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>.
6 .\" Copyright (c) 1980, 1990, 1993
7 .\" The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
9 .\" Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
10 .\" modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions
12 .\" 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
13 .\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
14 .\" 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
15 .\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
16 .\" documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
17 .\" 3. Neither the name of the University nor the names of its contributors
18 .\" may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software
19 .\" without specific prior written permission.
21 .\" THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE REGENTS AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND
22 .\" ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE
23 .\" IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE
24 .\" ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE REGENTS OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE
25 .\" FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL
26 .\" DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS
27 .\" OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION)
28 .\" HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT
29 .\" LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY
30 .\" OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF
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 ".Fl _ Ar _ddr"
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.
194 Being a special incarnation of
196 macros for the purpose of bundling longer-lived settings, activating
197 such an email account also switches to the accounts system
206 The same filename conventions as described in the section
208 apply: shell word expansion is restricted to the tilde
212 not be accessible but contain a
214 character, then anything after the
216 is assumed to specify the input character set and anything before
218 the filename: this is the only option to specify (and fixate) the input
219 character set of text attachments from the command line, not using the
221 command of and in the compose mode that follows
223 .Sx "COMMAND ESCAPES"
224 for compose mode commands).
228 (\*(OB: \*(UA will always use line-buffered output, to gain
229 line-buffered input even in batch mode enable batch mode via
234 Send a blind carbon copy to
237 May be used multiple times.
239 .Sx "On sending mail, and non-interactive mode" .
243 Send carbon copies to the given receiver.
244 May be used multiple times.
249 the internal variable
251 which enables debug messages and disables message delivery,
252 among others; effectively turns almost any operation into a dry-run.
258 and thus discard messages with an empty message part body.
259 This command line flag is \*(OB.
263 Just check if mail is present (in the specified or system
265 if yes, return an exit status of zero, a non-zero value otherwise.
266 To restrict the set of mails to consider in this evaluation a message
267 specification can be added with the option
272 Save the message to send in a file named after the local part of the
273 first recipient's address (instead of in
278 Read in the contents of the user's
280 (or the specified file) for processing;
281 when \*(UA is quit, it writes undeleted messages back to this file
285 Some special conventions are recognized for the optional
287 argument which are documented for the
292 is not a argument to the flag
294 but is instead taken from the command line after option processing has
298 that starts with a hyphen, prefix it with a (relative) path, as in
299 .Ql ./-hyphenbox.mbox .
303 Display a summary of the
305 of all messages in the specified mailbox or system
308 A configurable summary view is available via the
314 Show a short usage summary.
315 Because of widespread use a
317 argument will have the same effect.
323 to ignore tty interrupt signals.
326 .It Fl L Ar spec-list
327 Display a summary of all
329 of only those messages in the specified mailbox or the system
335 .Sx "Specifying messages"
342 option has been given in addition no header summary is produced,
343 but \*(UA will instead indicate via its exit status whether
349 note that any verbose output is suppressed in this mode and must instead
350 be enabled explicitly (e.g., by using the option
355 Special send mode that will flag standard input with the MIME
359 and use it as the main message body.
360 \*(ID Using this option will bypass processing of
361 .Va message-inject-head ,
364 .Va message-inject-tail .
370 Special send mode that will MIME classify the specified
372 and use it as the main message body.
373 \*(ID Using this option will bypass processing of
374 .Va message-inject-head ,
377 .Va message-inject-tail .
385 and thus inhibit initial display of message headers when reading mail or
386 editing a mail folder.
390 Standard flag that inhibits reading the system wide
395 allows more control over the startup sequence; also see
396 .Sx "Resource files" .
400 Special send mode that will initialize the message body with the
401 contents of the specified
403 which may be standard input
405 only in non-interactive context.
411 Any folder opened will be in read-only mode.
414 .It Fl r Ar from-addr
417 is a valid address then it specifies the envelope sender address to be
418 passed to a file-based
420 (Mail-Transfer-Agent) as
422 when a message is send.
425 include a user name, then the address components will be separated and
426 the name part will be passed to file-based
432 will also be assigned to the
435 .Ql -Sfrom=from-addr ) ,
436 therefore affecting possible SMTP
438 data transfer; note this assignment does not cause value fixation.
440 If instead an empty string is passed as
442 then the content of the variable
444 will be evaluated and used for this purpose whenever the
447 Note that \*(UA by default, without
449 that is, neither passes
453 flags to a file-based MTA by itself.
456 .It Fl S Ar var Ns Op = Ns value
460 iable and, in case of a non-boolean variable which has a value, assign
464 .Sx "INTERNAL VARIABLES"
468 may be overwritten from within resource files,
469 the command line setting will be reestablished after all resource files
474 Specify the subject of the message to be sent.
475 Newline (NL) and carriage-return (CR) bytes are invalid and will be
476 normalized to space (SP) characters.
480 The message given (on standard input) is expected to contain, separated
481 from the message body by an empty line, a message header with
486 fields giving its recipients, which will be added to any recipients
487 specified on the command line.
488 If a message subject is specified via
490 then it will be used in favour of one given on the command line.
506 .Ql Mail-Followup-To: ,
507 by default created automatically dependent on message context, will
508 be used if specified (a special address massage will however still occur
510 Any other (also custom) header field is passed through entirely
511 unchanged, and in conjunction with the option
513 it is possible to embed
514 .Sx "COMMAND ESCAPES" .
520 Initially read the primary system mailbox of
522 appropriate privileges presumed; effectively identical to
532 will also show the list of
534 .Ql $ \*(uA -Xversion -Xx .
539 ting the internal variable
541 enables display of some informational context messages.
542 Using it twice increases the level of verbosity.
546 Add the given (or multiple for a multiline argument)
548 to the list of commands to be executed (as a unit, just as via
550 before normal operation starts.
554 .Va batch-exit-on-error ;
555 the only possibility to execute commands in non-interactive mode when
556 reading startup files is actively prohibited.
561 .Sx "COMMAND ESCAPES"
562 even if not in interactive mode.
563 This can be used to, e.g., automatically format the composed message
564 text before sending the message:
565 .Bd -literal -offset indent
566 $ ( echo 'line one. Word. Word2.'; \e
567 echo '~| /usr/bin/fmt -tuw66' ) |\e
568 LC_ALL=C \*(uA -:/ -Sttycharset=UTF-8 -d~ bob@exam.ple
574 In batch mode the full set of commands is available, just like in
575 interactive mode, standard input is made line buffered, and diverse
576 .Sx "INTERNAL VARIABLES"
577 are adjusted for batch necessities, e.g., it
593 .Sx "COMMAND ESCAPES"
594 is enabled in compose mode.
595 The following prepares an email message in a batched dry run:
596 .Bd -literal -offset indent
597 $ LC_ALL=C printf 'm bob\en~s ubject\enText\en~.\enx\en' | \e
598 LC_ALL=C \*(uA -:/ -d# -X'alias bob bob@exam.ple'
603 This flag forces termination of option processing in order to prevent
606 It also forcefully puts \*(UA into send mode, see
607 .Sx "On sending mail, and non-interactive mode" .
611 In the above list of supported command line options,
615 are implemented by means of
617 ting the respective internal variable, as via
620 .Op Ar mta-option ...
622 arguments that are given at the end of the command line after a
624 separator will be passed through to a file-based
626 (Mail-Transfer-Agent) and persist for an entire (interactive) session
627 \(en if the setting of
629 allows their recognition; no such constraints apply to the variable
633 .\" .Ss "A starter" {{{
636 \*(UA is a direct descendant of
638 Mail, a successor of the Research
641 .Dq was there from the start
646 Mail reference manual begins with the following words:
648 .Bd -ragged -offset indent
649 Mail provides a simple and friendly environment for sending and
651 It divides incoming mail into its constituent messages and allows the
652 user to deal with them in any order.
653 In addition, it provides a set of
655 -like commands for manipulating messages and sending mail.
656 Mail offers the user simple editing capabilities to ease the composition
657 of outgoing messages, as well as providing the ability to define and
658 send to names which address groups of users.
662 \*(UA is thus the user side of the
664 mail system, whereas the system side (Mail-Transfer-Agent, MTA) was
665 traditionally taken by
667 and most MTAs provide a binary of this name for compatibility purposes.
672 of \*(UA then the system side is not a mandatory precondition for mail
676 Because \*(UA strives for compliance with POSIX
678 it is likely that some configuration settings have to be adjusted before
679 using it is a smooth experience.
682 resource file bends those standard imposed settings of the
683 .Sx "INTERNAL VARIABLES"
684 a bit towards more user friendliness and safety, however, e.g., it
689 in order to suppress the automatic moving of messages to
691 that would otherwise occur (see
692 .Sx "Message states" ) ,
695 to not remove empty system (MBOX) mailbox files in order not to mangle
696 file permissions when files eventually get recreated; be aware that
697 \*(UA will (try to) remove all empty (MBOX) mailbox files unless this
698 variable is set in case
700 .Pf ( Ev POSIXLY_CORRECT )
701 mode has been enabled.
702 The file mode creation mask is explicitly managed via
708 in order to synchronize \*(UA with the exit status report of the used
713 to enter interactive startup even if the initial mailbox is empty,
715 to allow editing of headers as well as
717 to not strip down addresses in compose mode, and
719 to include the message that is being responded to when
724 contains some more complete configuration examples.
727 .\" .Ss "On sending mail, and non-interactive mode" {{{
728 .Ss "On sending mail, and non-interactive mode"
730 To send a message to one or more people, using a local or a builtin
732 (Mail-Transfer-Agent) transport to actually deliver the generated mail
733 message, \*(UA can be invoked with arguments which are the names of
734 people to whom the mail will be sent, and the command line options
738 can be used to add (blind) carbon copy receivers:
740 .Bd -literal -offset indent
741 $ \*(uA -s ubject -a ttach.txt bill@exam.ple
742 # But... try it in an isolated dry-run mode first
743 $ LC_ALL=C \*(uA -:/ -d -vv -Ssendwait \e
744 -b bcc@exam.ple -c cc@exam.ple -. \e
745 '(Lovely) Bob <bob@exam.ple>' eric@exam.ple
747 $ LC_ALL=C \*(uA -:/ -d -vv -Sv15-compat -Ssendwait \e
748 -S 'mta=smtps://mylogin@exam.ple:465' -Ssmtp-auth=login \e
749 -S 'from=scriptreply@exam.ple' \e
755 If standard input is a terminal rather than the message to be sent,
756 the user is expected to type in the message contents.
757 In this compose mode \*(UA treats lines beginning with the character
759 special \(en these are so-called
760 .Sx "COMMAND ESCAPES"
761 which can be used to read in files, process shell commands, add and edit
762 attachments and more; e.g., the command escape
764 will start the text editor to revise the message in its current state,
766 allows editing of the most important message headers and
768 gives an overview of available command escapes.
772 at the beginning of an empty line leaves compose mode and causes the
773 message to be sent, whereas typing
776 twice will abort the current letter (saving its contents in the file
782 Messages are sent asynchronously, without supervision, unless the variable
784 is set, therefore send errors are not recognizable until then.
790 .Sx "INTERNAL VARIABLES"
791 can be used to alter default behavior; e.g.,
796 will automatically startup a text editor when compose mode is entered,
798 allows editing of headers additionally to plain body content,
800 will cause the user to be prompted actively for carbon-copy recipients
803 will allow leaving compose mode by writing a line consisting solely of
809 hook macros may be set to automatically adjust some settings dependent
810 on receiver, sender or subject contexts, and
811 .Va on-compose-done-shell
812 is an increasingly powerful mechanism to perform automated message
816 Especially for using public mail provider accounts with the SMTP
818 it is often necessary to set
820 and saving a copy of sent messages in a
822 may be desirable \(en as for most mailbox file targets some special
823 syntax conventions are recognized (see the
825 command for more on that).
828 for the purpose of arranging a complete environment of settings that can
829 be switched to with a single command or command line option may be
832 contains example configurations for sending messages via some of the
833 well-known public mail providers and also gives a compact overview on
834 how to setup a secure SSL/TLS environment).
839 sandbox dry-run tests first will prove correctness.
843 .Sx "On URL syntax and credential lookup"
844 will spread light on the different ways of how to specify user email
845 account credentials, the
847 variable chains, and accessing protocol-specific resources,
850 goes into the details of character encoding and how to use them for
851 representing messages and MIME part contents by specifying them in
853 and reading the section
854 .Sx "The mime.types files"
855 should help to understand how the MIME-type of outgoing attachments are
856 classified, and what can be done for fine-tuning.
857 Over the wire an intermediate, configurable
858 .Pf content-transfer-\: Va encoding
859 may be applied to the raw message part data.
862 Message recipients (as specified on the command line or defined in
867 may not only be email addressees but can also be names of mailboxes and
868 even complete shell command pipe specifications.
871 is not set then only network addresses (see
873 for a description of mail addresses) and plain user names (including MTA
874 aliases) may be used, other types will be filtered out, giving a warning
877 .\" When changing any of the following adjust any RECIPIENTADDRSPEC;
878 .\" grep the latter for the complete picture
882 is set then extended recipient addresses will optionally be accepted:
883 Any name which starts with a vertical bar
885 character specifies a command pipe \(en the command string following the
887 is executed and the message is sent to its standard input;
888 Likewise, any name that starts with the character solidus
890 or the character sequence dot solidus
892 is treated as a file, regardless of the remaining content;
893 likewise a name that solely consists of a hyphen
895 Any other name which contains an at sign
897 character is treated as a network address;
898 Any other name which starts with a plus sign
900 character specifies a mailbox name;
901 Any other name which contains a solidus
903 character but no exclamation mark
907 character before also specifies a mailbox name;
908 What remains is treated as a network address.
910 .Bd -literal -offset indent
911 $ echo bla | \*(uA -Sexpandaddr -s test ./mbox.mbox
912 $ echo bla | \*(uA -Sexpandaddr -s test '|cat >> ./mbox.mbox'
913 $ echo safe | LC_ALL=C \e
914 \*(uA -:/ -Sv15-compat -Ssendwait -Snosave \e
915 -Sexpandaddr=fail,-all,+addr -s test \e
920 It is possible to create personal distribution lists via the
922 command, so that, for instance, the user can send mail to
924 and have it go to a group of people.
925 These aliases have nothing in common with the system wide aliases that
926 may be used by the MTA, which are subject to the
930 and are often tracked in a file
936 Personal aliases will be expanded by \*(UA before the message is sent,
937 and are thus a convenient alternative to specifying each addressee by
941 .Dl alias cohorts bill jkf mark kridle@ucbcory ~/mail/cohorts.mbox
944 To avoid environmental noise scripts should
946 \*(UA from any configuration files and create a script-local
947 environment, ideally with the command line options
949 to disable any configuration file in conjunction with repetitions of
951 to specify variables:
953 .Bd -literal -offset indent
954 $ env LC_ALL=C \*(uA -:/ \e
955 -Sv15-compat -Ssendwait -Snosave -Sttycharset=utf-8 \e
956 -Sexpandaddr=fail,-all,+addr \e
957 -S 'mta=smtps://mylogin@exam.ple:465' -Ssmtp-auth=login \e
958 -S 'from=scriptreply@exam.ple' \e
959 -s 'subject' -a attachment_file \e
960 -. "Recipient 1 <rec1@exam.ple>" rec2@exam.ple \e
965 As shown, scripts can
967 a locale environment, the above specifies the all-compatible 7-bit clean
970 but will nonetheless take and send UTF-8 in the message text by using
972 In interactive mode, which is introduced in the next section, messages
973 can be sent by calling the
975 command with a list of recipient addresses \(em the semantics are
976 completely identical to non-interactive message sending:
978 .Bd -literal -offset indent
979 $ \*(uA -d -Squiet -Semptystart
980 "/var/spool/mail/user": 0 messages
981 ? mail "Recipient 1 <rec1@exam.ple>", rec2@exam.ple
982 ? # Will do the right thing (tm)
983 ? m rec1@exam.ple rec2@exam.ple
987 .\" .Ss "On reading mail, and interactive mode" {{{
988 .Ss "On reading mail, and interactive mode"
990 When invoked without addressees \*(UA enters interactive mode in which
992 When used like that the user's system
996 for an in-depth description of the different mailbox types that exist)
997 is read in and a one line header of each message therein is displayed.
998 The visual style of this summary of
1000 can be adjusted through the variable
1002 and the possible sorting criterion via
1008 can be performed with the command
1010 If the initially opened mailbox is empty \*(UA will instead exit
1011 immediately (after displaying a message) unless the variable
1020 will give a listing of all available commands and
1022 will give a summary of some common ones.
1023 If the \*(OPal documentation strings are available one can type
1026 and see the actual expansion of
1028 and what its purpose is, i.e., commands can be abbreviated
1029 (note that POSIX defines some abbreviations, so that the alphabetical
1030 order of commands does not necessarily relate to the abbreviations; it is
1031 possible to define overwrites with the
1034 These commands can also produce a more
1039 Messages are given numbers (starting at 1) which uniquely identify
1040 messages; the current message \(en the
1042 \(en will either be the first new message, or the first unread message,
1043 or the first message of the mailbox; the internal variable
1045 will instead cause usage of the last message for this purpose.
1050 ful of header summaries containing the
1054 will display only the summaries of the given messages, defaulting to the
1058 Message content can be displayed on the users' terminal with the
1062 If instead the command
1064 is used, only the first
1066 of a message will be shown.
1067 By default the current message
1069 is displayed, but like with many other commands it is possible to give
1070 a fancy message specification (see
1071 .Sx "Specifying messages" ) ,
1074 will display all unread messages,
1079 will type the messages 1 and 5,
1081 will type the messages 1 through 5, and
1085 will display the last and the next message, respectively.
1088 (a more substantial alias of the standard command
1090 will display a header summary of the given message specification list
1091 instead of their content, e.g., the following will search for subjects:
1094 .Dl from "'@Some subject to search for'"
1097 In the default setup all header fields of a message will be
1099 d, but fields can be white- or blacklisted for a variety of
1100 applications by using the command
1102 e.g., to restrict display to a very restricted set:
1103 .Ql Ic \:headerpick Cd \:type retain add Ar \:from to cc subject .
1104 In order to display all header fields of a message regardless of
1105 currently active ignore or retain lists, use the commands
1111 controls whether and when \*(UA will use the configured
1113 for display instead of directly writing to the user terminal
1115 (generally speaking).
1116 Note that historically the global
1118 not only adjusts the list of displayed headers, but also sets
1122 Dependent upon the configuration a line editor (see the section
1123 .Sx "On terminal control and line editor" )
1124 aims at making user experience with the many
1127 When reading the system
1133 specified a mailbox explicitly prefixed with the special
1135 modifier (propagating the mailbox to a primary one) then messages which
1136 have been read will be moved to a secondary mailbox, the user's
1138 file, automatically when the mailbox is left, either by changing the
1139 active mailbox or by quitting \*(UA (also see
1140 .Sx "Message states" )
1141 \(en this automatic moving from a system or primary to the secondary
1142 mailbox is not performed when the variable
1147 After examining a message the user can also
1151 to the sender and all recipients or
1153 exclusively to the sender(s).
1154 Messages can also be
1156 ed (shorter alias is
1158 Note that when replying to or forwarding a message recipient addresses
1159 will be stripped from comments and names unless the internal variable
1162 Deletion causes \*(UA to forget about the message;
1163 This is not irreversible, though, one can
1165 the message by giving its number,
1166 or the \*(UA session can be ended by giving the
1171 To end a mail processing session one may either issue
1173 to cause a full program exit, which possibly includes
1174 automatic moving of read messages to
1176 as well as updating the \*(OPal line editor
1180 instead in order to prevent any of these actions.
1183 .\" .Ss "HTML mail and MIME attachments" {{{
1184 .Ss "HTML mail and MIME attachments"
1186 Messages which are HTML-only get more and more common and of course many
1187 messages come bundled with a bouquet of MIME attachments.
1188 Whereas \*(UA \*(OPally supports a simple HTML-to-text converter to deal
1189 with HTML messages (see
1190 .Sx "The mime.types files" ) ,
1191 it normally cannot deal with any of these itself, but instead programs
1192 need to become registered to deal with specific MIME types or file
1194 These programs may either prepare plain text versions of their input
1195 in order to enable \*(UA to display the content on the terminal,
1196 or display the content themselves, for example in a graphical window.
1199 To install an external handler program for a specific MIME type set an
1201 .Va pipe-TYPE/SUBTYPE
1202 variable; to instead define a handler for a specific file extension set
1205 variable \(en these handlers take precedence.
1206 \*(OPally \*(UA supports mail user agent configuration as defined in
1207 RFC 1524; this mechanism, documented in the section
1208 .Sx "The Mailcap files" ,
1209 will be queried for display or quote handlers if none of the former two
1210 .\" TODO v15-compat "will be" -> "is"
1211 did; it will be the sole source for handlers of other purpose.
1212 A last source for handlers may be the MIME type definition itself, if
1213 the \*(UA specific type-marker extension was used when defining the type
1216 (Many of the builtin MIME types do so by default.)
1220 .Va mime-counter-evidence
1221 can be set to improve dealing with faulty MIME part declarations as are
1222 often seen in real-life messages.
1223 E.g., to display a HTML message inline (that is, converted to a more
1224 fancy plain text representation than the builtin converter is capable to
1225 produce) with either of the text-mode browsers
1229 teach \*(UA about MathML documents and make it display them as plain
1230 text, and to open PDF attachments in an external PDF viewer,
1231 asynchronously and with some other magic attached:
1233 .Bd -literal -offset indent
1234 if $features !@ +filter-html-tagsoup
1235 #set pipe-text/html='elinks -force-html -dump 1'
1236 set pipe-text/html='lynx -stdin -dump -force_html'
1237 # Display HTML as plain text instead
1238 #set pipe-text/html=@
1240 mimetype '@ application/mathml+xml mathml'
1241 wysh set pipe-application/pdf='@&=@ \e
1242 trap "rm -f \e"${NAIL_FILENAME_TEMPORARY}\e"" EXIT;\e
1243 trap "trap \e"\e" INT QUIT TERM; exit 1" INT QUIT TERM;\e
1244 mupdf "${NAIL_FILENAME_TEMPORARY}"'
1248 Note: special care must be taken when using such commands as mail
1249 viruses may be distributed by this method: if messages of type
1250 .Ql application/x-sh
1251 or files with the extension
1253 were blindly filtered through the shell, for example, a message sender
1254 could easily execute arbitrary code on the system \*(UA is running on.
1255 For more on MIME, also in respect to sending of messages, see the
1257 .Sx "The mime.types files" ,
1258 .Sx "The Mailcap files"
1263 .\" .Ss "Mailing lists" {{{
1266 \*(UA offers some support to ease handling of mailing lists.
1269 promotes all given arguments to known mailing lists, and
1271 sets their subscription attribute, creating them first as necessary.
1276 automatically, but only resets the subscription attribute.)
1277 Using the commands without arguments will show (a subset of) all
1278 currently defined mailing lists.
1283 can be used to mark out messages with configured list addresses
1284 in the header display.
1287 \*(OPally mailing lists may also be specified as (extended) regular
1288 expressions, which allows matching of many addresses with a single
1290 However, all fully qualified list addresses are matched via a fast
1291 dictionary, whereas expressions are placed in (a) list(s) which is
1292 (are) matched sequentially.
