is that of the certification authority (CA).
10411 A CA is a trusted institution that issues certificates.
10412 For each of these certificates it can be verified that it really
10413 originates from the CA, provided that the CA's own certificate is
10415 A set of CA certificates is usually delivered with OpenSSL and installed
10417 If you trust the source of your OpenSSL software installation,
10418 this offers reasonable security for S/MIME on the Internet.
10420 .Va smime-no-default-ca
10421 to avoid using the default certificate and point
10425 to a trusted pool of certificates.
10426 In general, a certificate cannot be more secure than the method its CA
10427 certificate has been retrieved with.
10430 The first thing you need for participating in S/MIME message exchange is
10431 your personal certificate, including a private key.
10432 The certificate contains public information, in particular your name and
10433 your email address(es), and the public key that is used by others to
10434 encrypt messages for you,
10435 and to verify signed messages they supposedly received from you.
10436 The certificate is included in each signed message you send.
10437 The private key must be kept secret.
10438 It is used to decrypt messages that were previously encrypted with your
10439 public key, and to sign messages.
10442 For personal use it is recommended that you get a S/MIME certificate
10443 from one of the major CAs on the Internet using your WWW browser.
10444 Many CAs offer such certificates for free.
10446 .Lk https://www.CAcert.org
10447 which issues client and server certificates to members of their
10448 community for free; their root certificate
10449 .Pf ( Lk https://\:www.cacert.org/\:certs/\:root.crt )
10450 is often not in the default set of trusted CA root certificates, though,
10451 which means you will have to download their root certificate separately
10452 and ensure it is part of our S/MIME certificate validation chain by
10455 or as a vivid member of the
10456 .Va smime-ca-file .
10457 But let us take a step-by-step tour on how to setup S/MIME with
10458 a certificate from CAcert.org despite this situation!
10461 First of all you will have to become a member of the CAcert.org
10462 community, simply by registrating yourself via the web interface.
10463 Once you are, create and verify all email addresses you want to be able
10464 to create signed and encrypted messages for/with using the corresponding
10465 entries of the web interface.
10466 Now ready to create S/MIME certificates, so let us create a new
10467 .Dq client certificate ,
10468 ensure to include all email addresses that should be covered by the
10469 certificate in the following web form, and also to use your name as the
10473 Create a private key and a certificate request on your local computer
10474 (please see the manual pages of the used commands for more in-depth
10475 knowledge on what the used arguments etc. do):
10478 .Dl openssl req -nodes -newkey rsa:4096 -keyout key.pem -out creq.pem
10481 Afterwards copy-and-paste the content of
10483 into the certificate-request (CSR) field of the web form on the
10484 CAcert.org website (you may need to unfold some
10485 .Dq advanced options
10486 to see the corresponding text field).
10487 This last step will ensure that your private key (which never left your
10488 box) and the certificate belong together (through the public key that
10489 will find its way into the certificate via the certificate-request).
10490 You are now ready and can create your CAcert certified certificate.
10491 Download and store or copy-and-paste it as
10496 In order to use your new S/MIME setup you will have to create
10497 a combined private key/public key (certificate) file:
10500 .Dl cat key.pem pub.crt > ME@HERE.com.paired
10503 This is the file \*(UA will work with.
10504 If you have created your private key with a passphrase then \*(UA will
10505 ask you for it whenever a message is signed or decrypted.
10506 Set the following variables to henceforth use S/MIME (setting
10508 is of interest for verification only):
10510 .Bd -literal -offset indent
10511 set smime-ca-file=ALL-TRUSTED-ROOT-CERTS-HERE \e
10512 smime-sign-cert=ME@HERE.com.paired \e
10513 smime-sign-message-digest=SHA256 \e
10518 From each signed message you send, the recipient can fetch your
10519 certificate and use it to send encrypted mail back to you.
10520 Accordingly if somebody sends you a signed message, you can do the same,
10523 command to check the validity of the certificate.
10526 Variables of interest for S/MIME signing:
10528 .Va smime-ca-file ,
10529 .Va smime-crl-dir ,
10530 .Va smime-crl-file ,
10531 .Va smime-no-default-ca ,
10533 .Va smime-sign-cert ,
10534 .Va smime-sign-include-certs
10536 .Va smime-sign-message-digest .