1294 .Bd -literal -offset indent
1295 set followup-to followup-to-honour=ask-yes reply-to-honour=ask-yes
1296 wysh mlist a1@b1.c1 a2@b2.c2 '.*@lists\e.c3$'
1297 mlsubscribe a4@b4.c4 exact@lists.c3
1302 .Va followup-to-honour
1304 .Ql Mail-\:Followup-\:To:
1305 header is honoured when the message is being replied to (via
1311 controls whether this header is created when sending mails; it will be
1312 created automatically for a couple of reasons, too, like when the
1314 .Dq mailing list specific
1319 is used to respond to a message with its
1320 .Ql Mail-Followup-To:
1324 A difference in between the handling of known and subscribed lists is
1325 that the address of the sender is usually not part of a generated
1326 .Ql Mail-Followup-To:
1327 when addressing the latter, whereas it is for the former kind of lists.
1328 Usually because there are exceptions: say, if multiple lists are
1329 addressed and not all of them are subscribed lists.
1331 For convenience \*(UA will, temporarily, automatically add a list
1332 address that is presented in the
1334 header of a message that is being responded to to the list of known
1336 Shall that header have existed \*(UA will instead, dependent on the
1338 .Va reply-to-honour ,
1341 for this purpose in order to accept a list administrators' wish that
1342 is supposed to have been manifested like that (but only if it provides
1343 a single address which resides on the same domain as what is stated in
1347 .\" .Ss "Resource files" {{{
1348 .Ss "Resource files"
1350 Upon startup \*(UA reads in several resource files:
1352 .Bl -tag -width ".It Pa _AIL_EXTRA_R_"
1355 System wide initialization file.
1356 Reading of this file can be suppressed, either by using the
1360 command line options, or by setting the
1363 .Ev NAIL_NO_SYSTEM_RC .
1367 File giving initial commands.
1368 A different file can be chosen by setting the
1372 Reading of this file can be suppressed with the
1374 command line option.
1376 .It Va NAIL_EXTRA_RC
1377 Can be used to define an optional startup file to be read after all
1378 other resource files.
1379 It can be used to specify settings that are not understood by other
1381 implementations, for example.
1382 This variable is only honoured when defined in a resource file, e.g.,
1384 .Sx "INTERNAL VARIABLES" .
1388 The content of these files is interpreted as follows:
1391 .Bl -bullet -compact
1393 A lines' leading whitespace is removed.
1395 Empty lines are ignored.
1397 Any other line is interpreted as a command.
1398 It may be spread over multiple input lines if the newline character is
1400 by placing a reverse solidus character
1402 as the last character of the line; whereas any leading whitespace of
1403 follow lines is ignored, trailing whitespace before a escaped newline
1404 remains in the input.
1406 If the line (content) starts with the number sign
1408 then it is a comment-command \(en a real command! \(en and also ignored.
1409 This command is the only form of comment that is understood.
1413 Unless \*(UA is about to enter interactive mode syntax errors that occur
1414 while loading these files are treated as errors and cause program exit.
1415 More files with syntactically equal content can be
1417 The following, saved in a file, would be an examplary content:
1419 .Bd -literal -offset indent
1420 # This line is a comment command. And y\e
1421 es, it is really continued here.
1428 .\" .Ss "Character sets" {{{
1429 .Ss "Character sets"
1431 \*(OP \*(UA detects the character set of the terminal by using
1432 mechanisms that are controlled by the
1437 should give an overview); the \*(UA internal variable
1439 will be set to the detected terminal character set accordingly
1440 and will thus show up in the output of the commands
1446 However, a user supplied
1448 value is not overwritten by this detection mechanism: this
1450 must be used if the detection does not work properly,
1451 and it may be used to adjust the name of the locale character set.
1452 E.g., on BSD systems one may use a locale with the character set
1453 ISO8859-1, which is not a valid name for this character set; to be on
1454 the safe side, one may set
1456 to the correct name, which is ISO-8859-1.
1459 Note that changing the value does not mean much beside that,
1460 since several aspects of the real character set are implied by the
1461 locale environment of the system,
1462 and that stays unaffected by the content of an overwritten
1465 (This is mostly an issue when interactively using \*(UA, though.
1466 It is actually possible to send mail in a completely
1468 locale environment, an option that \*(UA's test-suite uses excessively.)
1471 If no character set conversion capabilities have been compiled into
1474 does not include the term
1478 will be the only supported character set,
1479 it is simply assumed that it can be used to exchange 8-bit messages
1480 (over the wire an intermediate
1481 .Pf content-transfer-\: Va encoding
1483 and the rest of this section does not apply;
1484 it may however still be necessary to explicitly set it if automatic
1485 detection fails, since in that case it defaults to the mentioned
1486 .\" (Keep in SYNC: ./nail.1:"Character sets", ./nail.h:CHARSET_*!)
1490 When reading messages, their text is converted into
1492 as necessary in order to display them on the users terminal.
1493 Unprintable characters and invalid byte sequences are detected
1494 and replaced by proper substitution characters (unless the variable
1496 was set once \*(UA was started).
1498 .Va charset-unknown-8bit
1499 to deal with another hairy aspect of message interpretation.
1502 When sending messages all their parts and attachments are classified.
1503 Whereas no character set conversion is performed on those parts which
1504 appear to be binary data,
1505 the character set being used must be declared within the MIME header of
1506 an outgoing text part if it contains characters that do not conform to
1507 the set of characters that are allowed by the email standards.
1508 Permissible values for character sets can be declared using the
1512 which defines a catch-all last-resort fallback character set that is
1513 implicitly appended to the list of character-sets in
1517 When replying to a message and the variable
1518 .Va reply-in-same-charset
1519 is set then the character set of the message being replied to is tried
1521 And it is also possible to make \*(UA work even more closely related to
1522 the current locale setting automatically by using the variable
1523 .Va sendcharsets-else-ttycharset ,
1524 please see there for more information.
1527 All the specified character sets are tried in order unless the
1528 conversion of the part or attachment succeeds.
1529 If none of the tried (8-bit) character sets is capable to represent the
1530 content of the part or attachment,
1531 then the message will not be sent and its text will optionally be
1535 In general, if the message
1536 .Dq Cannot convert from a to b
1537 appears, either some characters are not appropriate for the currently
1538 selected (terminal) character set,
1539 or the needed conversion is not supported by the system.
1540 In the first case, it is necessary to set an appropriate
1542 locale and/or the variable
1546 The best results are usually achieved when \*(UA is run in a UTF-8
1547 locale on a UTF-8 capable terminal, in which case the full Unicode
1548 spectrum of characters is available.
1549 In this setup characters from various countries can be displayed,
1550 while it is still possible to use more simple character sets for sending
1551 to retain maximum compatibility with older mail clients.
1554 On the other hand the POSIX standard defines a locale-independent 7-bit
1555 .Dq portable character set
1556 that should be used when overall portability is an issue, the even more
1557 restricted subset named
1558 .Dq portable filename character set
1559 consisting of A-Z, a-z, 0-9, period
1568 .\" .Ss "Message states" {{{
1569 .Ss "Message states"
1571 \*(UA differentiates in between several different message states;
1572 the current state will be reflected in header summary displays if
1574 is configured to do so (via the internal variable
1576 and messages can also be selected and be acted upon depending on their
1578 .Sx "Specifying messages" ) .
1579 When operating on the system
1581 or in primary mailboxes opened with the special prefix
1585 special actions, like the automatic moving of messages to the secondary
1587 mailbox may be applied when the mailbox is left (also implicitly via
1588 a successful exit of \*(UA, but not if the special command
1590 is used) \(en however, because this may be irritating to users which
1593 mail-user-agents, the default global
1599 variables in order to suppress this behaviour.
1601 .Bl -tag -width ".It Ql _reserved"
1603 Message has neither been viewed nor moved to any other state.
1604 Such messages are retained even in the primary system mailbox.
1607 Message has neither been viewed nor moved to any other state, but the
1608 message was present already when the mailbox has been opened last:
1609 Such messages are retained even in the primary system mailbox.
1612 The message has been processed by one of the following commands:
1632 commands may also cause the next message to be marked as read, depending
1638 command is used, messages that are in the primary system mailbox or in
1639 mailboxes which were opened with the special
1643 state when the mailbox is left will be saved in
1645 unless the internal variable
1650 The message has been processed by one of the following commands:
1656 can be used to access such messages.
1659 The message has been processed by a
1661 command and it will be retained in its current location.
1664 The message has been processed by one of the following commands:
1670 command is used, messages that are in the primary system mailbox or in
1671 mailboxes which were opened with the special
1675 state when the mailbox is left will be deleted; they will be saved in
1677 when the internal variable
1683 .\" .Ss "Specifying messages" {{{
1684 .Ss "Specifying messages"
1691 can be given a list of message numbers as arguments to apply to a number
1692 of messages at once.
1695 deletes messages 1 and 2,
1698 will delete the messages 1 through 5.
1699 In sorted or threaded mode (see the
1703 will delete the messages that are located between (and including)
1704 messages 1 through 5 in the sorted/threaded order, as shown in the
1707 The following special message names exist:
1710 .Bl -tag -width ".It Ar _n_u"
1712 The current message, the so-called
1716 The message that was previously the current message.
1719 The parent message of the current message,
1720 that is the message with the Message-ID given in the
1722 field or the last entry of the
1724 field of the current message.
1727 The next previous undeleted message,
1728 or the next previous deleted message for the
1731 In sorted/threaded mode,
1732 the next previous such message in the sorted/threaded order.
1735 The next undeleted message,
1736 or the next deleted message for the
1739 In sorted/threaded mode,
1740 the next such message in the sorted/threaded order.
1743 The first undeleted message,
1744 or the first deleted message for the
1747 In sorted/threaded mode,
1748 the first such message in the sorted/threaded order.
1752 In sorted/threaded mode,
1753 the last message in the sorted/threaded order.
1757 selects the message addressed with
1761 is any other message specification,
1762 and all messages from the thread that begins at it.
1763 Otherwise it is identical to
1768 the thread beginning with the current message is selected.
1773 All messages that were included in the message list for the previous
1777 An inclusive range of message numbers.
1778 Selectors that may also be used as endpoints include any of
1783 .Dq any substring matches
1786 header, which will match addresses (too) even if
1788 is set (and POSIX says
1789 .Dq any address as shown in a header summary shall be matchable in this form ) ;
1792 variable is set, only the local part of the address is evaluated
1793 for the comparison, not ignoring case, and the setting of
1795 is completely ignored.
1796 For finer control and match boundaries use the
1800 .It Ar / Ns Ar string
1801 All messages that contain
1803 in the subject field (case ignored).
1810 the string from the previous specification of that type is used again.
1812 .It Xo Op Ar @ Ns Ar name-list Ns
1815 All messages that contain the given case-insensitive search
1817 ession; if the \*(OPal regular expression (see
1819 support is available
1821 will be interpreted as (an extended) one if any of the
1823 (extended) regular expression characters is seen.
1825 .Ar @ Ns Ar name-list
1826 part is missing, the search is restricted to the subject field body,
1829 specifies a comma-separated list of header fields to search, as in
1831 .Dl '@to,from,cc@Someone i ought to know'
1833 In order to search for a string that includes a
1835 (commercial at) character the
1837 is effectively non-optional, but may be given as the empty string.
1838 Some special header fields may be abbreviated:
1852 respectively and case-insensitively.
1857 can be used to search in (all of) the header(s) of the message, and the
1866 can be used to perform full text searches \(en whereas the former
1867 searches only the body, the latter also searches the message header.
1869 This message specification performs full text comparison, but even with
1870 regular expression support it is almost impossible to write a search
1871 expression that savely matches only a specific address domain.
1872 To request that the content of the header is treated as a list of
1873 addresses, and to strip those down to the plain email address which the
1874 search expression is to be matched against, prefix the header name
1875 (abbreviation) with a tilde
1878 .Dl @~f@@a\e.safe\e.domain\e.match$
1881 All messages of state
1885 is one or multiple of the following colon modifiers:
1887 .Bl -tag -compact -width ".It Ar :M"
1892 Old messages (any not in state
1918 Messages marked as draft.
1920 \*(OP Messages classified as spam.
1922 \*(OP Messages with unsure spam classification.
1928 \*(OP IMAP-style SEARCH expressions may also be used.
1929 This addressing mode is available with all types of folders;
1930 \*(UA will perform the search locally as necessary.
1931 Strings must be enclosed by double quotes
1933 in their entirety if they contain white space or parentheses;
1934 within the quotes, only reverse solidus
1936 is recognized as an escape character.
1937 All string searches are case-insensitive.
1938 When the description indicates that the
1940 representation of an address field is used,
1941 this means that the search string is checked against both a list
1944 .Bd -literal -offset indent
1945 (\*qname\*q \*qsource\*q \*qlocal-part\*q \*qdomain-part\*q)
1950 and the addresses without real names from the respective header field.
1951 These search expressions can be nested using parentheses, see below for
1955 .Bl -tag -compact -width ".It Ar _n_u"
1956 .It Ar ( criterion )
1957 All messages that satisfy the given
1959 .It Ar ( criterion1 criterion2 ... criterionN )
1960 All messages that satisfy all of the given criteria.
1962 .It Ar ( or criterion1 criterion2 )
1963 All messages that satisfy either
1968 To connect more than two criteria using
1970 specifications have to be nested using additional parentheses,
1972 .Ql (or a (or b c)) ,
1976 .Ql ((a or b) and c) .
1979 operation of independent criteria on the lowest nesting level,
1980 it is possible to achieve similar effects by using three separate
1984 .It Ar ( not criterion )
1985 All messages that do not satisfy
1987 .It Ar ( bcc \*q Ns Ar string Ns Ar \*q )
1988 All messages that contain
1990 in the envelope representation of the
1993 .It Ar ( cc \*q Ns Ar string Ns Ar \*q )
1994 All messages that contain
1996 in the envelope representation of the
1999 .It Ar ( from \*q Ns Ar string Ns Ar \*q )
2000 All messages that contain
2002 in the envelope representation of the
2005 .It Ar ( subject \*q Ns Ar string Ns Ar \*q )
2006 All messages that contain
2011 .It Ar ( to \*q Ns Ar string Ns Ar \*q )
2012 All messages that contain
2014 in the envelope representation of the
2017 .It Ar ( header name \*q Ns Ar string Ns Ar \*q )
2018 All messages that contain
2023 .It Ar ( body \*q Ns Ar string Ns Ar \*q )
2024 All messages that contain
2027 .It Ar ( text \*q Ns Ar string Ns Ar \*q )
2028 All messages that contain
2030 in their header or body.
2031 .It Ar ( larger size )
2032 All messages that are larger than
2035 .It Ar ( smaller size )
2036 All messages that are smaller than
2040 .It Ar ( before date )
2041 All messages that were received before
2043 which must be in the form
2047 denotes the day of the month as one or two digits,
2049 is the name of the month \(en one of
2050 .Ql Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec ,
2053 is the year as four digits, e.g.,
2057 All messages that were received on the specified date.
2058 .It Ar ( since date )
2059 All messages that were received since the specified date.
2060 .It Ar ( sentbefore date )
2061 All messages that were sent on the specified date.
2062 .It Ar ( senton date )
2063 All messages that were sent on the specified date.
2064 .It Ar ( sentsince date )
2065 All messages that were sent since the specified date.
2067 The same criterion as for the previous search.
2068 This specification cannot be used as part of another criterion.
2069 If the previous command line contained more than one independent
2070 criterion then the last of those criteria is used.
2074 .\" .Ss "On URL syntax and credential lookup" {{{
2075 .Ss "On URL syntax and credential lookup"
2077 \*(IN For accessing protocol-specific resources usage of Uniform
2078 Resource Locators (URL, RFC 1738) has become omnipresent.
2079 \*(UA expects and understands URLs in the following form;
2082 denote optional parts, optional either because there also exist other
2083 ways to define the information in question or because support of the
2084 part is protocol-specific (e.g.,
2086 is used by the IMAP protocol but not by POP3);
2091 are specified they must be given in URL percent encoded form (RFC 3986;
2097 .Dl PROTOCOL://[USER[:PASSWORD]@]server[:port][/path]
2100 Note that these \*(UA URLs most often do not conform to any real
2101 standard, but instead represent a normalized variant of RFC 1738 \(en
2102 they are not used in data exchange but only meant as a compact,
2103 easy-to-use way of defining and representing information in
2104 a well-known notation.
2107 Many internal variables of \*(UA exist in multiple versions, called
2108 variable chains for the rest of this document: the plain
2113 .Ql variable-USER@HOST .
2120 had been specified in the respective URL, otherwise it refers to the plain
2126 that had been found when doing the user chain lookup as is described
2129 will never be in URL percent encoded form, whether it came from an URL
2130 or not; i.e., variable chain name extensions of
2131 .Sx "INTERNAL VARIABLES"
2132 must not be URL percent encoded.
2135 For example, whether an hypothetical URL
2136 .Ql smtp://hey%3Ayou@our.house
2137 had been given that includes a user, or whether the URL was
2138 .Ql smtp://our.house
2139 and the user had been found differently, to lookup the variable chain
2140 .Va smtp-use-starttls
2141 \*(UA first looks for whether
2142 .Ql smtp-\:use-\:starttls-\:hey:you@our.house
2143 is defined, then whether
2144 .Ql smtp-\:use-\:starttls-\:our.house
2145 exists before finally ending up looking at the plain variable itself.
2148 \*(UA obeys the following logic scheme when dealing with the
2149 necessary credential information of an account:
2155 has been given in the URL the variables
2159 are looked up; if no such variable(s) can be found then \*(UA will,
2160 when enforced by the \*(OPal variables
2161 .Va netrc-lookup-HOST
2168 specific entry which provides a
2170 name: this lookup will only succeed if unambiguous (one possible matching
2173 It is possible to load encrypted
2178 If there is still no
2180 then \*(UA will fall back to the user who is supposed to run \*(UA,
2181 the identity of which has been fixated during \*(UA startup and is
2182 known to be a valid user on the current host.
2185 Authentication: unless otherwise noted this will lookup the
2186 .Va PROTOCOL-auth-USER@HOST , PROTOCOL-auth-HOST , PROTOCOL-auth
2187 variable chain, falling back to a protocol-specific default should this
2193 has been given in the URL, then if the
2195 has been found through the \*(OPal
2197 that may have already provided the password, too.
2198 Otherwise the variable chain
2199 .Va password-USER@HOST , password-HOST , password
2200 is looked up and used if existent.
2202 Afterwards the complete \*(OPal variable chain
2203 .Va netrc-lookup-USER@HOST , netrc-lookup-HOST , netrc-lookup
2207 cache is searched for a password only (multiple user accounts for
2208 a single machine may exist as well as a fallback entry without user
2209 but with a password).
2211 If at that point there is still no password available, but the
2212 (protocols') chosen authentication type requires a password, then in
2213 interactive mode the user will be prompted on the terminal.
2218 S/MIME verification works relative to the values found in the
2222 header field(s), which means that the values of
2223 .Va smime-sign , smime-sign-cert , smime-sign-include-certs
2225 .Va smime-sign-message-digest
2226 will not be looked up using the
2230 chains from above but instead use the corresponding values from the
2231 message that is being worked on.
2232 In unusual cases multiple and different
2236 combinations may therefore be involved \(en on the other hand those
2237 unusual cases become possible.
2238 The usual case is as short as:
2241 .Dl set mta=smtp://USER:PASS@HOST smtp-use-starttls \e
2242 .Dl \ \ \ \ smime-sign smime-sign-cert=+smime.pair
2247 contains complete example configurations.
2250 .\" .Ss "On terminal control and line editor" {{{
2251 .Ss "On terminal control and line editor"
2253 \*(OP Terminal control will be realized through one of the standard
2255 libraries, either the
2257 or, alternatively, the
2259 both of which will be initialized to work with the environment variable
2261 Terminal control will enhance or enable interactive usage aspects, e.g.,
2262 .Sx "Coloured display" ,
2263 and extend behaviour of the Mailx-Line-Editor (MLE), which may learn the
2264 byte-sequences of keys like the cursor and function keys, and which will
2265 automatically enter the so-called
2267 alternative screen shall the terminal support it.
2268 The internal variable
2270 can be used to overwrite settings or to learn (correct(ed)) keycodes.
2271 Actual interaction with the chosen library can be disabled completely by
2272 setting the internal variable
2273 .Va termcap-disable ;
2275 will be queried regardless, even if the \*(OPal support for the
2276 libraries has not been enabled at configuration time.
2279 \*(OP The builtin \*(UA Mailx-Line-Editor (MLE) should work in all
2280 environments which comply to the ISO C standard
2282 and will support wide glyphs if possible (the necessary functionality
2283 had been removed from ISO C, but was included in
2285 Prevent usage of a line editor in interactive mode by setting the
2287 .Va line-editor-disable .
2288 Especially if the \*(OPal terminal control support is missing setting
2289 entries in the internal variable
2291 will help shall the MLE misbehave, see there for more.
2292 The MLE can support a little bit of
2298 feature is available then input from line editor prompts will be saved
2299 in a history list that can be searched in and be expanded from.
2300 Such saving can be prevented by prefixing input with any amount of
2302 Aspects of history, like allowed content and maximum size, as well as
2303 whether history shall be saved persistently, can be configured with the
2307 .Va history-gabby-persist
2312 The MLE supports a set of editing and control commands.
2313 By default (as) many (as possible) of these will be assigned to a set of
2314 single-letter control codes, which should work on any terminal (and can
2315 be generated by holding the
2317 key while pressing the key of desire, e.g.,
2321 command is available then the MLE commands can also be accessed freely
2322 by assigning the command name, which is shown in parenthesis in the list
2323 below, to any desired key-sequence, and the MLE will instead and also use
2325 to establish its builtin key bindings
2326 (more of them if the \*(OPal terminal control is available),
2327 an action which can then be suppressed completely by setting
2328 .Va line-editor-no-defaults .
2329 The following uses the
2331 ell-style quote notation that is documented in the introduction of
2333 combinations not mentioned either cause job control signals or do not
2334 generate a (unique) keycode:
2338 .Bl -tag -compact -width "Ql _M"
2340 Go to the start of the line
2341 .Pf ( Cd mle-go-home ) .
2344 Move the cursor backward one character
2345 .Pf ( Cd mle-go-bwd ) .
2348 Forward delete the character under the cursor;
2349 quits \*(UA if used on the empty line unless the internal variable
2352 .Pf ( Cd mle-del-fwd ) .
2355 Go to the end of the line
2356 .Pf ( Cd mle-go-end ) .
2359 Move the cursor forward one character
2360 .Pf ( Cd mle-go-fwd ) .
2363 Cancel current operation, full reset.
2364 If there is an active history search or tabulator expansion then this
2365 command will first reset that, reverting to the former line content;
2366 thus a second reset is needed for a full reset in this case
2367 .Pf ( Cd mle-reset ) .
2370 Backspace: backward delete one character
2371 .Pf ( Cd mle-del-bwd ) .
2375 Horizontal tabulator:
2376 try to expand the word before the cursor, also supporting \*(UA
2379 .Pf ( Cd mle-complete ) .
2381 .Cd mle-quote-rndtrip .
2385 commit the current line
2386 .Pf ( Cd mle-commit ) .
2389 Cut all characters from the cursor to the end of the line
2390 .Pf ( Cd mle-snarf-end ) .
2394 .Pf ( Cd mle-repaint ) .
2397 \*(OP Go to the next history entry
2398 .Pf ( Cd mle-hist-fwd ) .
2401 (\*(OPally context-dependent) Invokes the command
2405 \*(OP Go to the previous history entry
2406 .Pf ( Cd mle-hist-bwd ) .
2409 Toggle roundtrip mode shell quotes, where produced,
2411 .Pf ( Cd mle-quote-rndtrip ) .
2412 This setting is temporary, and will be forgotten once the command line
2416 \*(OP Complete the current line from (the remaining) older history entries
2417 .Pf ( Cd mle-hist-srch-bwd ) .
2420 \*(OP Complete the current line from (the remaining) newer history entries
2421 .Pf ( Cd mle-hist-srch-fwd ) .
2424 Paste the snarf buffer
2425 .Pf ( Cd mle-paste ) .
2432 .Pf ( Cd mle-snarf-line ) .
2435 Prompts for a Unicode character (its hexadecimal number) to be inserted
2436 .Pf ( Cd mle-prompt-char ) .
2437 Note this command needs to be assigned to a single-letter control code
2438 in order to become recognized and executed during input of
2439 a key-sequence (only three single-letter control codes can be used for
2440 that shortcut purpose); this control code is special-treated and cannot
2441 be part of any other sequence, because any occurrence will perform the
2443 function immediately.
2446 Cut the characters from the one preceding the cursor to the preceding
2448 .Pf ( Cd mle-snarf-word-bwd ) .
2451 Move the cursor forward one word boundary
2452 .Pf ( Cd mle-go-word-fwd ) .
2455 Move the cursor backward one word boundary
2456 .Pf ( Cd mle-go-word-bwd ) .
2459 Escape: reset a possibly used multibyte character input state machine
2460 and \*(OPally a lingering, incomplete key binding
2461 .Pf ( Cd mle-cancel ) .
2462 This command needs to be assigned to a single-letter control code in
2463 order to become recognized and executed during input of a key-sequence
2464 (only three single-letter control codes can be used for that shortcut
2466 This control code may also be part of a multi-byte sequence, but if
2467 a sequence is active and the very control code is currently also an
2468 expected input, then it will first be consumed by the active sequence.
2471 (\*(OPally context-dependent) Invokes the command
2475 (\*(OPally context-dependent) Invokes the command
2479 (\*(OPally context-dependent) Invokes the command
2483 Cut the characters from the one after the cursor to the succeeding word
2485 .Pf ( Cd mle-snarf-word-fwd ) .
2495 this will immediately reset a possibly active search etc.
2499 ring the audible bell.
2503 .\" .Ss "Coloured display" {{{
2504 .Ss "Coloured display"
2506 \*(OP \*(UA can be configured to support a coloured display and font
2507 attributes by emitting ANSI / ISO 6429 SGR (select graphic rendition)
2509 Usage of colours and font attributes solely depends upon the
2510 capability of the detected terminal type that is defined by the
2511 environment variable
2513 and which can be fine-tuned by the user via the internal variable
2517 On top of what \*(UA knows about the terminal the boolean variable
2519 defines whether the actually applicable colour and font attribute
2520 sequences should also be generated when output is going to be paged
2521 through the external program defined by the environment variable
2526 This is not enabled by default because different pager programs need
2527 different command line switches or other configuration in order to
2528 support those sequences.
2529 \*(UA however knows about some widely used pagers and in a clean
2530 environment it is often enough to simply set
2532 please refer to that variable for more on this topic.
2537 is set then any active usage of colour and font attribute sequences
2538 is suppressed, but without affecting possibly established
2543 To define and control colours and font attributes a single multiplexer
2544 command family exists:
2546 shows or defines colour mappings for the given colour type (e.g.,
2549 can be used to remove mappings of a given colour type.
2550 Since colours are only available in interactive mode, it may make
2551 sense to conditionalize the colour setup by encapsulating it with
2554 .Bd -literal -offset indent
2555 if terminal && $features =@ +colour
2556 colour iso view-msginfo ft=bold,fg=green
2557 colour iso view-header ft=bold,fg=red "from,subject"
2558 colour iso view-header fg=red
2560 uncolour iso view-header from,subject
2561 colour iso view-header ft=bold,fg=magenta,bg=cyan
2562 colour 256 view-header ft=bold,fg=208,bg=230 subject,from
2563 colour mono view-header ft=bold
2564 colour mono view-header ft=bold,ft=reverse subject,from
2568 .\" }}} (DESCRIPTION)
2571 .\" .Sh COMMANDS {{{
2574 Each command is typed on a line by itself,
2575 and may take arguments following the command word.
2576 Command names may be abbreviated, in which case the first command that
2577 matches the given prefix will be used.
2580 can be used to show the list of all commands, either alphabetically
2581 sorted or in prefix search order (these do not match, also because the
2582 POSIX standard prescribes a set of abbreviations).
2583 \*(OPally the command
2587 when given an argument, will show a documentation string for the
2588 command matching the expanded argument, as in
2590 which should be a shorthand of
2592 Both commands support a more
2594 listing mode which includes the argument type of the command.
2597 For commands which take message lists as arguments, the next message
2598 forward that satisfies the command's requirements will be used shall no
2599 explicit message list have been specified.
2600 If there are no messages forward of the current message,
2601 the search proceeds backwards,
2602 and if there are no good messages at all,
2603 \*(UA shows an error message and aborts the command.
2604 \*(ID Non-message-list arguments can be quoted using the following methods:
2607 .Bl -bullet -compact -offset indent
2609 An argument can be enclosed between paired double-quotes
2614 any white space, shell word expansion, or reverse solidus characters
2615 (except as described next) within the quotes are treated literally as
2616 part of the argument.
2617 A double-quote will be treated literally within single-quotes and vice
2619 Inside such a quoted string the actually used quote character can be
2620 used nonetheless by escaping it with a reverse solidus
2626 An argument that is not enclosed in quotes, as above, can usually still
2627 contain space characters if those spaces are reverse solidus escaped, as in
2631 A reverse solidus outside of the enclosing quotes is discarded
2632 and the following character is treated literally as part of the argument.
2637 Some commands which do not take message-list arguments can also be
2638 prefixed with the special keyword
2640 to choose \*(INible argument quoting rules, and some new commands only
2641 support the new rules (without that keyword) and are flagged \*(NQ.
2642 In the future \*(UA will (mostly) use
2644 compatible argument parsing:
2645 Non-message-list arguments can be quoted using the following shell-style
2646 mechanisms: the escape character, single-quotes, double-quotes and
2647 dollar-single-quotes; any unquoted number sign
2649 that parses as a new token starts a comment that ends argument processing.
2650 The overall granularity of error reporting and diagnostics, also
2651 regarding function arguments and their content, will improve.
2655 .Bl -bullet -compact -offset indent
2657 The literal value of any character can be preserved by preceding it
2658 with the escape character reverse solidus
2662 will cause variable expansion of the given name: \*(UA
2663 .Sx "INTERNAL VARIABLES"
2666 (shell) variables can be accessed through this mechanism, brace
2667 enclosing the name is supported.
2670 Arguments which are enclosed in
2671 .Ql 'single-\:quotes'
2672 retain their literal value.
2673 A single-quote cannot occur within single-quotes.
2676 The literal value of all characters enclosed in
2677 .Ql \(dqdouble-\:quotes\(dq
2678 is retained, with the exception of dollar
2680 which will cause variable expansion, as above, backquote (grave accent)
2682 (which not yet means anything special), reverse solidus
2684 which will escape any of the characters dollar
2686 (to prevent variable expansion), backquote (grave accent)
2690 (to prevent ending the quote) and reverse solidus
2692 (to prevent escaping, i.e., to embed a reverse solidus character as-is),
2693 but has no special meaning otherwise.
2696 Arguments enclosed in
2697 .Ql $'dollar-\:single-\:quotes'
2698 extend normal single quotes in that reverse solidus escape sequences are
2699 expanded as follows:
2701 .Bl -tag -compact -width "Ql \eNNN"
2707 an escape character.
2709 an escape character.
2721 emits a reverse solidus character.
2725 double quote (escaping is optional).
2727 eight-bit byte with the octal value
2729 (one to three octal digits), optionally prefixed by an additional
2731 A 0 byte will suppress further output for the quoted argument.
2733 eight-bit byte with the hexadecimal value
2735 (one or two hexadecimal characters).
2736 A 0 byte will suppress further output for the quoted argument.
2738 the Unicode / ISO-10646 character with the hexadecimal codepoint value
2740 (one to eight hexadecimal digits) \(em note that Unicode defines the
2741 maximum codepoint to be ever supported as
2746 This escape is only supported in locales which support Unicode (see
2747 .Sx "Character sets" ) ,
2748 in other cases the sequence will remain unexpanded unless the given code
2749 point is ASCII compatible or can be represented in the current locale.
2750 The character NUL will suppress further output for the quoted argument.
2754 except it takes only one to four hexadecimal digits.
2756 A mechanism that allows usage of the non-printable (ASCII and
2757 compatible) control codes 0 to 31: to create the printable
2758 representation of a control code the numeric value 64 is added, and the
2759 resulting ASCII character set code point is then printed, e.g., BEL is
2760 .Ql 7 + 64 = 71 = G .
2761 Whereas historically circumflex notation has often been used for
2762 visualization purposes of control codes, e.g.,
2764 the reverse solidus notation has been standardized:
2766 Some control codes also have standardized (ISO 10646, ISO C) alias
2767 representations, as shown above (e.g.,
2771 whenever such an alias exists \*(UA will use it for display purposes.
2772 The control code NUL
2774 ends argument processing without producing further output.
2776 Non-standard extension: expand the given variable name, as above.
2777 Brace enclosing the name is supported.
2779 Not yet supported, just to raise awareness: Non-standard extension.
2785 .Sy Compatibility notes:
2786 \*(ID Note these are new mechanisms which are not supported by all
2788 Round-tripping (feeding in things shown in list modes again) are not yet
2789 stable or possible at all.
2790 On new-style command lines it is wise to quote semicolon
2794 characters in order to ensure upward compatibility: the author would
2795 like to see things like
2796 .Ql ? echo $'trouble\etahead' | cat >> in_the_shell.txt
2798 .Ql ? top 2 5 10; type 3 22
2800 Before \*(UA will switch entirely to shell-style argument parsing there
2801 will be a transition phase where using
2803 will emit obsoletion warnings.
2805 .Bd -literal -offset indent
2806 echo 'Quotes '${HOME}' and 'tokens" differ!"# no comment
2807 echo Quotes ${HOME} and tokens differ! # comment
2808 echo Don"'"t you worry$'\ex21' The sun shines on us. $'\eu263A'
2812 In any event an unquoted reverse solidus at the end of a command line is
2813 discarded and the next line continues the command.
2814 \*(ID Note that line continuation is handled before the above parsing is
2815 applied, i.e., the parsers documented above will see merged lines.
2816 Filenames, where expected, are subsequently subjected to the following
2817 transformations, in sequence:
2820 .Bl -bullet -compact -offset indent
2822 If the filename begins with an unquoted plus sign, and the
2824 variable is defined,
2825 the plus sign will be replaced by the value of the
2827 variable followed by a solidus.
2830 variable is unset or is set to null, the filename will be unchanged.
2833 Meta expansions are applied to the filename: a leading tilde
2835 character will be replaced by the expansion of
2837 except when followed by a valid user name, in which case the home
2838 directory of the given user is used instead.
2843 will be replaced by the expansion of the variable, if possible; \*(UA
2844 .Sx "INTERNAL VARIABLES"
2847 (shell) variables can be accessed through this mechanism, and the usual
2848 escape mechanism has to be applied to prevent interpretation.
2849 If the fully expanded filename results in multiple pathnames and the
2850 command is expecting only one file, an error results.
2852 In interactive context, in order to allow simple value acceptance (via
2854 arguments will usually be displayed in a properly quoted form, e.g., a file
2855 .Ql diet\e is \ecurd.txt
2857 .Ql 'diet\e is \ecurd.txt' .
2861 The following commands are available:
2863 .Bl -tag -width ".Ic _ccount"
2870 ) command which follows.
2874 The comment-command causes the entire line to be ignored.
2876 this really is a normal command which' purpose is to discard its
2879 indicating special character, which means that, e.g., trailing comments
2880 on a line are not possible.
2884 Goes to the next message in sequence and types it
2890 Display the preceding message, or the n'th previous message if given
2891 a numeric argument n.
2895 Show the current message number (the
2900 Show a brief summary of commands.
2903 output is available.
2904 \*(OP Given an argument a synopsis for the command in question is
2905 shown instead; commands can be abbreviated in general and this command
2906 can be used to see the full expansion of an abbreviation including the
2907 synopsis, try, e.g.,
2912 and see how the output changes.
2922 Interprets the remainder of the word as a macro name and passes it
2927 is a shorter synonym for
2928 .Ql call Ar mymacro .
2932 (ac) Creates, selects or lists (an) account(s).
2933 Accounts are special incarnations of
2935 macros and group commands and variable settings which together usually
2936 arrange the environment for the purpose of creating an email account.
2937 Different to normal macros settings which are covered by
2939 \(en here by default enabled! \(en will not be reverted before the
2944 (case-insensitive) always exists, and all but it can be deleted via
2947 Without arguments a listing of all defined accounts is shown.
2948 With one argument the given account is activated: the system
2950 of that account will be activated (as via
2952 and a possibly installed
2955 The two argument form is identical to defining a macro as via
2957 .Bd -literal -offset indent
2959 set folder=~/mail inbox=+syste.mbox record=+sent.mbox
2960 set from='myname@myisp.example (My Name)'
2961 set mta=smtp://mylogin@smtp.myisp.example
2967 (a) With no arguments, shows all currently-defined aliases.
2968 With one argument, shows that alias.
2969 With more than one argument,
2970 creates a new alias or appends to an existing one.
2972 can be used to delete aliases.
2976 (alt) Manage a list of alternate addresses / names of the active user,
2977 members of which will be removed from recipient lists when replying to
2980 variable is not set).
2981 If arguments are given the set of alternate names is replaced by them,
2982 without arguments the current set is displayed.
2986 Takes a message list and marks each message as having been answered.
2987 This mark has no technical meaning in the mail system;
2988 it just causes messages to be marked in the header summary,
2989 and makes them specially addressable.
2994 \*(OP\*(NQ The bind command extends the MLE (see
2995 .Sx "On terminal control and line editor" )
2996 with freely configurable key bindings.
2997 With one argument all bindings for the given context are shown,
2998 specifying an asterisk
3000 will show the bindings of all contexts; a more verbose listing will be
3001 produced if either of
3006 With two or more arguments a binding is (re)established:
3007 the first argument is the context to which the binding shall apply,
3008 the second argument is a comma-separated list of the
3010 which form the binding, and any remaining arguments form the expansion.
3011 To indicate that a binding shall not be auto-committed, but that the
3012 expansion shall instead be furtherly editable by the user, an at-sign
3014 (that will be removed) can be placed last in the expansion, from which
3015 leading and trailing whitespace will finally be removed.
3016 Reverse solidus cannot be used as the last character of expansion.
3019 Contexts define when a binding applies, i.e., a binding will not be seen
3020 unless the context for which it is defined for is currently active.
3021 This is not true for the shared binding
3023 which is the foundation for all other bindings and as such always
3024 applies, its bindings, however, only apply secondarily.
3025 The available contexts are the shared
3029 context which is used in all not otherwise documented situations, and
3031 which applies to compose-mode only.
3035 which form the binding are specified as a comma-separated list of
3036 byte-sequences, where each list entry corresponds to one key(press).
3037 \*(OPally a list entry may, indicated by a leading colon character
3039 also refer to the name of a terminal capability;
3040 several dozen names will be compiled into \*(UA and may be specified
3043 or, if existing, by their
3045 name, regardless of the actually used terminal control library.
3046 It is however possible to use any capability, as long as the name is
3047 resolvable by the control library or defined in the internal variable
3049 Input sequences are not case-normalized, so that an exact match is
3050 required to update or remove a binding.
3053 .Bd -literal -offset indent
3054 bind base $'\eE',d mle-snarf-word-fwd # Esc(ape)
3055 bind base $'\eE',$'\ec?' mle-snarf-word-bwd # Esc, Delete
3056 bind default $'\ecA',:khome,w 'echo An editable binding@'
3057 bind default a,b,c rm -rf / @ # Another editable binding
3058 bind default :kf1 File %
3059 bind compose :kf1 ~e
3063 Note that the entire comma-separated list is first parsed (over) as a
3064 shell-token with whitespace as the field separator, before being parsed
3065 and expanded for real with comma as the field separator, therefore
3066 whitespace needs to be properly quoted:
3067 shell-style quoting is documented in the introduction of
3069 Using Unicode reverse solidus escape sequences renders a binding
3070 defunctional if the locale does not support Unicode (see
3071 .Sx "Character sets" ) ,
3072 and using terminal capabilities does so if no terminal control support
3073 is (currently) available.
3076 The following terminal capability names are builtin and can be used in
3078 or (if available) the two-letter
3080 notation regardless of the actually used library.
3081 See the respective manual for a list of capabilities.
3084 can be used to show all the capabilities of
3086 or the given terminal type;
3089 flag will also show supported (non-standard) extensions.
3092 .Bl -tag -compact -width kcuuf_or_kcuuf
3093 .It Cd kbs Ns \0or Cd kb
3095 .It Cd kdch1 Ns \0or Cd kD
3097 .It Cd kDC Ns \0or Cd *4
3098 \(em shifted variant.
3099 .It Cd kel Ns \0or Cd kE
3100 Clear to end of line.
3101 .It Cd kext Ns \0or Cd @9
3103 .It Cd kich1 Ns \0or Cd kI
3105 .It Cd kIC Ns \0or Cd #3
3106 \(em shifted variant.
3107 .It Cd khome Ns \0or Cd kh
3109 .It Cd kHOM Ns \0or Cd #2
3110 \(em shifted variant.
3111 .It Cd kend Ns \0or Cd @7
3113 .It Cd knp Ns \0or Cd kN
3115 .It Cd kpp Ns \0or Cd kP
3117 .It Cd kcub1 Ns \0or Cd kl
3118 Left cursor (with more modifiers: see below).
3119 .It Cd kLFT Ns \0or Cd #4
3120 \(em shifted variant.
3121 .It Cd kcuf1 Ns \0or Cd kr
3122 Right cursor (ditto).
3123 .It Cd kRIT Ns \0or Cd %i
3124 \(em shifted variant.
3125 .It Cd kcud1 Ns \0or Cd kd
3126 Down cursor (ditto).
3128 \(em shifted variant (only terminfo).
3129 .It Cd kcuu1 Ns \0or Cd ku
3132 \(em shifted variant (only terminfo).
3133 .It Cd kf0 Ns \0or Cd k0
3135 Add one for each function key up to
3140 .It Cd kf10 Ns \0or Cd k;
3142 .It Cd kf11 Ns \0or Cd F1
3144 Add one for each function key up to
3152 Some terminals support key-modifier combination extensions, e.g.,
3154 For example, the delete key,
3156 in its shifted variant, the name is mutated to
3158 then a number is appended for the states
3170 .Ql Shift+Alt+Control
3172 The same for the left cursor key,
3174 .Cd KLFT , KLFT3 , KLFT4 , KLFT5 , KLFT6 , KLFT7 , KLFT8 .
3177 Key bindings can be removed with the command
3179 It is advisable to use an initial escape or other control character (e.g.,
3181 for bindings which describe user key combinations (as opposed to purely
3182 terminal capability based ones), in order to avoid ambiguities whether
3183 input belongs to key sequences or not; it also reduces search time.
3186 may help shall keys and sequences be falsely recognized.
3191 Calls a macro that has been created via
3196 (ch) Change the working directory to
3198 or the given argument.
3204 \*(OP Only applicable to S/MIME signed messages.
3205 Takes a message list and a file name and saves the certificates
3206 contained within the message signatures to the named file in both
3207 human-readable and PEM format.
3208 The certificates can later be used to send encrypted messages to the
3209 respective message senders by setting
3210 .Va smime-encrypt-USER@HOST
3215 (ch) Change the working directory to
3217 or the given argument.
3223 Only applicable to threaded mode.
3224 Takes a message list and makes all replies to these messages invisible
3225 in header summaries, unless they are in state
3231 \*(OP\*(NQ Manage colour mappings of and for a
3232 .Sx "Coloured display" .
3233 The type of colour is given as the (case-insensitive) first argument,
3234 which must be one of
3236 for 256-colour terminals,
3241 for the standard 8-colour ANSI / ISO 6429 color palette and
3245 for monochrome terminals.
3246 Monochrome terminals cannot deal with colours, but only (some) font
3250 Without further arguments the list of all currently defined mappings
3251 for the given colour type is shown (as a special case giving
3255 will show the mappings of all types).
3256 Otherwise the second argument defines the mappable slot, and the third
3257 argument a (comma-separated list of) colour and font attribute
3258 specification(s), and the optional fourth argument can be used to
3259 specify a precondition: if conditioned mappings exist they are tested in
3260 (creation) order unless a (case-insensitive) match has been found, and
3261 the default mapping (if any has been established) will only be chosen as
3263 The types of precondition available depend on the mappable slot (see
3264 .Sx "Coloured display"
3265 for some examples), the following of which exist:
3268 Mappings prefixed with
3270 are used for the \*(OPal builtin Mailx-Line-Editor (MLE, see
3271 .Sx "On terminal control and line editor" )
3272 and do not support preconditions.
3274 .Bl -tag -compact -width view-partinfo
3276 This mapping is used for the position indicator that is visible when
3277 a line cannot be fully displayed on the screen.
3284 Mappings prefixed with
3286 are used in header summaries, and they all understand the preconditions
3288 (the current message) and
3290 for elder messages (only honoured in conjunction with
3291 .Va datefield-markout-older ) .
3293 .Bl -tag -compact -width view-partinfo
3295 This mapping is used for the
3297 that can be created with the
3301 formats of the variable
3304 For the complete header summary line except the
3306 and the thread structure.
3308 For the thread structure which can be created with the
3310 format of the variable
3315 Mappings prefixed with
3317 are used when displaying messages.
3319 .Bl -tag -compact -width view-partinfo
3321 This mapping is used for so-called
3323 lines, which are MBOX file format specific header lines.
3326 A comma-separated list of headers to which the mapping applies may be
3327 given as a precondition; if the \*(OPal regular expression support is
3328 available then if any of the
3330 (extended) regular expression characters is seen the precondition will
3331 be evaluated as (an extended) one.
3333 For the introductional message info line.
3334 .It Ar view-partinfo
3335 For MIME part info lines.
3339 The following (case-insensitive) colour definitions and font attributes
3340 are understood, multiple of which can be specified in a comma-separated
3350 It is possible (and often applicable) to specify multiple font
3351 attributes for a single mapping.
3354 foreground colour attribute:
3364 To specify a 256-color mode a decimal number colour specification in
3365 the range 0 to 255, inclusive, is supported, and interpreted as follows:
3367 .Bl -tag -compact -width "999 - 999"
3369 the standard ISO 6429 colors, as above.