10539 After it has been verified save the certificate via
10541 and tell \*(UA that it should use it for encryption for further
10542 communication with that somebody:
10544 .Bd -literal -offset indent
10546 set smime-encrypt-USER@HOST=FILENAME \e
10547 smime-cipher-USER@HOST=AES256
10551 Additional variables of interest for S/MIME en- and decryption:
10554 .Va smime-encrypt-USER@HOST .
10557 You should carefully consider if you prefer to store encrypted messages
10559 If you do, anybody who has access to your mail folders can read them,
10560 but if you do not, you might be unable to read them yourself later if
10561 you happen to lose your private key.
10564 command saves messages in decrypted form, while the
10568 commands leave them encrypted.
10571 Note that neither S/MIME signing nor encryption applies to message
10572 subjects or other header fields yet.
10573 Thus they may not contain sensitive information for encrypted messages,
10574 and cannot be trusted even if the message content has been verified.
10575 When sending signed messages,
10576 it is recommended to repeat any important header information in the
10580 .\" .Ss "Using CRLs with S/MIME or SSL/TLS" {{{
10581 .Ss "Using CRLs with S/MIME or SSL/TLS"
10583 \*(OP Certification authorities (CAs) issue certificate revocation
10584 lists (CRLs) on a regular basis.
10585 These lists contain the serial numbers of certificates that have been
10586 declared invalid after they have been issued.
10587 Such usually happens because the private key for the certificate has
10589 because the owner of the certificate has left the organization that is
10590 mentioned in the certificate, etc.
10591 To seriously use S/MIME or SSL/TLS verification,
10592 an up-to-date CRL is required for each trusted CA.
10593 There is otherwise no method to distinguish between valid and
10594 invalidated certificates.
10595 \*(UA currently offers no mechanism to fetch CRLs, nor to access them on
10596 the Internet, so you have to retrieve them by some external mechanism.
10599 \*(UA accepts CRLs in PEM format only;
10600 CRLs in DER format must be converted, like, e.\|g.:
10603 .Dl $ openssl crl \-inform DER \-in crl.der \-out crl.pem
10606 To tell \*(UA about the CRLs, a directory that contains all CRL files
10607 (and no other files) must be created.
10612 variables, respectively, must then be set to point to that directory.
10613 After that, \*(UA requires a CRL to be present for each CA that is used
10614 to verify a certificate.
10617 .\" .Ss "Handling spam" {{{
10618 .Ss "Handling spam"
10620 \*(OP \*(UA can make use of several spam interfaces for the purpose of
10621 identification of, and, in general, dealing with spam messages.
10622 A precondition of most commands in order to function is that the
10624 variable is set to one of the supported interfaces.
10625 Once messages have been identified as spam their (volatile)
10627 state can be prompted: the
10631 message specifications will address respective messages and their
10633 entries will be used when displaying the
10635 in the header display.
10640 rates the given messages and sets their
10643 If the spam interface offers spam scores those can also be displayed in
10644 the header display by including the
10654 will interact with the Bayesian filter of the chosen interface and learn
10655 the given messages as
10659 respectively; the last command can be used to cause
10661 of messages; it adheres to their current
10663 state and thus reverts previous teachings.
10668 will simply set and clear, respectively, the mentioned volatile
10670 message flag, without any interface interaction.
10679 requires a running instance of the
10681 server in order to function, started with the option
10683 shall Bayesian filter learning be possible.