3371 high intensity variants of the standard colors.
3373 216 colors in tuples of 6.
3375 grayscale from black to white in 24 steps.
3377 .Bd -literal -offset indent
3379 fg() { printf "\e033[38;5;${1}m($1)"; }
3380 bg() { printf "\e033[48;5;${1}m($1)"; }
3382 while [ $i -lt 256 ]; do fg $i; i=$(($i + 1)); done
3383 printf "\e033[0m\en"
3385 while [ $i -lt 256 ]; do bg $i; i=$(($i + 1)); done
3386 printf "\e033[0m\en"
3390 background colour attribute (see
3392 for possible values).
3396 Mappings may be removed with the command
3398 For a generic overview see the section
3399 .Sx "Coloured display" .
3404 (C) Copy messages to files whose names are derived from the author of
3405 the respective message and do not mark them as being saved;
3406 otherwise identical to
3411 (c) Copy messages to the named file and do not mark them as being saved;
3412 otherwise identical to
3417 \*(NQ With no arguments, shows all currently-defined custom headers.
3418 With one argument, shows that custom header.
3419 With more than one argument, creates a new or an additional custom
3420 header with the name given as the first argument, the content of
3421 which being defined by the concatenated remaining arguments.
3423 can be used to delete custom headers.
3424 \*(ID Overwriting of automatically managed headers is neither supported
3426 Defined custom headers will be injected into newly composed or forwarded
3429 .Dl customhdr OpenPGP id=12345678; url=http://www.YYY.ZZ
3433 may also be used to inject custom headers; it is covered by
3438 Show the name of the current working directory.
3442 \*(OP For unencrypted messages this command is identical to
3444 Encrypted messages are first decrypted, if possible, and then copied.
3448 \*(OP For unencrypted messages this command is identical to
3450 Encrypted messages are first decrypted, if possible, and then copied.
3454 Without arguments the current list of macros, including their content,
3455 is shown, otherwise a macro is defined.
3456 A macro definition is a sequence of commands in the following form:
3457 .Bd -literal -offset indent
3466 A defined macro can be invoked explicitly by using the
3470 commands, or implicitly if a macro hook is triggered, e.g., a
3472 Note that interpretation of
3474 depends on how (i.e.,
3476 normal macro, folder hook, hook, account switch) the macro is invoked.
3477 Macros can be deleted via
3481 Macro behaviour, including option localization, will change in v15.
3482 Please be aware of that and possibly embed a version check in a resource
3487 (d) Marks the given message list as
3489 Deleted messages will neither be saved in
3491 nor will they be available for most other commands.
3497 Superseded by the multiplexer
3503 Deletes the current message and displays the next message.
3504 If there is no next message, \*(UA says
3511 up or down by one message when given
3515 argument, respectively.
3519 Takes a message list and marks each given message as a draft.
3520 This mark has no technical meaning in the mail system;
3521 it just causes messages to be marked in the header summary,
3522 and makes them specially addressable.
3526 (ec) Echoes its arguments after applying
3528 expansions and filename transformations, as documented for
3533 (e) Point the text editor (as defined in
3535 at each message from the given list in turn.
3536 Modified contents are discarded unless the
3543 .Ic if Ns / Ns Ic elif Ns / Ns Ic else Ns / Ns Ic endif
3544 conditional \(em if the condition of a preceding
3546 was false, check the following condition and execute the following block
3547 if it evaluates true.
3552 .Ic if Ns / Ns Ic elif Ns / Ns Ic else Ns / Ns Ic endif
3553 conditional \(em if none of the conditions of the preceding
3557 commands was true, the
3563 (en) Marks the end of an
3564 .Ic if Ns / Ns Ic elif Ns / Ns Ic else Ns / Ns Ic endif
3565 conditional execution block.
3570 \*(NQ \*(UA has a strict notion about which variables are
3571 .Sx "INTERNAL VARIABLES"
3572 and which are managed in the program
3574 Since some of the latter are a vivid part of \*(UAs functioning,
3575 however, they are transparently integrated into the normal handling of
3576 internal variables via
3580 To integrate other environment variables of choice into this
3581 transparent handling, and also to export internal variables into the
3582 process environment where they normally are not, a
3584 needs to become established with this command, as in, e.g.,
3587 .Dl environ link PERL5LIB from TZ
3590 Afterwards changing such variables with
3592 will cause automatic updates of the program environment, and therefore
3593 be inherited by newly created child processes.
3594 Sufficient system support provided (it was in BSD as early as 1987, and
3595 is standardized since Y2K) removing such variables with
3597 will remove them also from the program environment, but in any way
3598 the knowledge they ever have been
3601 Note this implies that
3603 may cause loss of links.
3608 will remove an existing link, but leaves the variables as such intact.
3609 Additionally the subcommands
3613 are provided, which work exactly the same as the documented commands
3617 but (additionally) link the variable(s) with the program environment and
3618 thus immediately export them to, or remove them from (if possible),
3619 respectively, the program environment.
3624 \*(OP Since \*(UA uses the console as a user interface it can happen
3625 that messages scroll by too fast to become recognized.
3626 Optionally an error message ring queue is available which stores
3627 duplicates of any error message and notifies the user in interactive
3628 sessions whenever a new error has occurred.
3629 The queue is finite: if its maximum size is reached any new message
3630 replaces the eldest.
3633 can be used to manage this message queue: if given
3635 or no argument the queue will be displayed and cleared,
3637 will only clear all messages from the queue.
3641 (ex or x) Exit from \*(UA without changing the active mailbox and skip
3642 any saving of messages in
3644 as well as a possibly tracked line editor history file.
3650 but open the mailbox readonly.
3654 (fi) The file command switches to a new mailbox.
3655 Without arguments it shows status information of the current mailbox.
3656 If an argument is given, it will write out changes (such as deletions)
3657 the user has made and open a new mailbox.
3658 Some special conventions are recognized for the
3662 .Bl -tag -compact -width ".Ar %:__lespec"
3664 (number sign) means the previous file,
3666 (percent sign) means the invoking user's system mailbox, which either
3667 is the (itself expandable)
3669 if that is set, the standardized absolute pathname indicated by
3671 if that is set, or a builtin compile-time default otherwise.
3673 means the primary system mailbox of
3675 (and never the value of
3677 regardless of its actual setting),
3679 (ampersand) means the invoking user's
3689 expands to the same value as
3691 but the file is handled as a primary system mailbox by, e.g., the
3695 commands, meaning that messages that have been read in the current
3696 session will be moved to the
3698 mailbox instead of simply being flagged as read.
3701 If the name matches one of the strings defined with the command
3703 it is replaced by its long form and expanded.
3704 If the name ends with
3709 it is treated as being compressed with
3714 respectively, and transparently handled through an intermediate
3715 (un)compression step (using a temporary file) with the according
3716 facility, sufficient support provided.
3717 Likewise, if the named file does not exist, but a file with one of the
3718 mentioned compression extensions does, then the name is automatically
3719 expanded and the compressed file is used.
3721 Otherwise, if the name ends with an extension for which
3722 .Va file-hook-load-EXTENSION
3724 .Va file-hook-save-EXTENSION
3725 variables are set, then the given hooks will be used to load and save
3727 and \*(UA will work with an intermediate temporary file.
3729 MBOX files (flat file-based mailboxes) are generally locked during file
3730 operations in order to avoid inconsistencies due to concurrent
3732 \*(OPal Mailbox files which \*(UA treats as the system
3735 and primary mailboxes will also be protected by so-called dotlock
3736 files, the traditional way of mail spool file locking: for any file
3740 will be created for the duration of the synchronization \(em
3741 as necessary a privilege-separated dotlock child process will be used
3742 to accommodate for necessary privilege adjustments in order to create
3743 the dotlock file in the same directory
3744 and with the same user and group identities as the file of interest.
3748 refers to a directory with the subdirectories
3753 then it is treated as a folder in
3755 format; \*(ID the variable
3757 can be used to control the format of yet non-existent folders.
3760 .Dl \*(IN protocol://[user[:password]@]host[:port][/path]
3761 .Dl \*(OU protocol://[user@]host[:port][/path]
3763 is taken as an Internet mailbox specification.
3764 The \*(OPally supported protocols are
3768 (POP3 with SSL/TLS encrypted transport).
3771 part is valid only for IMAP; there it defaults to
3773 Also see the section
3774 .Sx "On URL syntax and credential lookup" .
3778 contains special characters, in particular
3782 they must be escaped in URL notation \(en the command
3784 can be used to show the necessary conversion.
3788 Takes a message list and marks the messages as
3790 ged for urgent/special attention.
3791 This mark has no technical meaning in the mail system;
3792 it just causes messages to be highlighted in the header summary,
3793 and makes them specially addressable.
3802 With no arguments, list the names of the folders in the folder directory.
3803 With an existing folder as an argument,
3804 lists the names of folders below the named folder.
3810 but saves the message in a file named after the local part of the first
3811 recipient's address (instead of in
3818 but saves the message in a file named after the local part of the first
3819 recipient's address (instead of in
3826 but responds to all recipients regardless of the
3831 .It Ic followupsender
3834 but responds to the sender only regardless of the
3850 (f) Takes a list of message specifications and displays a summary of
3851 their message headers, exactly as via
3853 An alias of this command is
3856 .Sx "Specifying messages" .
3862 but saves the message in a file named after the local part of the
3863 recipient's address (instead of in
3868 Takes a message and the address of a recipient
3869 and forwards the message to him.
3870 The text of the original message is included in the new one,
3871 with the value of the
3873 variable preceding it.
3874 To filter the included header fields to the desired subset use the
3876 slot of the white- and blacklisting command
3878 Only the first part of a multipart message is included unless
3879 .Va forward-as-attachment ,
3880 and recipient addresses will be stripped from comments, names etc.
3881 unless the internal variable
3887 \*(OB Superseded by the multiplexer
3892 \*(OB Superseded by the multiplexer
3897 Define or list command aliases, so-called ghosts.
3898 Without arguments a list of all currently known aliases is shown.
3899 With one argument the expansion of the given alias is shown.
3900 With two or more arguments a command alias is defined or updated: the
3901 first argument is the name under which the remaining command line should
3902 be accessible, the content of which can be just about anything.
3903 A ghost can be used everywhere a normal command can be used, but always
3904 takes precedence; any arguments that are given to the command alias are
3905 joined onto the alias content, and the resulting string forms the
3906 command line that is, in effect, executed.
3909 .Bd -literal -offset indent
3911 `ghost': no such alias: "xx"
3914 ghost xx "echo hello,"
3924 \*(NQ Multiplexer command to establish white- and blacklisting
3925 selections of header fields for a variety of applications.
3926 Without any arguments the entire set of known contexts and their current
3927 settings is displayed.
3928 When given arguments, the first argument is the context to which the
3929 command applies, one of (case-insensitively)
3931 for display purposes (via, e.g.,
3934 for selecting which headers shall be stored persistently when
3940 ing messages (note that MIME related etc. header fields should not be
3941 ignored in order to not destroy usability of the message in this case),
3943 for stripping down messages when
3945 ing message (has no effect if
3946 .Va forward-as-attachment
3949 for defining user-defined set of fields for the command
3953 The current settings of the given context are displayed if only the
3954 first argument is given.
3955 A second argument denotes the type of restriction that is to be chosen,
3956 it may be (a case-insensitive prefix of)
3960 for white- and blacklisting purposes, respectively.
3961 Establishing a whitelist suppresses inspection of the corresponding
3963 If no further argument is given the current settings of the given type
3967 With four or more arguments the third denotes the action to be applied,
3972 for addition of fields, and
3976 for removal of fields from the given type of the given context.
3977 The fourth, and any following arguments are expected to specify the
3978 fields of desire, or \*(OPally, regular expression matches ought to
3980 The special wildcard field (asterisk,
3982 will establish a (fast) shorthand setting which covers all fields, or
3983 remove all fields in one operation, respectively.
3988 (h) Show the current group of headers, the size of which depends on
3991 and the style of which can be adjusted with the variable
3993 If a message-specification is given the group of headers containing the
3994 first message therein is shown and the message at the top of the screen
4009 the list of history entries;
4012 argument selects and shows the respective history entry \(en
4015 to accept it, and the history entry will become the new history top.
4016 The default mode if no arguments are given is
4023 Takes a message list and marks each message therein to be saved in the
4028 Does not override the
4031 \*(UA deviates from the POSIX standard with this command, because a
4033 command issued after
4035 will display the following message, not the current one.
4040 (i) Part of the nestable
4041 .Ic if Ns / Ns Ic elif Ns / Ns Ic else Ns / Ns Ic endif
4042 conditional execution construct \(em if the given condition is true then
4043 the encapsulated block is executed.
4044 POSIX only supports the (case-insensitive) conditions
4049 end, all remaining conditions are non-portable extensions; note that
4050 falsely specified conditions cause the execution of the entire
4051 conditional construct until the (matching) closing
4053 command to be suppressed.
4054 The syntax of the nestable
4056 conditional execution construct requires that each condition and syntax
4057 element is surrounded by whitespace.
4059 .Bd -literal -offset indent
4068 The (case-insensitive) condition
4070 erminal will evaluate to true if the standard input is a terminal, i.e.,
4071 in interactive sessions.
4072 Another condition can be any boolean value (see the section
4073 .Sx "INTERNAL VARIABLES"
4074 for textual boolean representations) to mark an enwrapped block as
4077 .Dq always execute .
4078 It is possible to check
4079 .Sx "INTERNAL VARIABLES"
4082 variables for existence or compare their expansion against a user given
4083 value or another variable by using the
4085 .Pf ( Dq variable next )
4086 conditional trigger character;
4087 a variable on the right hand side may be signalled using the same
4089 The variable names may be enclosed in a pair of matching braces.
4092 The available comparison operators are
4096 (less than or equal to),
4102 (greater than or equal to),
4106 (is substring of) and
4108 (is not substring of).
4109 The values of the left and right hand side are treated as strings and
4110 are compared 8-bit byte-wise, ignoring case according to the rules of
4111 the US-ASCII encoding (therefore, dependent on the active locale,
4112 possibly producing false results for strings in the locale encoding).
4113 Except for the substring checks the comparison will instead be performed
4114 arithmetically if both, the user given value as well as the variable
4115 content, can be parsed as numbers (integers).
4116 An unset variable is treated as the empty string.
4119 When the \*(OPal regular expression support is available, the additional
4125 They treat the right hand side as an extended regular expression that is
4126 matched case-insensitively and according to the active
4128 locale, meaning that strings in the locale encoding should be matched
4132 Conditions can be joined via AND-OR lists (where the AND operator is
4134 and the OR operator is
4136 which have equal precedence and will be evaluated with left
4137 associativity, thus using the same syntax that is known for the
4139 It is also possible to form groups of conditions and lists by enclosing
4140 them in pairs of brackets
4141 .Ql [\ \&.\&.\&.\ ] ,
4142 which may be interlocked within each other, and also be joined via
4146 The results of individual conditions and entire groups may be modified
4147 via unary operators: the unary operator
4149 will reverse the result.
4151 .Bd -literal -offset indent
4155 if $ttycharset == "UTF-8"
4156 echo *ttycharset* is set to UTF-8, case-insensitively
4160 echo These two variables are equal
4162 if $version-major >= 15
4163 echo Running a new version..
4164 if $features =@ +regex
4165 if $TERM =~ "^xterm\&.*"
4166 echo ..in an X terminal
4169 if [ [ true ] && [ [ ${debug} ] || [ $verbose ] ] ]
4172 if true && $debug || ${verbose}
4173 echo Left associativity, as is known from the shell
4175 if ! ! true && ! [ ! $debug && ! $verbose ]
4176 echo Unary operator support
4186 Superseded by the multiplexer
4191 Shows the names of all available commands, alphabetically sorted.
4192 If given any non-whitespace argument the list will be shown in the order
4193 in which command prefixes are searched.
4196 output is available.
4200 This command can be used to localize changes to variables, meaning that
4201 their state will be reverted to the former one once the covered scope
4203 It can only be used inside of macro definition blocks introduced by
4207 and is interpreted as a boolean (string, see
4208 .Sx "INTERNAL VARIABLES" ) ;
4211 of an account is left once it is switched off again.
4212 .Bd -literal -offset indent
4213 define temporary_settings {
4228 enables change localization and calls
4230 which explicitly resets localization, then any value changes within
4232 will still be reverted by
4234 \*(ID Once the outermost level, the one which enabled localization
4235 first, is left, but no earlier, all adjustments will be unrolled.
4236 \*(ID Likewise worth knowing, if in this example
4238 changes to a different
4240 which sets some variables that are yet covered by localizations, their
4241 scope will be extended, and in fact leaving the
4243 will (thus) restore settings in (likely) global scope which actually
4244 were defined in a local, private context.
4248 Reply to messages that come in via known
4251 .Pf ( Ic mlsubscribe )
4252 mailing lists, or pretend to do so (see
4253 .Sx "Mailing lists" ) :
4256 functionality this will actively resort and even remove message
4257 recipients in order to generate a message that is supposed to be sent to
4259 For example it will also implicitly generate a
4260 .Ql Mail-Followup-To:
4261 header if that seems useful, regardless of the setting of the variable
4268 but saves the message in a file named after the local part of the first
4269 recipient's address (instead of in
4274 (m) Takes a (list of) recipient address(es) as (an) argument(s),
4275 or asks on standard input if none were given;
4276 then collects the remaining mail content and sends it out.
4280 (mb) The given message list is to be sent to
4282 when \*(UA is quit; this is the default action unless the variable
4285 \*(ID This command can only be used in a primary system mailbox (see
4290 Without any arguments the content of the MIME type cache will displayed.
4291 Otherwise each argument defines a complete MIME type specification of
4292 a type that shall be added (prepended) to the cache.
4293 In any event MIME type sources are loaded first as necessary \(en
4294 .Va mimetypes-load-control
4295 can be used to fine-tune which sources are actually loaded.
4296 Refer to the section on
4297 .Sx "The mime.types files"
4298 for more on MIME type specifications and this topic in general.
4299 MIME type unregistration and cache resets can be triggered with
4304 Without arguments the list of all currently defined mailing lists
4305 (and their attributes, if any) is shown; a more verbose listing will be
4306 produced if either of
4311 Otherwise all given arguments (which need not be quoted except for
4312 whitespace) will be added and henceforth be recognized as mailing lists.
4313 Mailing lists may be removed via the command
4316 If the \*(OPal regular expression support is available then mailing
4317 lists may also be specified as (extended) regular expressions (see
4323 Without arguments the list of all currently defined mailing lists which
4324 have a subscription attribute is shown; a more verbose listing will be
4325 produced if either of
4330 Otherwise this attribute will be set for all given mailing lists,
4331 newly creating them as necessary (as via
4333 Subscription attributes may be removed via the command
4342 but moves the messages to a file named after the local part of the
4343 sender address of the first message (instead of in
4350 but marks the messages for deletion if they were transferred
4357 but also displays header fields which would not pass the
4359 selection, and all MIME parts.
4367 on the given messages, even in non-interactive mode and as long as the
4368 standard output is a terminal.
4374 \*(OP When used without arguments or if
4376 has been given the content of the
4378 cache is shown, loading it first as necessary.
4381 then the cache will only be initialized and
4383 will remove its contents.
4384 Note that \*(UA will try to load the file only once, use
4385 .Ql Ic \&\&netrc Ns \:\0\:clear
4386 to unlock further attempts.
4391 .Sx "On URL syntax and credential lookup" ;
4393 .Sx "The .netrc file"
4394 documents the file format in detail.
4398 Checks for new mail in the current folder without committing any changes
4400 If new mail is present, a message is shown.
4404 the headers of each new message are also shown.
4405 This command is not available for all mailbox types.
4413 Goes to the next message in sequence and types it.
4414 With an argument list, types the next matching message.
4428 If the current folder is accessed via a network connection, a
4430 command is sent, otherwise no operation is performed.
4436 but also displays header fields which would not pass the
4438 selection, and all MIME parts.
4446 on the given messages, even in non-interactive mode and as long as the
4447 standard output is a terminal.
4455 but also pipes header fields which would not pass the
4457 selection, and all parts of MIME
4458 .Ql multipart/alternative
4463 (pi) Takes a message list and a shell command
4464 and pipes the messages through the command.
4465 Without an argument the current message is piped through the command
4472 every message is followed by a formfeed character.
4493 (q) Terminates the session, saving all undeleted, unsaved messages in
4496 preserving all messages marked with
4500 or never referenced in the system
4502 and removing all other messages from the primary system mailbox.
4503 If new mail has arrived during the session,
4505 .Dq You have new mail
4507 If given while editing a mailbox file with the command line flag
4509 then the edit file is rewritten.
4510 A return to the shell is effected,
4511 unless the rewrite of edit file fails,
4512 in which case the user can escape with the exit command.
4526 Removes the named files or directories.
4527 If a name refer to a mailbox, e.g., a Maildir mailbox, then a mailbox
4528 type specific removal will be performed, deleting the complete mailbox.
4529 The user is asked for confirmation in interactive mode.
4533 Takes the name of an existing folder
4534 and the name for the new folder
4535 and renames the first to the second one.
4536 Both folders must be of the same type.
4540 (R) Reply to originator.
4541 Does not reply to other recipients of the original message.
4543 will exchange this command with
4545 Unless the internal variable
4547 is set the recipient address will be stripped from comments, names etc.
4551 (r) Take a message and group-responds to it by addressing the sender
4554 .Va followup-to-honour ,
4557 .Va recipients-in-cc
4558 influence response behaviour.
4561 offers special support for replying to mailing lists.
4562 Unless the internal variable
4564 is set recipient addresses will be stripped from comments, names etc.
4577 but initiates a group-reply regardless of the value of
4584 but responds to the sender only regardless of the value of
4591 but does not add any header lines.
4592 This is not a way to hide the sender's identity,
4593 but useful for sending a message again to the same recipients.
4597 Takes a list of messages and a user name
4598 and sends each message to the named user.
4600 and related header fields are prepended to the new copy of the message.
4618 .It Ic respondsender
4624 (ret) Superseded by the multiplexer
4631 but saves the messages in a file named after the local part of the
4632 sender of the first message instead of (in
4634 and) taking a filename argument.
4638 (s) Takes a message list and a filename and appends each message in turn
4639 to the end of the file.
4640 If no filename is given, the
4643 The filename in quotes, followed by the generated character count
4644 is echoed on the user's terminal.
4645 If editing a primary system mailbox the messages are marked for deletion.
4646 Filename interpretation as described for the
4648 command is performed.
4652 \*(OB Superseded by the multiplexer
4657 \*(OB Superseded by the multiplexer
4662 \*(OB Superseded by the multiplexer
4667 Takes a message specification (list) and displays a header summary of
4668 all matching messages, as via
4670 This command is an alias of
4673 .Sx "Specifying messages" .
4677 Takes a message list and marks all messages as having been read.
4681 (se) Without arguments this command shows all internal variables which
4682 are currently known to \*(UA (they have been set).
4683 A more verbose listing will be produced if either of
4687 are set, in which case variables may be preceded with a comment line
4688 that gives some context of what \*(UA knows about the given variable.
4690 Otherwise the given variables (and arguments) are set or adjusted.
4691 Arguments are of the form
4693 (no space before or after
4697 if there is no value, i.e., a boolean variable.
4698 Quotation marks may be placed around any part of the assignment
4699 statement to quote blanks or tabs, e.g.,
4701 .Dl set indentprefix='->'
4703 If an argument begins with
4707 the effect is the same as invoking the
4709 command with the remaining part of the variable
4710 .Pf ( Ql unset save ) .
4714 that is known to map to an environment variable will automatically cause
4715 updates in the program environment (unsetting a variable in the
4716 environment requires corresponding system support).
4717 Please use the command
4719 for further environmental control.
4724 .Sx "INTERNAL VARIABLES"
4730 (sh) Invokes an interactive version of the shell.
4734 Without arguments the list of all currently defined shortcuts is
4736 Otherwise all given arguments (which need not be quoted except for
4737 whitespace) are treated as pairs of shortcuts and their expansions,
4738 creating new or changing already existing shortcuts, as necessary.
4739 Shortcuts may be removed via the command
4741 The expansion strings should be in the syntax that has been described
4750 but performs neither MIME decoding nor decryption, so that the raw
4751 message text is shown.
4755 (si) Shows the size in characters of each message of the given
4760 Shows the current sorting criterion when used without an argument.
4761 Otherwise creates a sorted representation of the current folder,
4764 command and the addressing modes such that they refer to messages in
4766 Message numbers are the same as in regular mode.
4770 a header summary in the new order is also displayed.
4771 Automatic folder sorting can be enabled by setting the
4773 variable, as in, e.g.,
4774 .Ql set autosort=thread .
4775 Possible sorting criterions are:
4777 .Bl -tag -compact -width "subject"
4779 Sort the messages by their
4781 field, that is by the time they were sent.
4783 Sort messages by the value of their
4785 field, that is by the address of the sender.
4788 variable is set, the sender's real name (if any) is used.
4790 Sort the messages by their size.
4792 \*(OP Sort the message by their spam score, as has been classified by
4795 Sort the messages by their message status.
4797 Sort the messages by their subject.
4799 Create a threaded display.
4801 Sort messages by the value of their
4803 field, that is by the address of the recipient.
4806 variable is set, the recipient's real name (if any) is used.
4811 (so) The source command reads commands from the given file, which is
4812 subject to the usual filename expansions (see introductional words of
4814 If the given argument ends with a vertical bar
4816 then the argument will instead be interpreted as a shell command and
4817 \*(UA will read the output generated by it.
4818 Interpretation of commands read is stopped when an error is encountered.
4821 cannot be used from within macros that execute as
4822 .Va folder-hook Ns s
4825 i.e., it can only be called from macros that were
4832 (beside not supporting pipe syntax aka shell command input) is that
4833 this command will not generate an error if the given file argument
4834 cannot be opened successfully.
4838 \*(OP Takes a list of messages and clears their
4844 \*(OP Takes a list of messages and causes the
4846 to forget it has ever used them to train its Bayesian filter.
4847 Unless otherwise noted the
4849 flag of the message is inspected to chose whether a message shall be
4857 \*(OP Takes a list of messages and informs the Bayesian filter of the
4861 This also clears the
4863 flag of the messages in question.
4867 \*(OP Takes a list of messages and rates them using the configured
4868 .Va spam-interface ,
4869 without modifying the messages, but setting their
4871 flag as appropriate; because the spam rating headers are lost the rate
4872 will be forgotten once the mailbox is left.
4873 Refer to the manual section
4875 for the complete picture of spam handling in \*(UA.
4879 \*(OP Takes a list of messages and sets their
4885 \*(OP Takes a list of messages and informs the Bayesian filter of the
4891 flag of the messages in question.
4900 Create a threaded representation of the current folder,
4901 i.\|e. indent messages that are replies to other messages in the header
4902 display and change the
4904 command and the addressing modes such that they refer to messages in the
4906 Message numbers are the same as in unthreaded mode.
4910 a header summary in threaded order is also displayed.
4919 slot for white- and blacklisting header fields.
4923 (to) Takes a message list and types out the first
4925 lines of each message on the users' terminal.
4926 Unless a special selection has been established for the
4930 command, the only header fields that are displayed are
4941 It is possible to apply compression to what is displayed by setting
4943 Messages are decrypted and converted to the terminal character set
4948 (tou) Takes a message list and marks the messages for saving in
4950 \*(UA deviates from the POSIX standard with this command,
4953 command will display the following message instead of the current one.
4959 but also displays header fields which would not pass the
4961 selection, and all parts of MIME
4962 .Ql multipart/alternative
4967 (t) Takes a message list and types out each message on the users'
4971 For MIME multipart messages, all parts with a content type of
4975 are shown, the other are hidden except for their headers.
4976 Messages are decrypted and converted to the terminal character set
4981 Delete all given accounts.
4982 An error message is shown if a given account is not defined.
4985 will discard all existing accounts.
4989 (una) Takes a list of names defined by alias commands
4990 and discards the remembered groups of users.
4993 will discard all existing aliases.
4997 Takes a message list and marks each message as not having been answered.
5003 ing, specified by its context and input sequence, both of which may be
5004 specified as a wildcard (asterisk,
5008 will remove all bindings of all contexts.
5012 Only applicable to threaded mode.
5013 Takes a message list and makes the message and all replies to it visible
5014 in header summaries again.
5015 When a message becomes the current message,
5016 it is automatically made visible.
5017 Also when a message with collapsed replies is displayed,
5018 all of these are automatically uncollapsed.
5024 mapping for the given colour type (see
5026 for a list of types) and mapping; if the optional precondition argument
5027 is used then only the exact tuple of mapping and precondition is removed.
5030 will remove all mappings (no precondition allowed).
5032 .Sx "Coloured display"
5033 for the general picture.
5037 Deletes the custom headers given as arguments.
5038 It is not possible to delete a specific body of a custom header with
5039 multiple bodies (i.e., multiple instances of the same header).
5042 will remove all custom headers.
5046 Undefine all given macros.
5047 An error message is shown if a given macro is not defined.
5050 will discard all existing macros.
5054 (u) Takes a message list and marks each message as not being deleted.
5058 Takes a message list and
5064 Takes a message list and marks each message as not being
5069 \*(OB Superseded by the multiplexer
5074 \*(OB Superseded by the multiplexer
5079 Remove all the given command
5083 will remove all ghosts.
5087 Superseded by the multiplexer
5092 Delete all given MIME types, e.g.,
5093 .Ql unmimetype text/plain
5094 will remove all registered specifications for the MIME type
5098 will discard all existing MIME types, just as will
5100 but which also reenables cache initialization via
5101 .Va mimetypes-load-control .
5105 Forget about all the given mailing lists.
5108 will remove all lists.
5113 .It Ic unmlsubscribe
5114 Remove the subscription attribute from all given mailing lists.
5117 will clear the attribute from all lists which have it set.
5128 Takes a message list and marks each message as not having been read.
5132 Superseded by the multiplexer
5137 \*(OB Superseded by the multiplexer
5142 \*(OB Superseded by the multiplexer
5147 (uns) Takes a list of internal variable names and discards their
5148 remembered values; the reverse of
5155 Deletes the shortcut names given as arguments.
5158 will remove all shortcuts.
5162 Disable sorted or threaded mode
5168 return to normal message order and,
5172 displays a header summary.
5182 Perform URL percent codec operations, rather according to RFC 3986,
5183 on all given strings.
5184 This is character set agnostic and thus locale dependent, and it may
5185 decode bytes which are invalid in the current locale, unless the input
5186 solely consists of characters in the portable character set, see
5187 .Sx "Character sets" .
5188 The first argument specifies the operation:
5192 perform plain URL percent en- and decoding, respectively.
5196 perform a slightly modified operation which should be better for
5197 pathnames: it does not allow a tilde
5199 and will neither accept hyphen
5203 as an initial character.
5207 Edit the values of or create the given variable(s) in the
5209 Boolean variables cannot be edited.
5213 This command produces the same output as the listing mode of
5217 ity adjustments, but only for the given variables.
5221 \*(OP Takes a message list and verifies each message.
5222 If a message is not a S/MIME signed message,
5223 verification will fail for it.
5224 The verification process checks if the message was signed using a valid
5226 if the message sender's email address matches one of those contained
5227 within the certificate,
5228 and if the message content has been altered.
5240 (v) Takes a message list and invokes the display editor on each message.
5241 Modified contents are discarded unless the
5247 (w) For conventional messages the body without all headers is written.
5248 The original message is never marked for deletion in the originating
5250 The output is decrypted and converted to its native format as necessary.
5251 If the output file exists, the text is appended.
5252 If a message is in MIME multipart format its first part is written to
5253 the specified file as for conventional messages, handling of the remains
5254 depends on the execution mode.
5255 No special handling of compressed files is performed.
5257 In interactive mode the user is consecutively asked for the filenames of
5258 the processed parts.
5259 For convience saving of each part may be skipped by giving an empty
5260 value, the same result as writing it to
5262 Shell piping the part content by specifying a leading vertical bar
5264 character for the filename is supported.
5265 Other user input is expanded as usually for folders, e.g., tilde
5266 expansion is performed, and contents of the destination file are
5267 overwritten if the file previously existed.
5269 \*(ID In non-interactive mode any part which does not specify a filename
5270 is ignored, and suspicious parts of filenames of the remaining parts are
5271 URL percent encoded (as via
5273 to prevent injection of malicious character sequences, resulting in
5274 a filename that will be written into the current directory.
5275 Existing files will not be overwritten, instead the part number or
5276 a dot are appended after a number sign
5278 to the name until file creation succeeds (or fails due to other
5288 \*(UA presents message headers in
5290 fuls as described under the
5293 Without arguments this command scrolls to the next window of messages,
5294 likewise if the argument is
5298 scrolls to the last,
5300 scrolls to the first, and
5305 A number argument prefixed by
5309 indicates that the window is calculated in relation to the current
5310 position, and a number without a prefix specifies an absolute position.
5316 but scrolls to the next or previous window that contains at least one
5325 .\" .Sh COMMAND ESCAPES {{{
5326 .Sh "COMMAND ESCAPES"
5328 Here is a summary of the command escapes available in compose mode,
5329 which are used to perform special functions when composing messages.
5330 Command escapes are only recognized at the beginning of lines.
5331 The actual escape character can be set via the internal variable
5333 it defaults to the tilde
5336 .Bl -tag -width ".Ic __ filename"
5339 Insert the string of text in the message prefaced by a single
5341 (If the escape character has been changed,
5342 that character must be doubled
5343 in order to send it at the beginning of a line.)
5346 .It Ic ~! Ar command
5347 Execute the indicated shell
5349 then return to the message.
5353 Same effect as typing the end-of-file character.
5356 .It Ic ~: Ar \*(UA-command Ns \0or Ic ~_ Ar \*(UA-command
5357 Execute the given \*(UA command.
5358 Not all commands, however, are allowed.
5362 Write a summary of command escapes.
5365 .It Ic ~< Ar filename
5370 .It Ic ~<! Ar command
5372 is executed using the shell.
5373 Its standard output is inserted into the message.
5376 .It Ic ~@ Op Ar filename...
5377 With no arguments, edit the attachment list interactively.
5378 If an attachment's file name is left empty,
5379 that attachment is deleted from the list.
5380 When the end of the attachment list is reached,
5381 \*(UA will ask for further attachments until an empty name is given.
5382 If a given file name solely consists of the number sign
5384 followed by a valid message number of the currently active mailbox, then
5385 the given message is attached as a MIME
5387 and the rest of this section does not apply.
5389 If character set conversion has been compiled into \*(UA, then this mode
5390 gives the user the option to specify input and output character sets,
5391 unless the file extension indicates binary content, in which case \*(UA
5392 asks whether this step shall be skipped for the attachment in question.
5393 If not skipped, then the charset that succeeds to represent the
5394 attachment data will be used in the
5396 MIME parameter of the mail message:
5398 .Bl -bullet -compact
5400 If input and output character sets are specified, then the conversion is
5401 performed on the fly.
5402 The user will be asked repeatedly until the desired conversion succeeds.
5404 If only an output character set is specified, then the input is assumed
5407 charset and will be converted to the given output charset on the fly.
5408 The user will be asked repeatedly until the desired conversion succeeds.
5410 If no character sets are specified at all then the algorithm that is
5411 documented in the section
5412 .Sx "Character sets"
5413 is applied, but directly and on the fly.
5414 The user will be asked repeatedly until the desired conversion succeeds.
5416 Finally, if an input-, but no output character set is specified, then no
5417 conversion is ever performed, but the
5419 MIME parameter value will still be set to the user input.
5421 The character set selection loop can be left by typing
5423 i.e., causing an interrupt.
5424 .\" \*(OU next sentence
5425 Note that before \*(UA version 15.0 this terminates the entire
5426 current attachment selection, not only the character set selection.
5429 Without character set conversion support, \*(UA will ask for the input
5430 character set only, and it will set the
5432 MIME parameter value to the given input, if any;
5433 if no user input is seen then the
5435 character set will be used for the parameter value instead.
5436 Note that the file extension check is not performed in this mode, since
5437 no conversion will take place anyway.
5439 Note that in non-interactive mode, for reproduceabilities sake, there
5440 will always be two questions for each attachment, regardless of whether
5441 character set conversion is available and what the file extension is.
5442 The first asks for the filename, and the second asks for the input
5443 character set to be passed through to the corresponding MIME parameter;
5444 no conversion will be tried if there is input to the latter question,
5445 otherwise the usual conversion algorithm, as above, is applied.
5446 For message attachments, the answer to the second question is completely
5451 arguments are specified for the
5453 command they are treated as a file list of
5455 -style quoted arguments, optionally also separated by commas, which are
5456 expanded and then appended to the existing list of message attachments.
5457 Message attachments can only be added via the first method.
5458 In this mode the (text) attachments are assumed to be in
5460 encoding, and will be evaluated as documented in the section
5461 .Sx "Character sets" .
5465 Inserts the string contained in the
5468 .Ql Ic ~i Ns \0Sign ) .
5469 The escape sequences tabulator
5477 Inserts the string contained in the
5480 .Ql Ic ~i Ns \0sign ) .
5481 The escape sequences tabulator
5488 .It Ic ~b Ar name ...
5489 Add the given names to the list of blind carbon copy recipients.
5492 .It Ic ~c Ar name ...
5493 Add the given names to the list of carbon copy recipients.
5497 Read the file specified by the
5499 variable into the message.
5503 Invoke the text editor on the message collected so far.
5504 After the editing session is finished,
5505 the user may continue appending text to the message.
5508 .It Ic ~F Ar messages
5509 Read the named messages into the message being sent, including all
5510 message headers and MIME parts.
5511 If no messages are specified, read in the current message.
5514 .It Ic ~f Ar messages
5515 Read the named messages into the message being sent.
5516 If no messages are specified, read in the current message.
5517 Strips down the list of header fields according to the
5519 white- and blacklist selection of
5521 For MIME multipart messages,
5522 only the first displayable part is included.
5526 Edit the message header fields
5531 by typing each one in turn and allowing the user to edit the field.
5532 The default values for these fields originate from the
5540 Edit the message header fields
5546 by typing each one in turn and allowing the user to edit the field.
5549 .It Ic ~i Ar variable
5550 Insert the value of the specified variable into the message,
5551 adding a newline character at the end.
5552 The message remains unaltered if the variable is unset or empty.
5553 The escape sequences tabulator
5560 .It Ic ~M Ar messages
5561 Read the named messages into the message being sent,
5564 If no messages are specified, read the current message.
5567 .It Ic ~m Ar messages
5568 Read the named messages into the message being sent,
5571 If no messages are specified, read the current message.
5572 Strips down the list of header fields according to the
5574 white- and blacklist selection of
5576 For MIME multipart messages,
5577 only the first displayable part is included.
5581 Display the message collected so far,
5582 prefaced by the message header fields
5583 and followed by the attachment list, if any.
5587 Abort the message being sent,
5588 copying it to the file specified by the
5595 .It Ic ~R Ar filename
5596 Read the named file into the message, indented by
5600 .It Ic ~r Ar filename
5601 Read the named file into the message.
5605 Cause the named string to become the current subject field.
5606 Newline (NL) and carriage-return (CR) bytes are invalid and will be
5607 normalized to space (SP) characters.
5610 .It Ic ~t Ar name ...
5611 Add the given name(s) to the direct recipient list.
5614 .It Ic ~U Ar messages
5615 Read in the given / current message(s) excluding all headers, indented by
5619 .It Ic ~u Ar messages
5620 Read in the given / current message(s), excluding all headers.
5624 Invoke an alternate editor (defined by the
5626 environment variable) on the message collected so far.
5627 Usually, the alternate editor will be a screen editor.
5628 After the editor is quit,
5629 the user may resume appending text to the end of the message.
5632 .It Ic ~w Ar filename
5633 Write the message onto the named file.
5635 the message is appended to it.
5641 except that the message is not saved at all.
5644 .It Ic ~| Ar command
5645 Pipe the message through the specified filter command.
5646 If the command gives no output or terminates abnormally,
5647 retain the original text of the message.
5650 is often used as a rejustifying filter.
5655 .\" .Sh INTERNAL VARIABLES {{{
5656 .Sh "INTERNAL VARIABLES"
5658 Internal \*(UA variables are controlled via the
5662 commands; prefixing a variable name with the string
5666 has the same effect as using
5672 Creation or editing of variables can be performed in the
5677 will give more insight on the given variable(s), and
5679 when called without arguments, will show a listing of all variables.
5680 Both commands support a more
5683 Some well-known variables will also become inherited from the
5686 implicitly, others can be explicitly imported with the command
5688 and henceforth share the said properties.
5691 Two different kind of internal variables exist.
5692 There are boolean variables, which can only be in one of the two states
5696 and value variables with a(n optional) string value.
5697 For the latter proper quoting is necessary upon assignment time, the
5698 introduction of the section
5700 documents the supported quoting rules.
5702 .Bd -literal -offset indent
5703 wysh set one=val\e 1 two="val 2" \e
5704 three='val "3"' four=$'val \e'4\e''
5705 varshow one two three four
5706 unset one two three four
5710 Dependent upon the actual option the string values will be interpreted
5711 as numbers, colour names, normal text etc., but there also exists
5712 a special kind of string value, the
5713 .Dq boolean string ,
5714 which must either be a decimal integer (in which case
5718 and any other value is true) or any of the (case-insensitive) strings
5724 for a false boolean and
5730 for a true boolean; a special kind of boolean string is the
5732 which is a boolean string that can optionally be prefixed with the
5733 (case-insensitive) term
5737 which causes prompting of the user in interactive mode, with the given
5738 boolean as the default value.
5740 .\" .Ss "Initial settings" {{{
5741 .\" (Keep in SYNC: ./nail.h:okeys, ./nail.rc, ./nail.1:"Initial settings")
5742 .Ss "Initial Settings"
5744 The standard POSIX 2008/Cor 2-2016 mandates the following initial
5750 .Pf no Va autoprint ,
5764 .Pf no Va ignoreeof ,
5766 .Pf no Va keepsave ,
5768 .Pf no Va outfolder ,
5776 .Pf no Va sendwait ,
5785 Notes: \*(UA does not support the
5787 variable \(en use command line options or
5789 to pass options through to a
5791 And the default global
5793 file (which is loaded unless the
5795 command line flag has been used or the
5796 .Ev NAIL_NO_SYSTEM_RC
5797 environment variable is set) bends those initial settings a bit, e.g.,
5798 it sets the variables
5803 to name a few, establishes a default
5805 selection etc., and should thus be taken into account.
5808 .\" .Ss "Variables" {{{
5811 .Bl -tag -width ".It Va _utoprin_"
5813 .It Va -account-name
5814 \*(RO Is set to the active
5819 \*(RO The status of the last command.
5822 .It Va -folder-resolved
5823 \*(RO Set to the fully resolved path of
5825 once that evaluation has occurred; rather internal.
5828 .It Va -mailbox-display
5829 \*(RO The name of the current mailbox
5831 possibly abbreviated for display purposes.
5834 .It Va -mailbox-resolved
5835 \*(RO The fully resolved path of the current mailbox.
5838 .It Va add-file-recipients
5839 \*(BO When file or pipe recipients have been specified,
5840 mention them in the corresponding address fields of the message instead
5841 of silently stripping them from their recipient list.
5842 By default such addressees are not mentioned.
5846 \*(BO Causes only the local part to be evaluated
5847 when comparing addresses.
5851 \*(BO Causes messages saved in
5853 to be appended to the end rather than prepended.
5854 This should always be set.
5858 \*(BO Causes \*(UA to prompt for the subject of each message sent.
5859 If the user responds with simply a newline,
5860 no subject field will be sent.
5864 \*(BO Causes the prompts for
5868 lists to appear after the message has been edited.
5872 \*(BO If set, \*(UA asks for files to attach at the end of each message,
5873 shall the list be found empty at that time.
5874 An empty line finalizes the list.
5878 \*(BO Causes the user to be prompted for carbon copy recipients
5879 (at the end of each message if
5883 are set) shall the list be found empty (at that time).
5884 An empty line finalizes the list.
5888 \*(BO Causes the user to be prompted for blind carbon copy
5889 recipients (at the end of each message if
5893 are set) shall the list be found empty (at that time).
5894 An empty line finalizes the list.
5898 \*(BO\*(OP Causes the user to be prompted if the message is to be
5899 signed at the end of each message.
5902 variable is ignored when this variable is set.
5906 \*(BO Alternative name for
5913 .It Va attachment-ask-content-description , \
5914 attachment-ask-content-disposition , \
5915 attachment-ask-content-id , \
5916 attachment-ask-content-type
5917 \*(BO If set then the user will be prompted for some attachment
5918 information when editing the attachment list.
5919 It is advisable to not use these but for the first of the variables;
5920 even for that it has to be noted that the data is used
5926 A sequence of characters to display in the
5930 as shown in the display of
5932 each for one type of messages (see
5933 .Sx "Message states" ) ,
5934 with the default being
5937 .Ql NU\ \ *HMFAT+\-$~
5940 variable is set, in the following order:
5942 .Bl -tag -compact -width ".It Ql _"
5964 start of a collapsed thread.
5966 an uncollapsed thread (TODO ignored for now).
5970 classified as possible spam.
5976 Specifies a list of recipients to which a blind carbon copy of each
5977 outgoing message will be sent automatically.
5981 Specifies a list of recipients to which a carbon copy of each outgoing
5982 message will be sent automatically.
5986 \*(BO Causes threads to be collapsed automatically when threaded mode
5993 \*(BO Causes the delete command to behave like
5995 thus, after deleting a message the next one will be typed automatically.
5999 \*(BO\*(OB Causes threaded mode (see the
6001 command) to be entered automatically when a folder is opened.
6003 .Ql autosort=thread .
6007 Causes sorted mode (see the
6009 command) to be entered automatically with the value of this variable as
6010 sorting method when a folder is opened, e.g.,
6011 .Ql set autosort=thread .
6015 \*(BO Enables the substitution of
6017 by the contents of the last command line in shell escapes.
6020 .It Va batch-exit-on-error
6021 \*(BO If the batch mode has been enabled via the
6023 command line option, then this variable will be consulted whenever \*(UA
6024 completes one operation (returns to the command prompt); if it is set
6025 then \*(UA will terminate if the last operation generated an error.