10685 .Bd -literal -offset indent
10686 $ spamd -i localhost:2142 -i /tmp/.spamsock -d [-L] [-l]
10687 $ spamd --listen=localhost:2142 --listen=/tmp/.spamsock \e
10688 --daemonize [--local] [--allow-tell]
10692 Thereafter \*(UA can make use of these interfaces:
10694 .Bd -literal -offset indent
10695 $ \*(uA -Sspam-interface=spamc -Sspam-maxsize=500000 \e
10696 -Sspamc-command=/usr/local/bin/spamc \e
10697 -Sspamc-arguments="-U /tmp/.spamsock" -Sspamc-user=
10699 $ \*(uA -Sspam-interface=spamc -Sspam-maxsize=500000 \e
10700 -Sspamc-command=/usr/local/bin/spamc \e
10701 -Sspamc-arguments="-d localhost -p 2142" -Sspamc-user=
10705 Using the generic filter approach allows usage of programs like
10707 Here is an example, requiring it to be accessible via
10710 .Bd -literal -offset indent
10711 $ \*(uA -Sspam-interface=filter -Sspam-maxsize=500000 \e
10712 -Sspamfilter-ham="bogofilter -n" \e
10713 -Sspamfilter-noham="bogofilter -N" \e
10714 -Sspamfilter-nospam="bogofilter -S" \e
10715 -Sspamfilter-rate="bogofilter -TTu 2>/dev/null" \e
10716 -Sspamfilter-spam="bogofilter -s" \e
10717 -Sspamfilter-rate-scanscore="1;^(.+)$"
10721 Because messages must exist on local storage in order to be scored (or
10722 used for Bayesian filter training), it is possibly a good idea to
10723 perform the local spam check last:
10725 .Bd -literal -offset indent
10726 define spamdelhook {
10728 spamset (header x-dcc-brand-metrics "bulk")
10729 # Server-side spamassassin(1)
10730 spamset (header x-spam-flag "YES")
10731 del :s # TODO we HAVE to be able to do `spamrate :u ! :sS'
10732 move :S +maybe-spam
10735 move :S +maybe-spam
10737 set folder-hook-FOLDER=spamdelhook
10741 See also the documentation for the variables
10742 .Va spam-interface , spam-maxsize ,
10743 .Va spamc-command , spamc-arguments , spamc-user ,
10744 .Va spamfilter-ham , spamfilter-noham , spamfilter-nospam , \
10747 .Va spamfilter-rate-scanscore .
10755 In general it is a good idea to turn on
10761 twice) if something does not work well.
10762 Very often a diagnostic message can be produced that leads to the
10763 problems' solution.
10765 .\" .Ss "\*(UA shortly hangs on startup" {{{
10766 .Ss "\*(UA shortly hangs on startup"
10768 This can have two reasons, one is the necessity to wait for a file lock
10769 and cannot be helped, the other being that \*(UA calls the function
10771 in order to query the nodename of the box (sometimes the real one is
10772 needed instead of the one represented by the internal variable
10774 You may have varying success by ensuring that the real hostname and
10778 or, more generally, that the name service is properly setup \(en
10781 return what you would expect?
10782 Does this local hostname has a domain suffix?
10783 RFC 6762 standardized the link-local top-level domain
10785 try again after adding an (additional) entry with this extension.
10788 .\" .Ss "\*(UA exits quick, and output is cleared away" {{{
10789 .Ss "\*(UA exits quick, and output is cleared away"
10791 When this happens even with
10793 set, then this most likely indicates a problem with the creation of
10794 so-called dotlock files: setting
10795 .Va dotlock-ignore-error
10796 should overcome this situation.
10797 This only avoids symptoms, it does not address the problem, though.
10798 Since the output is cleared away \*(UA has support for
10799 .Sx "On terminal control and line editor" ,
10800 and switches to the
10802 which causes the output clearance: by doing
10803 .Ql set termcap='smcup='
10804 this mode can be suppressed, and by setting
10806 (twice) the actual problem should be reported.
10809 .\" .Ss "I cannot login to Google mail aka GMail" {{{
10810 .Ss "I cannot login to Google mail aka GMail"
10812 Since 2014 some free service providers classify programs as
10814 unless they use a special authentification method (OAuth 2.0) which
10815 was not standardized for non-HTTP protocol authentication token query
10816 until August 2015 (RFC 7628).
10819 Different to Kerberos / GSSAPI, which is developed since the mid of the
10820 1980s, where a user can easily create a local authentication ticket for
10821 her- and himself with the locally installed
10823 program, that protocol has no such local part but instead requires
10824 a world-wide-web query to create or fetch a token; since there is no
10825 local cache this query would have to be performed whenever \*(UA is
10826 invoked (in interactive sessions situation may differ).