6029 \*(OP Terminals generate multi-byte sequences for certain forms of
6030 input, for example for function and other special keys.
6031 Some terminals however do not write these multi-byte sequences as
6032 a whole, but byte-by-byte, and the latter is what \*(UA actually reads.
6033 This variable specifies the timeout in milliseconds that the MLE (see
6034 .Sx "On terminal control and line editor" )
6035 waits for more bytes to arrive unless it considers a sequence
6041 \*(BO Causes automatic display of a header summary after executing a
6043 command, and thus complements the standard variable
6045 which controls header summary display on program startup.
6046 It is only meaningful if
6052 \*(BO Sets some cosmetical features to traditional BSD style;
6053 has the same affect as setting
6055 and all other variables prefixed with
6057 it also changes the behaviour of
6059 (which does not exist in BSD).
6063 \*(BO Changes the letters shown in the first column of a header
6064 summary to traditional BSD style.
6068 \*(BO Changes the display of columns in a header summary to traditional
6073 \*(BO Changes some informational messages to traditional BSD style.
6079 field to appear immediately after the
6081 field in message headers and with the
6083 .Sx "COMMAND ESCAPES" .
6087 The value that should appear in the
6091 MIME header fields when no character set conversion of the message data
6093 This defaults to US-ASCII, and the chosen character set should be
6094 US-ASCII compatible.
6098 \*(OP The default 8-bit character set that is used as an implicit last
6099 member of the variable
6101 This defaults to UTF-8.
6102 If no character set conversion capabilities are available in \*(UA then
6103 the only supported character set is
6105 Refer to the section
6106 .Sx "Character sets"
6107 for the complete picture of character set conversion in \*(UA.
6110 .It Va charset-unknown-8bit
6111 \*(OP RFC 1428 specifies conditions when internet mail gateways shall
6113 the content of a mail message by using a character set with the name
6115 Because of the unclassified nature of this character set \*(UA will not
6116 be capable to convert this character set to any other character set.
6117 If this variable is set any message part which uses the character set
6119 is assumed to really be in the character set given in the value,
6120 otherwise the (final) value of
6122 is used for this purpose.
6124 This variable will also be taken into account if a MIME type (see
6125 .Sx "The mime.types files" )
6126 of a MIME message part that uses the
6128 character set is forcefully treated as text.
6132 The default value for the
6137 .It Va colour-disable
6138 \*(BO\*(OP Forcefully disable usage of colours.
6139 Also see the section
6140 .Sx "Coloured display" .
6144 \*(BO\*(OP Whether colour shall be used for output that is paged through
6146 Note that pagers may need special flags, e.g.,
6154 in order to support colours.
6155 Often doing manual adjustments is unnecessary since \*(UA may perform
6156 adjustments dependent on the value of the environment variable
6158 (see there for more).
6162 In a(n interactive) terminal session, then if this valued variable is
6163 set it will be used as a threshold to determine how many lines the given
6164 output has to span before it will be displayed via the configured
6168 can be forced by setting this to the value
6170 setting it without a value will deduce the current height of the
6171 terminal screen to compute the treshold (see
6179 \*(OB A variable counterpart of the
6181 command (see there for documentation), interpreted as a comma-separated
6182 list of custom headers to be injected, to include commas in the header
6183 bodies escape them with reverse solidus, e.g.:
6185 .Dl set customhdr='Hdr1: Body1-1\e, Body1-2, Hdr2: Body2'
6191 the message date, if any is to be displayed according to the format of
6193 is by default taken from the
6195 line of the message.
6196 If this variable is set the date as given in the
6198 header field is used instead, converted to local time.
6199 To control the display format of the date assign a valid
6204 format should not be used, because \*(UA does not take embedded newlines
6205 into account when calculating how many lines fit onto the screen.)
6207 .Va datefield-markout-older .
6210 .It Va datefield-markout-older
6211 This variable, when set in addition to
6215 messages (concept is rather comparable to the
6217 option of the POSIX utility
6219 The content interpretation is identical to
6224 \*(BO Enables debug messages and obsoletion warnings, disables the
6225 actual delivery of messages and also implies
6231 .It Va disposition-notification-send
6233 .Ql Disposition-Notification-To:
6234 header (RFC 3798) with the message.
6238 .\" TODO .It Va disposition-notification-send-HOST
6240 .\".Va disposition-notification-send
6241 .\" for SMTP accounts on a specific host.
6242 .\" TODO .It Va disposition-notification-send-USER@HOST
6244 .\".Va disposition-notification-send
6245 .\"for a specific account.
6249 \*(BO When dot is set, a period
6251 on a line by itself during message input in (interactive) compose mode
6252 will be treated as end-of-message (in addition to the normal end-of-file
6261 .It Va dotlock-ignore-error
6262 \*(BO\*(OP Synchronization of mailboxes which \*(UA treats as system
6263 mailboxes (see the command
6265 will be protected with so-called dotlock files\(emthe traditional mail
6266 spool file locking method\(emin addition to system file locking.
6267 Because \*(UA ships with a privilege-separated dotlock creation program
6268 that should always be able to create such a dotlock file there is no
6269 good reason to ignore dotlock file creation errors, and thus these are
6270 fatal unless this variable is set.
6274 \*(BO If this variable is set then the editor is started automatically
6275 when a message is composed in interactive mode, as if the
6277 .Sx "COMMAND ESCAPES"
6281 variable is implied for this automatically spawned editor session.
6285 \*(BO When a message is edited while being composed,
6286 its header is included in the editable text.
6296 fields are accepted within the header, other fields are ignored.
6300 \*(BO When entering interactive mode \*(UA normally writes
6301 .Dq \&No mail for user
6302 and exits immediately if a mailbox is empty or does not exist.
6303 If this variable is set \*(UA starts even with an empty or nonexistent
6304 mailbox (the latter behaviour furtherly depends upon
6311 .Ql Content-Transfer-Encoding
6312 to use in outgoing text messages and message parts, where applicable.
6313 (7-bit clean text messages are sent as-is, without a transfer encoding.)
6316 .Bl -tag -compact -width "_%%_"
6319 8-bit transport effectively causes the raw data be passed through
6320 unchanged, but may cause problems when transferring mail messages over
6321 channels that are not ESMTP (RFC 1869) compliant.
6322 Also, several input data constructs are not allowed by the
6323 specifications and may cause a different transfer-encoding to be used.
6324 .It Ql quoted-printable
6326 Quoted-printable encoding is 7-bit clean and has the property that ASCII
6327 characters are passed through unchanged, so that an english message can
6328 be read as-is; it is also acceptible for other single-byte locales that
6329 share many characters with ASCII, like, e.g., ISO-8859-1.
6330 The encoding will cause a large overhead for messages in other character
6331 sets: e.g., it will require up to twelve (12) bytes to encode a single
6332 UTF-8 character of four (4) bytes.
6334 .Pf (Or\0 Ql b64 . )
6335 The default encoding, it is 7-bit clean and will always be used for
6337 This encoding has a constant input:output ratio of 3:4, regardless of
6338 the character set of the input data it will encode three bytes of input
6339 to four bytes of output.
6340 This transfer-encoding is not human readable without performing
6346 If defined, the first character of the value of this variable
6347 gives the character to use in place of
6350 .Sx "COMMAND ESCAPES" .
6354 If not set then file and command pipeline targets are not allowed,
6355 and any such address will be filtered out, giving a warning message.
6356 If set without a value then all possible recipient address
6357 specifications will be accepted \(en see the section
6358 .Sx "On sending mail, and non-interactive mode"
6360 To accept them, but only in interactive mode, or when tilde commands
6361 were enabled explicitly by using one of the command line options
6365 set this to the (case-insensitive) value
6367 (note right now this is actually like setting
6368 .Ql restrict,-all,+name,+addr ) .
6370 In fact the value is interpreted as a comma-separated list of values.
6373 then the existence of disallowed specifications is treated as a hard
6374 send error instead of only filtering them out.
6375 The remaining values specify whether a specific type of recipient
6376 address specification is allowed (optionally indicated by a plus sign
6378 prefix) or disallowed (prefixed with a hyphen
6382 addresses all possible address specifications,
6386 command pipeline targets,
6388 plain user names and (MTA) aliases (\*(OB
6390 may be used as an alternative syntax to
6395 These kind of values are interpreted in the given order, so that
6396 .Ql restrict,\:fail,\:+file,\:-all,\:+addr
6397 will cause hard errors for any non-network address recipient address
6398 unless \*(UA is in interactive mode or has been started with the
6402 command line option; in the latter case(s) any address may be used, then.
6406 Unless this variable is set additional
6408 (Mail-Transfer-Agent)
6409 arguments from the command line, as can be given after a
6411 separator, are ignored due to safety reasons.
6412 However, if set to the special (case-insensitive) value
6414 then the presence of additional MTA arguments is treated as a hard
6415 error that causes \*(UA to exit with failure status.
6416 A lesser strict variant is the otherwise identical
6418 which does accept such arguments in interactive mode, or if tilde
6419 commands were enabled explicitly by using one of the command line options
6426 \*(RO String giving a list of features \*(UA, preceded with a plus-sign
6428 if the feature is available, and a minus-sign
6431 The output of the command
6433 will include this information.
6437 \*(BO This setting reverses the meanings of a set of reply commands,
6438 turning the lowercase variants, which by default address all recipients
6439 included in the header of a message
6440 .Pf ( Ic reply , respond , followup )
6441 into the uppercase variants, which by default address the sender only
6442 .Pf ( Ic Reply , Respond , Followup )
6445 .Ic replysender , respondsender , followupsender
6447 .Ic replyall , respondall , followupall
6448 are not affected by the current setting of
6453 .It Va file-hook-load-EXTENSION , file-hook-save-EXTENSION
6454 It is possible to install file hooks which will be used by the
6456 command in order to be able to transparently handle (through an
6457 intermediate temporary file) files with specific
6459 s: the variable values can include shell snippets and are expected to
6460 write data to standard output / read data from standard input,
6462 \*(ID The variables may not be changed while there is a mailbox
6464 .Bd -literal -offset indent
6465 set file-hook-load-xy='echo >&2 XY-LOAD; gzip -cd' \e
6466 file-hook-save-xy='echo >&2 XY-SAVE; gzip -c' \e
6467 record=+null-sent.xy
6472 The default path under which mailboxes are to be saved:
6473 file names that begin with the plus-sign
6475 will be expanded by prefixing them with the value of this variable.
6476 The same special syntax conventions as documented for the
6478 command may be used; if the non-empty value does not start with a solidus
6482 will be prefixed automatically.
6483 If unset or the empty string any
6485 prefixing file names will remain unexpanded.
6489 This variable can be set to the name of a
6491 macro which will be called whenever a
6494 The macro will also be invoked when new mail arrives,
6495 but message lists for commands executed from the macro
6496 only include newly arrived messages then.
6498 are activated by default in a folder hook, causing the covered settings
6499 to be reverted once the folder is left again.
6502 Macro behaviour, including option localization, will change in v15.
6503 Please be aware of that and possibly embed a version check in a resource
6507 .It Va folder-hook-FOLDER
6512 Unlike other folder specifications, the fully expanded name of a folder,
6513 without metacharacters, is used to avoid ambiguities.
6514 However, if the mailbox resides under
6518 specification is tried in addition, e.g., if
6522 (and thus relative to the user's home directory) then
6523 .Pa /home/usr1/mail/sent
6525 .Ql folder-hook-/home/usr1/mail/sent
6526 first, but then followed by
6527 .Ql folder-hook-+sent .
6531 \*(BO Controls whether a
6532 .Ql Mail-Followup-To:
6533 header is generated when sending messages to known mailing lists.
6535 .Va followup-to-honour
6537 .Ic mlist , mlsubscribe , reply
6542 .It Va followup-to-honour
6544 .Ql Mail-Followup-To:
6545 header is honoured when group-replying to a message via
6549 This is a quadoption; if set without a value it defaults to
6559 .It Va forward-as-attachment
6560 \*(BO Original messages are normally sent as inline text with the
6563 and only the first part of a multipart message is included.
6564 With this setting enabled messages are sent as unmodified MIME
6566 attachments with all of their parts included.
6570 The address (or a list of addresses) to put into the
6572 field of the message header, quoting RFC 5322:
6573 the author(s) of the message, that is, the mailbox(es) of the person(s)
6574 or system(s) responsible for the writing of the message.
6577 ing to messages these addresses are handled as if they were in the
6581 If the machine's hostname is not valid at the Internet (for example at
6582 a dialup machine) then either this variable or
6584 (\*(IN and with a defined SMTP protocol in
6587 adds even more fine-tuning capabilities),
6591 contains more than one address,
6594 variable is required (according to the standard RFC 5322).
6598 \*(BO When replying to or forwarding a message \*(UA normally removes
6599 the comment and name parts of email addresses.
6600 If this variable is set such stripping is not performed,
6601 and comments, names etc. are retained.
6605 The string to put before the text of a message with the
6609 .Va forward-as-attachment
6612 .Dq -------- Original Message --------
6613 if unset; No heading is put if it is set to the empty string.
6617 \*(BO Causes the header summary to be written at startup and after
6618 commands that affect the number of messages or the order of messages in
6619 the current folder; enabled by default.
6620 The command line option
6626 complements this and controls header summary display on folder changes.
6631 A format string to use for the summary of
6633 similar to the ones used for
6636 Format specifiers in the given string start with a percent character
6638 and may be followed by an optional decimal number indicating the field
6639 width \(em if that is negative, the field is to be left-aligned.
6640 Valid format specifiers are:
6643 .Bl -tag -compact -width "_%%_"
6645 A plain percent character.
6648 a space character but for the current message
6650 for which it expands to
6654 a space character but for the current message
6656 for which it expands to
6659 \*(OP The spam score of the message, as has been classified via the
6662 Shows only a replacement character if there is no spam support.
6664 Message attribute character (status flag); the actual content can be
6668 The date when the message was received, or the date found in the
6672 variable is set (optionally to a date display format string).
6674 The indenting level in threaded mode.
6676 The address of the message sender.
6678 The message thread tree structure.
6679 (Note that this format does not support a field width.)
6681 The number of lines of the message, if available.
6685 The number of octets (bytes) in the message, if available.
6687 Message subject (if any).
6689 Message subject (if any) in double quotes.
6691 Message recipient flags: is the addressee of the message a known or
6692 subscribed mailing list \(en see
6697 The position in threaded/sorted order.
6701 .Ql %>\&%a\&%m\ %-18f\ %16d\ %4l/%\-5o\ %i%-s ,
6703 .Ql %>\&%a\&%m\ %20-f\ \ %16d\ %3l/%\-5o\ %i%-S
6714 .It Va headline-bidi
6715 Bidirectional text requires special treatment when displaying headers,
6716 because numbers (in dates or for file sizes etc.) will not affect the
6717 current text direction, in effect resulting in ugly line layouts when
6718 arabic or other right-to-left text is to be displayed.
6719 On the other hand only a minority of terminals is capable to correctly
6720 handle direction changes, so that user interaction is necessary for
6722 Note that extended host system support is required nonetheless, e.g.,
6723 detection of the terminal character set is one precondition;
6724 and this feature only works in an Unicode (i.e., UTF-8) locale.
6726 In general setting this variable will cause \*(UA to encapsulate text
6727 fields that may occur when displaying
6729 (and some other fields, like dynamic expansions in
6731 with special Unicode control sequences;
6732 it is possible to fine-tune the terminal support level by assigning
6734 no value (or any value other than
6739 will make \*(UA assume that the terminal is capable to properly deal
6740 with Unicode version 6.3, in which case text is embedded in a pair of
6741 U+2068 (FIRST STRONG ISOLATE) and U+2069 (POP DIRECTIONAL ISOLATE)
6743 In addition no space on the line is reserved for these characters.
6745 Weaker support is chosen by using the value
6747 (Unicode 6.3, but reserve the room of two spaces for writing the control
6748 sequences onto the line).
6753 select Unicode 1.1 support (U+200E, LEFT-TO-RIGHT MARK); the latter
6754 again reserves room for two spaces in addition.
6758 \*(OP If a line editor is available then this can be set to
6759 name the (expandable) path of the location of a permanent history file.
6762 .It Va history-gabby
6763 \*(BO\*(OP Add more entries to the history as is normally done.
6766 .It Va history-gabby-persist
6767 \*(BO\*(OP \*(UA's own MLE will not save the additional
6769 entries in persistent storage unless this variable is set.
6770 On the other hand it will not loose the knowledge of whether
6771 a persistent entry was gabby or not.
6777 \*(OP If a line editor is available this value restricts the
6778 amount of history entries that are saved into a set and valid
6780 A value of less than 0 disables this feature;
6781 note that loading and incorporation of
6783 upon program startup can also be suppressed by doing this.
6784 If unset or 0, a default value will be used.
6785 Dependent on the available line editor this will also define the
6786 number of history entries in memory;
6787 it is also editor-specific whether runtime updates of this value will
6792 \*(BO This setting controls whether messages are held in the system
6794 and it is set by default.
6798 Use this string as hostname when expanding local addresses instead of
6799 the value obtained from
6808 Note that when SMTP transport is not used (via
6810 then it is normally the responsibility of the MTA to create these
6811 fields, \*(IN in conjunction with SMTP however
6813 also influences the results:
6814 you should produce some test messages with the desired combination of
6823 \*(BO\*(OP Can be used to turn off the automatic conversion of domain
6824 names according to the rules of IDNA (internationalized domain names
6826 Since the IDNA code assumes that domain names are specified with the
6828 character set, an UTF-8 locale charset is required to represent all
6829 possible international domain names (before conversion, that is).
6833 \*(BO Ignore interrupt signals from the terminal while entering
6834 messages; instead echo them as
6836 characters and discard the current line.
6840 \*(BO Ignore end-of-file conditions
6841 .Pf ( Ql control-D )
6842 in compose mode on message input and in interactive command input.
6843 If set an interactive command input session can only be left by
6844 explicitly using one of the commands
6848 and message input in compose mode can only be terminated by entering
6851 on a line by itself or by using the
6853 .Sx "COMMAND ESCAPES" ;
6855 overrides a setting of
6860 If this is set to a non-empty string it will be used for expansions of
6865 The value supports a subset of filename expansions itself.
6873 .Sx "COMMAND ESCAPES"
6876 option for indenting messages,
6877 in place of the normal tabulator character
6879 which is the default.
6880 Be sure to quote the value if it contains spaces or tabs.
6884 \*(BO If set, an empty system (MBOX) mailbox file is not removed.
6885 Note that, in conjunction with
6888 .Ev POSIXLY_CORRECT )
6889 any empty file will be removed unless this variable is set.
6890 This may improve the interoperability with other mail user agents
6891 when using a common folder directory, and prevents malicious users
6892 from creating fake mailboxes in a world-writable spool directory.
6893 \*(ID Only local regular (MBOX) files are covered, Maildir or other
6894 mailbox types will never be removed, even if empty.
6897 .It Va keep-content-length
6898 \*(BO When (editing messages and) writing
6900 mailbox files \*(UA can be told to keep the
6904 header fields that some MUAs generate by setting this variable.
6905 Since \*(UA does neither use nor update these non-standardized header
6906 fields (which in itself shows one of their conceptual problems),
6907 stripping them should increase interoperability in between MUAs that
6908 work with with same mailbox files.
6909 Note that, if this is not set but
6910 .Va writebackedited ,
6911 as below, is, a possibly performed automatic stripping of these header
6912 fields already marks the message as being modified.
6916 \*(BO When a message is saved it is usually discarded from the
6917 originating folder when \*(UA is quit.
6918 This setting causes all saved message to be retained.
6921 .It Va line-editor-disable
6922 \*(BO Turn off any enhanced line editing capabilities (see
6923 .Sx "On terminal control and line editor"
6927 .It Va line-editor-no-defaults
6928 \*(BO\*(OP Do not establish any default key binding.
6932 \*(BO When a message is replied to and this variable is set,
6933 it is marked as having been answered.
6934 This mark has no technical meaning in the mail system;
6935 it just causes messages to be marked in the header summary,
6936 and makes them specially addressable.
6940 \*(BO Internal development variable.
6943 .It Va message-id-disable
6944 \*(BO By setting this variable the generation of
6946 can be completely suppressed, effectively leaving this task up to the
6948 (Mail-Transfer-Agent) or the SMTP server.
6949 (According to RFC 5321 your SMTP server is not required to add this
6950 field by itself, so you should ensure that it accepts messages without a
6954 .It Va message-inject-head
6955 A string to put at the beginning of each new message.
6956 The escape sequences tabulator
6963 .It Va message-inject-tail
6964 A string to put at the end of each new message.
6965 The escape sequences tabulator
6973 \*(BO Usually, when an
6975 expansion contains the sender, the sender is removed from the expansion.
6976 Setting this option suppresses these removals.
6981 option to be passed through to the
6983 (Mail-Transfer-Agent); though most of the modern MTAs no longer document
6984 this flag, no MTA is known which does not support it (for historical
6988 .It Va mime-allow-text-controls
6989 \*(BO When sending messages, each part of the message is MIME-inspected
6990 in order to classify the
6993 .Ql Content-Transfer-Encoding:
6996 that is required to send this part over mail transport, i.e.,
6997 a computation rather similar to what the
6999 command produces when used with the
7003 This classification however treats text files which are encoded in
7004 UTF-16 (seen for HTML files) and similar character sets as binary
7005 octet-streams, forcefully changing any
7010 .Ql application/octet-stream :
7011 If that actually happens a yet unset charset MIME parameter is set to
7013 effectively making it impossible for the receiving MUA to automatically
7014 interpret the contents of the part.
7016 If this variable is set, and the data was unambiguously identified as
7017 text data at first glance (by a
7021 file extension), then the original
7023 will not be overwritten.
7026 .It Va mime-alternative-favour-rich
7027 \*(BO If this variable is set then rich MIME alternative parts (e.g.,
7028 HTML) will be preferred in favour of included plain text versions when
7029 displaying messages, provided that a handler exists which produces
7030 output that can be (re)integrated into \*(UA's normal visual display.
7031 (E.g., at the time of this writing some newsletters ship their full
7032 content only in the rich HTML part, whereas the plain text part only
7033 contains topic subjects.)
7036 .It Va mime-counter-evidence
7039 field is used to decide how to handle MIME parts.
7040 Some MUAs however do not use
7042 or a similar mechanism to correctly classify content, but simply specify
7043 .Ql application/octet-stream ,
7044 even for plain text attachments like
7046 If this variable is set then \*(UA will try to classify such MIME
7047 message parts on its own, if possible, for example via a possibly
7048 existing attachment filename.
7049 A non-empty value may also be given, in which case a number is expected,
7050 actually a carrier of bits.
7051 Creating the bit-carrying number is a simple addition:
7052 .Bd -literal -offset indent
7053 ? !echo Value should be set to $((2 + 4 + 8))
7054 Value should be set to 14
7057 .Bl -bullet -compact
7059 If bit two is set (2) then the detected
7061 content-type will be carried along with the message and be used for
7063 .Va pipe-TYPE/SUBTYPE
7064 is responsible for the MIME part, shall that question arise;
7065 when displaying such a MIME part the part-info will indicate the
7066 overridden content-type by showing a plus-sign
7069 If bit three is set (4) then the counter-evidence is always produced
7070 and a positive result will be used as the MIME type, even forcefully
7071 overriding the parts given MIME type.
7073 If bit four is set (8) then as a last resort the actual content of
7074 .Ql application/octet-stream
7075 parts will be inspected, so that data which looks like plain text can be
7080 .It Va mimetypes-load-control
7081 Can be used to control which of the
7083 databases are loaded by \*(UA, as furtherly described in the section
7084 .Sx "The mime.types files" .
7087 is part of the option value, then the user's personal
7089 file will be loaded (if it exists); likewise the letter
7091 controls loading of the system wide
7092 .Pa /etc/mime.types ;
7093 directives found in the user file take precedence, letter matching is
7095 If this variable is not set \*(UA will try to load both files.
7096 Incorporation of the \*(UA-builtin MIME types cannot be suppressed,
7097 but they will be matched last (the order can be listed via
7100 More sources can be specified by using a different syntax: if the
7101 value string contains an equals sign
7103 then it is instead parsed as a comma-separated list of the described
7106 pairs; the given filenames will be expanded and loaded, and their
7107 content may use the extended syntax that is described in the section
7108 .Sx "The mime.types files" .
7109 Directives found in such files always take precedence (are prepended to
7110 the MIME type cache).
7115 To choose an alternate Mail-Transfer-Agent, set this option to either
7116 the full pathname of an executable (optionally prefixed with a
7118 protocol indicator), or \*(OPally a SMTP protocol URL, e.g., \*(IN
7120 .Dl smtps?://[user[:password]@]server[:port]
7123 .Ql [smtp://]server[:port] . )
7124 The default has been chosen at compie time.
7125 All supported data transfers are executed in child processes, which
7126 run asynchronously, and without supervision, unless either the
7131 If such a child receives a TERM signal, it will abort and
7138 For a file-based MTA it may be necessary to set
7140 in in order to choose the right target of a modern
7143 It will be passed command line arguments from several possible sources:
7146 if set, from the command line if given and the variable
7149 Argument processing of the MTA will be terminated with a
7154 The otherwise occurring implicit usage of the following MTA command
7155 line arguments can be disabled by setting the boolean variable
7156 .Va mta-no-default-arguments
7157 (which will also disable passing
7161 (for not treating a line with only a dot
7163 character as the end of input),
7171 variable is set); in conjunction with the
7173 command line option \*(UA will also pass
7179 \*(OP \*(UA can send mail over SMTP network connections to a single
7180 defined SMTP smarthost, the access URL of which has to be assigned to
7182 To use this mode it is helpful to read
7183 .Sx "On URL syntax and credential lookup" .
7184 It may be necessary to set the
7186 variable in order to use a specific combination of
7191 with some mail providers.
7194 .Bl -bullet -compact
7196 The plain SMTP protocol (RFC 5321) that normally lives on the
7197 server port 25 and requires setting the
7198 .Va smtp-use-starttls
7199 variable to enter a SSL/TLS encrypted session state.
7200 Assign a value like \*(IN
7201 .Ql smtp://[user[:password]@]server[:port]
7203 .Ql smtp://server[:port] )
7204 to choose this protocol.
7206 The so-called SMTPS which is supposed to live on server port 465
7207 and is automatically SSL/TLS secured.
7208 Unfortunately it never became a standardized protocol and may thus not
7209 be supported by your hosts network service database
7210 \(en in fact the port number has already been reassigned to other
7213 SMTPS is nonetheless a commonly offered protocol and thus can be
7214 chosen by assigning a value like \*(IN
7215 .Ql smtps://[user[:password]@]server[:port]
7217 .Ql smtps://server[:port] ) ;
7218 due to the mentioned problems it is usually necessary to explicitly
7223 Finally there is the SUBMISSION protocol (RFC 6409), which usually
7224 lives on server port 587 and is practically identically to the SMTP
7225 protocol from \*(UA's point of view beside that; it requires setting the
7226 .Va smtp-use-starttls
7227 variable to enter a SSL/TLS secured session state.
7228 Assign a value like \*(IN
7229 .Ql submission://[user[:password]@]server[:port]
7231 .Ql submission://server[:port] ) .
7236 .It Va mta-arguments
7237 Arguments to pass through to a file-based
7239 can be given via this variable, the content of which will be split up in
7240 a vector of arguments, to be joined onto other possible MTA options:
7242 .Dl set mta-arguments='-t -X \&"/tmp/my log\&"'
7245 .It Va mta-no-default-arguments
7246 \*(BO Unless this variable is set \*(UA will pass some well known
7247 standard command line options to a file-based
7249 (Mail-Transfer-Agent), see there for more.
7253 Many systems use a so-called
7255 environment to ensure compatibility with
7257 This works by inspecting the name that was used to invoke the mail
7259 If this variable is set then the mailwrapper (the program that is
7260 actually executed when calling the file-based
7262 will treat its contents as that name.
7267 .It Va NAIL_EXTRA_RC
7268 The name of an optional startup file to be read last.
7269 This variable has an effect only if it is set in any of the
7270 .Sx "Resource files" ,
7271 it is not imported from the environment.
7272 Use this file for commands that are not understood by other POSIX
7277 .It Va netrc-lookup-USER@HOST , netrc-lookup-HOST , netrc-lookup
7278 \*(BO\*(IN\*(OP Used to control usage of the users
7280 file for lookup of account credentials, as documented in the section
7281 .Sx "On URL syntax and credential lookup"
7285 .Sx "The .netrc file"
7286 documents the file format.
7298 then \*(UA will read the output of a shell pipe instead of the users
7300 file if this variable is set (to the desired shell command).
7301 This can be used to, e.g., store
7305 .Dl set netrc-pipe='gpg -qd ~/.netrc.pgp'
7309 If this variable has the value
7311 newly created local folders will be in Maildir format.
7315 Checks for new mail in the current folder each time the prompt is shown.
7316 A Maildir folder must be re-scanned to determine if new mail has arrived.
7317 If this variable is set to the special value
7319 then a Maildir folder will not be rescanned completely, but only
7320 timestamp changes are detected.
7323 .It Va on-compose-done-shell
7324 The specified shell command will be run once the normal compose mode is
7325 finished, but before the
7326 .Va on-compose-leave
7327 macro hook is called, the
7329 is injected etc., with its input and output are connected to \*(UA
7330 that makes it appear and act as if it would be an interactive user.
7332 are by default enabled for this hook, causing any setting to be
7333 forgotten after the message has been sent.
7335 During execution of this hook \*(UA will temporarily forget whether it
7336 has been started in interactive mode though, (a restricted set of)
7337 .Sx "COMMAND ESCAPES"
7338 will always be available, and soft newline escaping via a trailing
7339 reverse solidus character is not supported.
7340 \*(ID because most \*(UA commands do not take this new functionality
7341 into account but are ment for human interaction special care must be
7342 taken to avoid deadlocks because of unexpected control flow!
7343 The compose-mode command
7345 has been especially designed for scriptability (via this hook).
7346 The first line the hook will read on its standard input is the protocol
7347 version of said command escape, currently
7349 backward incompatible protocol changes are to be expected in the
7350 future, and it is advisable to make use of the protocol version.
7351 .Bd -literal -offset indent
7352 wysh set on-compose-done-shell=$'\e
7354 echo \e'!^header list\e';\e
7355 printf "hello $version! Headers: ";\e
7356 read status result;\e
7357 echo "status=$status result=$result";\e
7363 .It Va on-compose-enter , on-compose-leave
7364 \*(ID Macro hooks which will be executed before compose mode is
7365 entered, and after composing has been finished, respectively.
7366 Please note that this interface is very likely to change in v15, and
7367 should therefore possibly even be seen as experimental.
7369 are by default enabled for these hooks, causing any setting to be
7370 forgotten after the message has been sent.
7371 The following variables will be set temporarily during execution of the
7374 .Bl -tag -compact -width ".It Va compose_subject"
7377 .It Va compose-sender
7379 .It Va compose-to , compose-cc , compose-bcc
7380 The list of receiver addresses as a space-separated list.
7381 .It Va compose-subject
7387 \*(BO Causes the filename given in the
7390 and the sender-based filenames for the
7394 commands to be interpreted relative to the directory given in the
7396 variable rather than to the current directory,
7397 unless it is set to an absolute pathname.
7401 \*(BO If set, each message feed through the command given for
7403 is followed by a formfeed character
7407 .It Va password-USER@HOST , password-HOST , password
7408 \*(IN Variable chain that sets a password, which is used in case none has
7409 been given in the protocol and account-specific URL;
7410 as a last resort \*(UA will ask for a password on the user's terminal if
7411 the authentication method requires a password.
7412 Specifying passwords in a startup file is generally a security risk;
7413 the file should be readable by the invoking user only.
7415 .It Va password-USER@HOST
7416 \*(OU (see the chain above for \*(IN)
7417 Set the password for
7421 If no such variable is defined for a host,
7422 the user will be asked for a password on standard input.
7423 Specifying passwords in a startup file is generally a security risk;
7424 the file should be readable by the invoking user only.
7428 \*(BO Send messages to the
7430 command without performing MIME and character set conversions.
7434 .It Va pipe-TYPE/SUBTYPE
7435 When a MIME message part of type
7437 (case-insensitive) is displayed or quoted,
7438 its text is filtered through the value of this variable interpreted as
7442 forces interpretation of the message part as plain text, e.g.,
7443 .Ql set pipe-application/xml=@
7444 will henceforth display XML
7446 (The same could also be achieved by adding a MIME type marker with the
7449 And \*(OPally MIME type handlers may be defined via
7450 .Sx "The Mailcap files"
7451 \(em corresponding flag strings are shown in parenthesis below.)
7456 can in fact be used to adjust usage and behaviour of a following shell
7457 command specification by appending trigger characters to it, e.g., the
7458 following hypothetical command specification could be used:
7459 .Bd -literal -offset indent
7460 set pipe-X/Y='@*!++=@vim ${NAIL_FILENAME_TEMPORARY}'
7464 .Bl -tag -compact -width ".It Ql __"
7466 Simply by using the special
7468 prefix the MIME type (shell command) handler will only be invoked to
7469 display or convert the MIME part if the message is addressed directly
7470 and alone by itself.
7471 Use this trigger to disable this and always invoke the handler
7472 .Pf ( Cd x-mailx-always ) .
7475 If set the handler will not be invoked when a message is to be quoted,
7476 but only when it will be displayed
7477 .Pf ( Cd x-mailx-noquote ) .
7480 The command will be run asynchronously, i.e., without blocking \*(UA,
7481 which may be a handy way to display a, e.g., PDF file while also
7482 continuing to read the mail message
7483 .Pf ( Cd x-mailx-async ) .
7484 Asynchronous execution implies
7488 The command must be run on an interactive terminal, \*(UA will
7489 temporarily release the terminal to it
7490 .Pf ( Cd needsterminal ) .
7491 This flag is mutual exclusive with
7493 will only be used in interactive mode and implies
7497 Request creation of a zero-sized temporary file, the absolute pathname
7498 of which will be made accessible via the environment variable
7499 .Ev NAIL_FILENAME_TEMPORARY
7500 .Pf ( Cd x-mailx-tmpfile ) .
7501 If this trigger is given twice then the file will be unlinked
7502 automatically by \*(UA when the command loop is entered again at latest
7503 .Pf ( Cd x-mailx-tmpfile-unlink ) .
7504 (Do not use this for asynchronous handlers.)
7507 Normally the MIME part content is passed to the handler via standard
7508 input; if this flag is set then the data will instead be written into
7509 .Ev NAIL_FILENAME_TEMPORARY
7510 .Pf ( Cd x-mailx-tmpfile-fill ) ,
7511 the creation of which is implied; note however that in order to cause
7512 deletion of the temporary file you still have to use two plus signs
7517 To avoid ambiguities with normal shell command content you can use
7518 another at-sign to forcefully terminate interpretation of remaining
7520 (Any character not in this list will have the same effect.)
7524 Some information about the MIME part to be displayed is embedded into
7525 the environment of the shell command:
7528 .Bl -tag -compact -width ".It Ev _AIL__ILENAME__ENERATED"
7531 The MIME content-type of the part, if known, the empty string otherwise.
7534 .It Ev NAIL_CONTENT_EVIDENCE
7536 .Va mime-counter-evidence
7537 includes the carry-around-bit (2), then this will be set to the detected
7538 MIME content-type; not only then identical to
7539 .Ev \&\&NAIL_CONTENT
7543 .It Ev NAIL_FILENAME
7544 The filename, if any is set, the empty string otherwise.
7547 .It Ev NAIL_FILENAME_GENERATED
7551 .It Ev NAIL_FILENAME_TEMPORARY
7552 If temporary file creation has been requested through the command prefix
7553 this variable will be set and contain the absolute pathname of the
7558 The temporary directory that \*(UA uses.
7559 Usually identical to
7561 but guaranteed to be set and usable by child processes;
7562 to ensure the latter condition for
7564 also, it will be set.
7569 .It Va pipe-EXTENSION
7570 This is identical to
7571 .Va pipe-TYPE/SUBTYPE
7574 (normalized to lowercase using character mappings of the ASCII charset)
7575 names a file extension, e.g.,
7577 Handlers registered using this method take precedence.
7580 .It Va pop3-auth-USER@HOST , pop3-auth-HOST , pop3-auth
7581 \*(OP\*(IN Variable chain that sets the POP3 authentication method.
7582 The only possible value as of now is
7584 which is thus the default.
7587 .Mx Va pop3-bulk-load
7588 .It Va pop3-bulk-load-USER@HOST , pop3-bulk-load-HOST , pop3-bulk-load
7589 \*(BO\*(OP When accessing a POP3 server \*(UA loads the headers of
7590 the messages, and only requests the message bodies on user request.
7591 For the POP3 protocol this means that the message headers will be
7593 If this variable is set then \*(UA will download only complete messages
7594 from the given POP3 server(s) instead.
7596 .Mx Va pop3-keepalive
7597 .It Va pop3-keepalive-USER@HOST , pop3-keepalive-HOST , pop3-keepalive
7598 \*(OP POP3 servers close the connection after a period of inactivity;
7599 the standard requires this to be at least 10 minutes,
7600 but practical experience may vary.
7601 Setting this variable to a numeric value greater than
7605 command to be sent each value seconds if no other operation is performed.
7608 .It Va pop3-no-apop-USER@HOST , pop3-no-apop-HOST , pop3-no-apop
7609 \*(BO\*(OP Unless this variable is set the
7611 authentication method will be used when connecting to a POP3 server that
7615 is that the password is not sent in clear text over the wire and that
7616 only a single packet is sent for the user/password tuple.
7618 .Va pop3-no-apop-HOST
7621 .Mx Va pop3-use-starttls
7622 .It Va pop3-use-starttls-USER@HOST , pop3-use-starttls-HOST , pop3-use-starttls
7623 \*(BO\*(OP Causes \*(UA to issue a
7625 command to make an unencrypted POP3 session SSL/TLS encrypted.
7626 This functionality is not supported by all servers,
7627 and is not used if the session is already encrypted by the POP3S method.
7629 .Va pop3-use-starttls-HOST
7634 \*(BO This flag enables POSIX mode, which changes behaviour of \*(UA
7635 where that deviates from standardized behaviour.
7636 It will be set implicitly before the
7637 .Sx "Resource files"
7638 are loaded if the environment variable
7640 is set, and adjusting any of those two will be reflected by the other
7644 .It Va print-alternatives
7645 \*(BO When a MIME message part of type
7646 .Ql multipart/alternative
7647 is displayed and it contains a subpart of type
7649 other parts are normally discarded.
7650 Setting this variable causes all subparts to be displayed,
7651 just as if the surrounding part was of type
7652 .Ql multipart/mixed .
7656 The string used as a prompt in interactive mode.
7657 Whenever the variable is evaluated the value is shell-expanded using
7658 dollar-single-quote expansion mode (see
7660 and it is an error if the prompt expands to more than a single token.
7661 This (post-assignment, i.e., second) expansion can be used to embed
7662 status information, for example
7666 .Va -mailbox-display .
7667 In order to embed characters which should not be counted when
7668 calculating the visual width of the resulting string, enclose the
7669 characters of interest in a pair of reverse solidus escaped brackets:
7671 Prompting may be prevented by setting this to the null string
7673 .Ql set noprompt ) .
7677 This string is used for secondary prompts, but is otherwise identical to
7684 \*(BO Suppresses the printing of the version when first invoked.
7688 If set, \*(UA starts a replying message with the original message
7689 prefixed by the value of the variable
7691 Normally, a heading consisting of
7692 .Dq Fromheaderfield wrote:
7693 is put before the quotation.
7698 variable, this heading is omitted.
7701 is assigned, only the headers selected by the
7704 selection are put above the message body,
7707 acts like an automatic
7709 .Sx "COMMAND ESCAPES"
7713 is assigned, all headers are put above the message body and all MIME
7714 parts are included, making
7716 act like an automatic
7719 .Va quote-as-attachment .
7722 .It Va quote-as-attachment
7723 \*(BO Add the original message in its entirety as a
7725 MIME attachment when replying to a message.
7726 Note this works regardless of the setting of
7731 \*(OP Can be set in addition to
7733 Setting this turns on a more fancy quotation algorithm in that leading
7734 quotation characters are compressed and overlong lines are folded.
7736 can be set to either one or two (space separated) numeric values,
7737 which are interpreted as the maximum (goal) and the minimum line length,
7738 respectively, in a spirit rather equal to the
7740 program, but line-, not paragraph-based.
7741 If not set explicitly the minimum will reflect the goal algorithmically.
7742 The goal cannot be smaller than the length of
7744 plus some additional pad.
7745 Necessary adjustments take place silently.
7748 .It Va recipients-in-cc
7749 \*(BO On group replies, specify only the sender of the original mail in
7751 and mention the other recipients in the secondary
7753 By default all recipients of the original mail will be addressed via
7758 If defined, gives the pathname of the folder used to record all outgoing
7760 If not defined, then outgoing mail is not saved.
7761 When saving to this folder fails the message is not sent,
7762 but instead saved to
7766 .It Va record-resent
7767 \*(BO If both this variable and the
7774 commands save messages to the
7776 folder as it is normally only done for newly composed messages.
7779 .It Va reply-in-same-charset
7780 \*(BO If this variable is set \*(UA first tries to use the same
7781 character set of the original message for replies.
7782 If this fails, the mechanism described in
7783 .Sx "Character sets"
7784 is evaluated as usual.
7787 .It Va reply_strings
7788 Can be set to a comma-separated list of (case-insensitive according to
7789 ASCII rules) strings which shall be recognized in addition to the
7792 reply message indicators \(en builtin are
7794 which is mandated by RFC 5322, as well as the german
7799 A list of addresses to put into the
7801 field of the message header.
7802 Members of this list are handled as if they were in the
7807 .It Va reply-to-honour
7810 header is honoured when replying to a message via
7814 This is a quadoption; if set without a value it defaults to
7818 .It Va rfc822-body-from_
7819 \*(BO This variable can be used to force displaying a so-called
7821 line for messages that are embedded into an envelope mail via the
7823 MIME mechanism, for more visual convenience.
7827 \*(BO Enable saving of (partial) messages in
7829 upon interrupt or delivery error.
7833 The number of lines that represents a
7842 line display and scrolling via
7844 If this variable is not set \*(UA falls back to a calculation based upon
7845 the detected terminal window size and the baud rate: the faster the
7846 terminal, the more will be shown.
7847 Overall screen dimensions and pager usage is influenced by the
7848 environment variables
7856 .It Va searchheaders
7857 \*(BO Expand message-list specifiers in the form
7859 to all messages containing the substring
7863 The string search is case insensitive.
7867 \*(OP A comma-separated list of character set names that can be used in
7868 outgoing internet mail.
7869 The value of the variable
7871 is automatically appended to this list of character-sets.
7872 If no character set conversion capabilities are compiled into \*(UA then
7873 the only supported charset is
7876 .Va sendcharsets-else-ttycharset
7877 and refer to the section
7878 .Sx "Character sets"
7879 for the complete picture of character set conversion in \*(UA.
7882 .It Va sendcharsets-else-ttycharset
7883 \*(BO\*(OP If this variable is set, but
7885 is not, then \*(UA acts as if
7887 had been set to the value of the variable
7889 In effect this combination passes through the message data in the
7890 character set of the current locale (given that
7892 has not been set manually), i.e., without converting it to the
7894 fallback character set.
7895 Thus, mail message text will be in ISO-8859-1 encoding when send from
7896 within a ISO-8859-1 locale, and in UTF-8 encoding when send from within
7898 If no character set conversion capabilities are available in \*(UA then
7899 the only supported character set is
7904 An address that is put into the
7906 field of outgoing messages, quoting RFC 5322: the mailbox of the agent
7907 responsible for the actual transmission of the message.
7908 This field should normally not be used unless the
7910 field contains more than one address, on which case it is required.
7913 address is handled as if it were in the
7919 \*(OB Predecessor of
7923 .It Va sendmail-arguments
7924 \*(OB Predecessor of
7928 .It Va sendmail-no-default-arguments
7929 \*(OB\*(BO Predecessor of
7930 .Va mta-no-default-arguments .
7933 .It Va sendmail-progname
7934 \*(OB Predecessor of
7939 \*(BO When sending a message wait until the
7941 (including the builtin SMTP one) exits before accepting further commands.
7943 with this variable set errors reported by the MTA will be recognizable!
7944 If the MTA returns a non-zero exit status,
7945 the exit status of \*(UA will also be non-zero.
7949 \*(BO This setting causes \*(UA to start at the last message
7950 instead of the first one when opening a mail folder.
7954 \*(BO Causes \*(UA to use the sender's real name instead of the plain
7955 address in the header field summary and in message specifications.
7959 \*(BO Causes the recipient of the message to be shown in the header
7960 summary if the message was sent by the user.
7964 The string to expand
7967 .Sx "COMMAND ESCAPES" ) .
7971 The string to expand
7974 .Sx "COMMAND ESCAPES" ) .
7978 Must correspond to the name of a readable file if set.
7979 The file's content is then appended to each singlepart message
7980 and to the first part of each multipart message.
7981 Be warned that there is no possibility to edit the signature for an
7985 .It Va skipemptybody
7986 \*(BO If an outgoing message does not contain any text in its first or
7987 only message part, do not send it but discard it silently (see also the
7993 \*(OP Specifies a directory with CA certificates in PEM (Privacy
7994 Enhanced Mail) format for verification of S/MIME signed messages.
7997 .It Va smime-ca-file
7998 \*(OP Specifies a file with CA certificates in PEM format for
7999 verification of S/MIME signed messages.
8002 .It Va smime-cipher-USER@HOST , smime-cipher
8003 \*(OP Specifies the cipher to use when generating S/MIME encrypted
8004 messages (for the specified account).
8005 RFC 5751 mandates a default of
8008 Possible values are (case-insensitive and) in decreasing cipher strength:
8016 (DES EDE3 CBC, 168 bits; default if
8018 is not available) and
8022 The actually available cipher algorithms depend on the cryptographic
8023 library that \*(UA uses.