10829 \*(UA does not support OAuth.
10830 Because of this it is necessary to declare \*(UA a
10831 .Dq less secure app
10832 (on the providers account web page) in order to read and send mail.
10833 However, it also seems possible to take the following steps instead:
10838 give the provider the number of a mobile phone,
10841 .Dq 2-Step Verification ,
10843 create an application specific password (16 characters), and
10845 use that special password instead of your real Google account password in
10846 \*(UA (for more on that see the section
10847 .Sx "On URL syntax and credential lookup" ) .
10851 .\" .Ss "Not \(dqdefunctional\(dq, but the editor key does not work" {{{
10852 .Ss "Not \(dqdefunctional\(dq, but the editor key does not work"
10854 It can happen that the terminal library (see
10855 .Sx "On terminal control and line editor",
10858 reports different codes than the terminal really sends, in which case
10859 \*(UA will tell that a key binding is functional, but will not be able to
10860 recognize it because the received data does not match anything expected.
10865 ings will show the byte sequences that are expected.
10868 To overcome the situation, use, e.g., the program
10870 in conjunction with the
10872 flag if available, to see the byte sequences which are actually produced
10873 by keypresses, and use the variable
10875 to make \*(UA aware of them.
10876 E.g., the terminal this is typed on produces some false sequences, here
10877 an example showing the shifted home key:
10879 .Bd -literal -offset indent
10882 # 1B 5B=[ 31=1 3B=; 32=2 48=H
10887 ? \*(uA -v -Stermcap='kHOM=\eE[H'
10896 .\" .Sh "SEE ALSO" {{{
10906 .Xr spamassassin 1 ,
10915 .Xr mailwrapper 8 ,
10920 .\" .Sh HISTORY {{{
10923 M. Douglas McIlroy writes in his article
10924 .Dq A Research UNIX Reader: Annotated Excerpts \
10925 from the Programmer's Manual, 1971-1986
10928 command already appeared in First Edition
10932 .Bd -ragged -offset indent
10933 Electronic mail was there from the start.
10934 Never satisfied with its exact behavior, everybody touched it at one
10935 time or another: to assure the safety of simultaneous access, to improve
10936 privacy, to survive crashes, to exploit uucp, to screen out foreign
10937 freeloaders, or whatever.
10938 Not until v7 did the interface change (Thompson).
10939 Later, as mail became global in its reach, Dave Presotto took charge and
10940 brought order to communications with a grab-bag of external networks
10946 Mail was written in 1978 by Kurt Shoens and developed as part of the
10949 distribution until 1995.
10950 Mail has then seen further development in open source
10952 variants, noticeably by Christos Zoulas in
10954 Basing upon this Nail, later Heirloom Mailx, was developed by Gunnar
10955 Ritter in the years 2000 until 2008.
10956 Since 2012 S-nail is maintained by Steffen (Daode) Nurpmeso.
10957 This man page is derived from
10958 .Dq The Mail Reference Manual
10959 that was originally written by Kurt Shoens.
10965 .An "Kurt Shoens" ,
10966 .An "Edward Wang" ,
10967 .An "Keith Bostic" ,
10968 .An "Christos Zoulas" ,
10969 .An "Gunnar Ritter" ,
10970 .An "Steffen Nurpmeso" Aq Mt s-nail-users@lists.sourceforge.net
10972 .Mt s-mailx@sdaoden.eu ) .
10975 .\" .Sh CAVEATS {{{
10978 \*(ID Interrupting an operation via
10982 is often problematic: many library functions cannot deal with the
10984 that this software (still) performs.
10987 The SMTP and POP3 protocol support of \*(UA is very basic.
10988 Also, if it fails to contact its upstream SMTP server, it will not make
10989 further attempts to transfer the message at a later time (setting
10994 If this is a concern, it might be better to set up a local SMTP server
10995 that is capable of message queuing.
11001 After deleting some message of a POP3 mailbox the header summary falsely
11002 claims that there are no messages to display, you need to perform
11003 a scroll or dot movement to restore proper state.
11005 In threaded display a power user may encounter crashes very
11006 occasionally (this is may and very).
11010 in the source repository lists future directions.