8024 \*(OP Support for more cipher algorithms may be available through
8025 dynamic loading via, e.g.,
8026 .Xr EVP_get_cipherbyname 3
8027 (OpenSSL) if \*(UA has been compiled to support this.
8030 .It Va smime-crl-dir
8031 \*(OP Specifies a directory that contains files with CRLs in PEM format
8032 to use when verifying S/MIME messages.
8035 .It Va smime-crl-file
8036 \*(OP Specifies a file that contains a CRL in PEM format to use when
8037 verifying S/MIME messages.
8040 .It Va smime-encrypt-USER@HOST
8041 \*(OP If this variable is set, messages send to the given receiver are
8042 encrypted before sending.
8043 The value of the variable must be set to the name of a file that
8044 contains a certificate in PEM format.
8046 If a message is sent to multiple recipients,
8047 each of them for whom a corresponding variable is set will receive an
8048 individually encrypted message;
8049 other recipients will continue to receive the message in plain text
8051 .Va smime-force-encryption
8053 It is recommended to sign encrypted messages, i.e., to also set the
8058 .It Va smime-force-encryption
8059 \*(BO\*(OP Causes \*(UA to refuse sending unencrypted messages.
8062 .It Va smime-no-default-ca
8063 \*(BO\*(OP Do not load default CA locations when verifying S/MIME
8068 \*(BO\*(OP S/MIME sign outgoing messages with the user's private key
8069 and include the user's certificate as a MIME attachment.
8070 Signing a message enables a recipient to verify that the sender used
8071 a valid certificate,
8072 that the email addresses in the certificate match those in the message
8073 header and that the message content has not been altered.
8074 It does not change the message text,
8075 and people will be able to read the message as usual.
8077 .Va smime-sign-cert , smime-sign-include-certs
8079 .Va smime-sign-message-digest .
8081 .Mx Va smime-sign-cert
8082 .It Va smime-sign-cert-USER@HOST , smime-sign-cert
8083 \*(OP Points to a file in PEM format.
8084 For the purpose of signing and decryption this file needs to contain the
8085 user's private key as well as his certificate.
8089 is always derived from the value of
8091 (or, if that contains multiple addresses,
8093 For the purpose of encryption the recipient's public encryption key
8094 (certificate) is expected; the command
8096 can be used to save certificates of signed messages (the section
8097 .Sx "Signed and encrypted messages with S/MIME"
8098 gives some details).
8099 This mode of operation is usually driven by the specialized form.
8101 When decrypting messages the account is derived from the recipient
8106 of the message, which are searched for addresses for which such
8108 \*(UA always uses the first address that matches,
8109 so if the same message is sent to more than one of the user's addresses
8110 using different encryption keys, decryption might fail.
8112 .Mx Va smime-sign-include-certs
8113 .It Va smime-sign-include-certs-USER@HOST , smime-sign-include-certs
8114 \*(OP If used, this is supposed to a consist of a comma-separated list
8115 of files, each of which containing a single certificate in PEM format to
8116 be included in the S/MIME message in addition to the
8119 This is most useful for long certificate chains if it is desired to aid
8120 the receiving parties verification process.
8121 Note that top level certificates may also be included in the chain but
8122 do not play a role for verification.
8124 .Va smime-sign-cert .
8125 Remember that for this
8127 refers to the variable
8129 (or, if that contains multiple addresses,
8132 .Mx Va smime-sign-message-digest
8133 .It Va smime-sign-message-digest-USER@HOST , smime-sign-message-digest
8134 \*(OP Specifies the message digest to use when signing S/MIME messages.
8135 RFC 5751 mandates a default of
8137 Possible values are (case-insensitive and) in decreasing cipher strength:
8145 The actually available message digest algorithms depend on the
8146 cryptographic library that \*(UA uses.
8147 \*(OP Support for more message digest algorithms may be available
8148 through dynamic loading via, e.g.,
8149 .Xr EVP_get_digestbyname 3
8150 (OpenSSL) if \*(UA has been compiled to support this.
8151 Remember that for this
8153 refers to the variable
8155 (or, if that contains multiple addresses,
8160 \*(OB\*(OP To use the builtin SMTP transport, specify a SMTP URL in
8162 \*(ID For compatibility reasons a set
8164 is used in preference of
8168 .It Va smtp-auth-USER@HOST , smtp-auth-HOST , smtp-auth
8169 \*(OP Variable chain that controls the SMTP
8171 authentication method, possible values are
8177 as well as the \*(OPal methods
8183 method does not need any user credentials,
8185 requires a user name and all other methods require a user name and
8193 .Va smtp-auth-password
8195 .Va smtp-auth-user ) .
8200 .Va smtp-auth-USER@HOST :
8201 may override dependent on sender address in the variable
8204 .It Va smtp-auth-password
8205 \*(OP\*(OU Sets the global fallback password for SMTP authentication.
8206 If the authentication method requires a password, but neither
8207 .Va smtp-auth-password
8209 .Va smtp-auth-password-USER@HOST
8211 \*(UA will ask for a password on the user's terminal.
8213 .It Va smtp-auth-password-USER@HOST
8215 .Va smtp-auth-password
8216 for specific values of sender addresses, dependent upon the variable
8219 .It Va smtp-auth-user
8220 \*(OP\*(OU Sets the global fallback user name for SMTP authentication.
8221 If the authentication method requires a user name, but neither
8224 .Va smtp-auth-user-USER@HOST
8226 \*(UA will ask for a user name on the user's terminal.
8228 .It Va smtp-auth-user-USER@HOST
8231 for specific values of sender addresses, dependent upon the variable
8235 .It Va smtp-hostname
8236 \*(OP\*(IN Normally \*(UA uses the variable
8238 to derive the necessary
8240 information in order to issue a
8247 can be used to use the
8249 from the SMTP account
8256 from the content of this variable (or, if that is the empty string,
8258 or the local hostname as a last resort).
8259 This often allows using an address that is itself valid but hosted by
8260 a provider other than which (in
8262 is about to send the message.
8263 Setting this variable also influences the generated
8266 .Mx Va smtp-use-starttls
8267 .It Va smtp-use-starttls-USER@HOST , smtp-use-starttls-HOST , smtp-use-starttls
8268 \*(BO\*(OP Causes \*(UA to issue a
8270 command to make an SMTP
8272 session SSL/TLS encrypted, i.e., to enable transport layer security.
8276 .It Va spam-interface
8277 \*(OP In order to use any of the spam-related commands (like, e.g.,
8279 the desired spam interface must be defined by setting this variable.
8280 Please refer to the manual section
8282 for the complete picture of spam handling in \*(UA.
8283 All or none of the following interfaces may be available:
8285 .Bl -tag -width ".It Ql _ilte_"
8291 .Pf ( Lk http://spamassassin.apache.org SpamAssassin )
8293 Different to the generic filter interface \*(UA will automatically add
8294 the correct arguments for a given command and has the necessary
8295 knowledge to parse the program's output.
8298 will have been compiled into the \*(UA binary if
8303 Shall it be necessary to define a specific connection type (rather than
8304 using a configuration file for that), the variable
8306 can be used as in, e.g.,
8307 .Ql -d server.example.com -p 783 .
8308 It is also possible to specify a per-user configuration via
8310 Note that this interface does not inspect the
8312 flag of a message for the command
8316 generic spam filter support via freely configurable hooks.
8317 This interface is meant for programs like
8319 and requires according behaviour in respect to the hooks' exit
8320 status for at least the command
8323 meaning a message is spam,
8327 for unsure and any other return value indicating a hard error);
8328 since the hooks can include shell code snippets diverting behaviour
8329 can be intercepted as necessary.
8331 .Va spamfilter-ham , spamfilter-noham , spamfilter-nospam , \
8334 .Va spamfilter-spam ;
8337 contains examples for some programs.
8338 The process environment of the hooks will have the variables
8339 .Ev NAIL_TMPDIR , TMPDIR
8341 .Ev NAIL_FILENAME_GENERATED
8343 Note that spam score support for
8345 is not supported unless the \*(OPtional regular expression support is
8347 .Va spamfilter-rate-scanscore
8354 \*(OP Messages that exceed this size will not be passed through to the
8356 .Va spam-interface .
8357 If unset or 0, the default of 420000 bytes is used.
8360 .It Va spamc-command
8361 \*(OP The path to the
8365 .Va spam-interface .
8366 Note that the path is not expanded, but used
8368 A fallback path will have been compiled into the \*(UA binary if the
8369 executable had been found during compilation.
8372 .It Va spamc-arguments
8373 \*(OP Even though \*(UA deals with most arguments for the
8376 automatically, it may at least sometimes be desirable to specify
8377 connection-related ones via this variable, e.g.,
8378 .Ql -d server.example.com -p 783 .
8382 \*(OP Specify a username for per-user configuration files for the
8384 .Va spam-interface .
8385 If this is set to the empty string then \*(UA will use the name of the
8394 .It Va spamfilter-ham , spamfilter-noham , \
8395 spamfilter-nospam , spamfilter-rate , spamfilter-spam
8396 \*(OP Command and argument hooks for the
8398 .Va spam-interface .
8401 contains examples for some programs.
8404 .It Va spamfilter-rate-scanscore
8405 \*(OP Because of the generic nature of the
8408 spam scores are not supported for it by default, but if the \*(OPtional
8409 regular expression support is available then setting this variable can
8410 be used to overcome this restriction.
8411 It is interpreted as follows: first a number (digits) is parsed that
8412 must be followed by a semicolon
8414 and an extended regular expression.
8415 Then the latter is used to parse the first output line of the
8417 hook, and, in case the evaluation is successful, the group that has been
8418 specified via the number is interpreted as a floating point scan score.
8422 \*(OP Specifies a directory with CA certificates in PEM (Pricacy
8423 Enhanced Mail) for verification of of SSL/TLS server certificates.
8425 .Xr SSL_CTX_load_verify_locations 3
8426 for more information.
8430 \*(OP Specifies a file with CA certificates in PEM format for
8431 verification of SSL/TLS server certificates.
8433 .Xr SSL_CTX_load_verify_locations 3
8434 for more information.
8437 .It Va ssl-cert-USER@HOST , ssl-cert-HOST , ssl-cert
8438 \*(OP Variable chain that sets the file name for a SSL/TLS client
8439 certificate required by some servers.
8440 This is a direct interface to the
8444 function of the OpenSSL library, if available.
8446 .Mx Va ssl-cipher-list
8447 .It Va ssl-cipher-list-USER@HOST , ssl-cipher-list-HOST , ssl-cipher-list
8448 \*(OP Specifies a list of ciphers for SSL/TLS connections.
8449 This is a direct interface to the
8453 function of the OpenSSL library, if available; see
8455 for more information.
8456 By default \*(UA does not set a list of ciphers, in effect using a
8458 specific cipher (protocol standards ship with a list of acceptable
8459 ciphers), possibly cramped to what the actually used SSL/TLS library
8460 supports \(en the manual section
8461 .Sx "An example configuration"
8462 also contains a SSL/TLS use case.
8465 .It Va ssl-config-file
8466 \*(OP If this variable is set \*(UA will call
8467 .Xr CONF_modules_load_file 3
8468 to allow OpenSSL to be configured according to the host system wide
8470 If a non-empty value is given then this will be used to specify the
8471 configuration file to be used instead of the global OpenSSL default;
8472 note that in this case it is an error if the file cannot be loaded.
8473 The application name will always be passed as
8478 \*(OP Specifies a file that contains a CRL in PEM format to use when
8479 verifying SSL/TLS server certificates.
8483 \*(OP Specifies a directory that contains files with CRLs in PEM format
8484 to use when verifying SSL/TLS server certificates.
8487 .It Va ssl-key-USER@HOST , ssl-key-HOST , ssl-key
8488 \*(OP Variable chain that sets the file name for the private key of
8489 a SSL/TLS client certificate.
8490 If unset, the name of the certificate file is used.
8491 The file is expected to be in PEM format.
8492 This is a direct interface to the
8496 function of the OpenSSL library, if available.
8499 .It Va ssl-method-USER@HOST , ssl-method-HOST , ssl-method
8500 \*(OB\*(OP Please use the newer and more flexible
8502 instead: if both values are set,
8504 will take precedence!
8505 Can be set to the following values, the actually used
8507 specification to which it is mapped is shown in parenthesis:
8509 .Pf ( Ql -ALL, TLSv1.2 ) ,
8511 .Pf ( Ql -ALL, TLSv1.1 ) ,
8513 .Pf ( Ql -ALL, TLSv1 )
8516 .Pf ( Ql -ALL, SSLv3 ) ;
8521 and thus includes the SSLv3 protocol.
8522 Note that SSLv2 is no longer supported at all.
8525 .It Va ssl-no-default-ca
8526 \*(BO\*(OP Do not load default CA locations to verify SSL/TLS server
8530 .It Va ssl-protocol-USER@HOST , ssl-protocol-HOST , ssl-protocol
8531 \*(OP Specify the used SSL/TLS protocol.
8532 This is a direct interface to the
8536 function of the OpenSSL library, if available;
8537 otherwise an \*(UA internal parser is used which understands the
8538 following subset of (case-insensitive) command strings:
8544 as well as the special value
8546 Multiple specifications may be given via a comma-separated list which
8547 ignores any whitespace.
8550 plus prefix will enable a protocol, a
8552 minus prefix will disable it, so that
8554 will enable only the TLSv1.2 protocol.
8556 It depends upon the used TLS/SSL library which protocols are actually
8557 supported and which protocols are used if
8559 is not set, but note that SSLv2 is no longer supported at all and
8561 Especially for older protocols explicitly securing
8563 may be worthwile, see
8564 .Sx "An example configuration" .
8568 \*(OP Gives the pathname to an entropy daemon socket, see
8570 Not all SSL/TLS libraries support this.
8573 .It Va ssl-rand-file
8574 \*(OP Gives the filename to a file with random entropy data, see
8575 .Xr RAND_load_file 3 .
8576 If this variable is not set, or set to the empty string, or if the
8577 filename expansion failed, then
8578 .Xr RAND_file_name 3
8579 will be used to create the filename if, and only if,
8581 documents that the SSL PRNG is not yet sufficiently seeded.
8582 If \*(UA successfully seeded the SSL PRNG then it will update the file
8583 .Pf ( Xr RAND_write_file 3 ) .
8584 This variable is only used if
8586 is not set (or not supported by the SSL/TLS library).
8589 .It Va ssl-verify-USER@HOST , ssl-verify-HOST , ssl-verify
8590 \*(OP Variable chain that sets the action to be performed if an error
8591 occurs during SSL/TLS server certificate validation.
8592 Valid (case-insensitive) values are
8594 (fail and close connection immediately),
8596 (ask whether to continue on standard input),
8598 (show a warning and continue),
8600 (do not perform validation).
8606 If only set without an assigned value, then this setting inhibits the
8611 header fields that include obvious references to \*(UA.
8612 There are two pitfalls associated with this:
8613 First, the message id of outgoing messages is not known anymore.
8614 Second, an expert may still use the remaining information in the header
8615 to track down the originating mail user agent.
8620 suppression does not occur.
8625 (\*(OP) This specifies a comma-separated list of
8630 .Sx "On terminal control and line editor" ,
8631 escape commas with reverse solidus) to be used to overwrite or define
8633 Note that this variable will only be queried once at program startup and
8634 can thus only be specified in resource files or on the command line.
8637 String capabilities form
8639 pairs and are expected unless noted otherwise.
8640 Numerics have to be notated as
8642 where the number is expected in normal decimal notation.
8643 Finally, booleans do not have any value but indicate a true or false
8644 state simply by being defined or not; this indeed means that \*(UA
8645 does not support undefining an existing boolean.
8646 String capability values will undergo some expansions before use:
8647 for one notations like
8650 .Ql control-LETTER ,
8651 and for clarification purposes
8653 can be used to specify
8655 (the control notation
8657 could lead to misreadings when a left bracket follows, which it does for
8658 the standard CSI sequence);
8659 finally three letter octal sequences, as in
8662 To specify that a terminal supports 256-colours, and to define sequences
8663 that home the cursor and produce an audible bell, one might write:
8665 .Bd -literal -offset indent
8666 set termcap='Co#256,home=\eE[H,bel=^G'
8670 The following terminal capabilities are or may be meaningful for the
8671 operation of the builtin line editor or \*(UA in general:
8674 .Bl -tag -compact -width yay
8676 .It Cd colors Ns \0or Cd Co
8678 numeric capability specifying the maximum number of colours.
8679 Note that \*(UA does not actually care about the terminal beside that,
8680 but always emits ANSI / ISO 6429 escape sequences.
8683 .It Cd rmcup Ns \0or Cd te Ns \0/ Cd smcup Ns \0or Cd ti
8687 respectively: exit and enter the alternative screen
8689 effectively turning \*(UA into a fullscreen application.
8690 To disable that, set (at least) one to the empty string.
8692 .It Cd smkx Ns \0or Cd ks Ns \0/ Cd rmkx Ns \0or Cd ke
8696 respectively: enable and disable the keypad.
8697 This is always enabled if available, because it seems even keyboards
8698 without keypads generate other key codes for, e.g., cursor keys in that
8699 case, and only if enabled we see the codes that we are interested in.
8701 .It Cd ed Ns \0or Cd cd
8705 .It Cd clear Ns \0or Cd cl
8707 clear the screen and home cursor.
8708 (Will be simulated via
8713 .It Cd home Ns \0or Cd ho
8718 .It Cd el Ns \0or Cd ce
8720 clear to the end of line.
8721 (Will be simulated via
8723 plus repetitions of space characters.)
8725 .It Cd hpa Ns \0or Cd ch
8726 .Cd column_address :
8727 move the cursor (to the given column parameter) in the current row.
8728 (Will be simulated via
8734 .Cd carriage_return :
8735 move to the first column in the current row.
8736 The default builtin fallback is
8739 .It Cd cub1 Ns \0or Cd le
8741 move the cursor left one space (non-destructively).
8742 The default builtin fallback is
8745 .It Cd cuf1 Ns \0or Cd nd
8747 move the cursor right one space (non-destructively).
8748 The default builtin fallback is
8750 which is used by most terminals.
8758 Many more capabilities which describe key-sequences are documented for
8762 .It Va termcap-disable
8763 \*(OP Disable any interaction with a terminal control library.
8764 If set only some generic fallback builtins and possibly the content of
8766 describe the terminal to \*(UA.
8768 that this variable will only be queried once at program startup and can
8769 thus only be specified in resource files or on the command line.
8773 If defined, gives the number of lines of a message to be displayed
8776 if unset, the first five lines are printed, if set to 0 the variable
8779 If the value is negative then its absolute value will be used for right
8782 height; (shifting bitwise is like dividing algorithmically, but since
8783 it takes away bits the value decreases pretty fast).
8787 \*(BO If set then the
8789 command series will strip adjacent empty lines and quotations.
8793 The character set of the terminal \*(UA operates on,
8794 and the one and only supported character set that \*(UA can use if no
8795 character set conversion capabilities have been compiled into it,
8796 in which case it defaults to ISO-8859-1 unless it can deduce a value
8800 Refer to the section
8801 .Sx "Character sets"
8802 for the complete picture about character sets.
8805 .It Va typescript-mode
8806 \*(BO A special multiplex variable that disables all variables and
8807 settings which result in behaviour that interferes with running \*(UA in
8810 .Va colour-disable ,
8811 .Va line-editor-disable
8812 and (before startup completed only)
8813 .Va termcap-disable .
8814 Unsetting it does not restore the former state of the covered settings.
8818 For a safety-by-default policy \*(UA sets its process
8822 but this variable can be used to override that:
8823 set it to an empty value to do not change the (current) setting,
8824 otherwise the process file mode creation mask is updated to the new value.
8825 Child processes inherit the process file mode creation mask.
8828 .It Va user-HOST , user
8829 \*(IN Variable chain that sets a global fallback user name, which is
8830 used in case none has been given in the protocol and account-specific
8832 This variable defaults to the name of the user who runs \*(UA.
8836 \*(BO Setting this enables upward compatibility with \*(UA
8837 version 15.0 in respect to which configuration options are available and
8838 how they are handled.
8839 This manual uses \*(IN and \*(OU to refer to the new and the old way of
8840 doing things, respectively.
8844 \*(BO This setting, also controllable via the command line option
8846 causes \*(UA to be more verbose, e.g., it will display obsoletion
8847 warnings and SSL/TLS certificate chains.
8848 Even though marked \*(BO this option may be set twice in order to
8849 increase the level of verbosity even more, in which case even details of
8850 the actual message delivery and protocol conversations are shown.
8853 is sufficient to disable verbosity as such.
8859 .It Va version , version-major , version-minor , version-update
8860 \*(RO \*(UA version information: the first variable contains a string
8861 containing the complete version identification, the latter three contain
8862 only digits: the major, minor and update version numbers.
8863 The output of the command
8865 will include this information.
8868 .It Va writebackedited
8869 If this variable is set messages modified using the
8873 commands are written back to the current folder when it is quit;
8874 it is only honoured for writable folders in MBOX format, though.
8875 Note that the editor will be pointed to the raw message content in that
8876 case, i.e., neither MIME decoding nor decryption will have been
8877 performed, and proper RFC 4155
8879 quoting of newly added or edited content is also left as an excercise to
8883 .\" }}} (INTERNAL VARIABLES)
8886 .\" .Sh ENVIRONMENT {{{
8890 .Dq environment variable
8891 should be considered an indication that these variables are either
8892 standardized as vivid parts of process environments, or that they are
8893 commonly found in there.
8894 The process environment is inherited from the
8896 once \*(UA is started, and unless otherwise explicitly noted handling of
8897 the following variables transparently integrates into that of the
8898 .Sx "INTERNAL VARIABLES"
8899 from \*(UA's point of view.
8900 This means that, e.g., they can be managed via
8904 causing automatic program environment updates (to be inherited by
8905 newly created child processes).
8908 In order to transparently integrate other environment variables equally
8909 they need to be imported (linked) with the command
8911 This command can also be used to set and unset non-integrated
8912 environment variables from scratch, sufficient system support provided.
8913 The following example, applicable to a POSIX shell, sets the
8915 environment variable for \*(UA only, and beforehand exports the
8917 in order to affect any further processing in the running shell:
8919 .Bd -literal -offset indent
8920 $ EDITOR="vim -u ${HOME}/.vimrc"
8922 $ COLUMNS=80 \*(uA -R
8925 .Bl -tag -width ".It Ev _AILR_"
8928 The user's preferred width in column positions for the terminal screen
8930 Queried and used once on program startup, actively managed for child
8931 processes and the MLE (see
8932 .Sx "On terminal control and line editor" )
8933 in interactive mode thereafter.
8937 The name of the (mailbox)
8939 to use for saving aborted messages if
8941 is set; this defaults to
8948 is set no output will be generated, otherwise the contents of the file
8953 Pathname of the text editor to use in the
8957 .Sx "COMMAND ESCAPES" .
8958 A default editor is used if this value is not defined.
8962 The user's home directory.
8963 This variable is only used when it resides in the process environment.
8970 .It Ev LANG , LC_ALL , LC_COLLATE , LC_CTYPE , LC_MESSAGES
8974 .Sx "Character sets" .
8978 The user's preferred number of lines on a page or the vertical screen
8979 or window size in lines.
8980 Queried and used once on program startup, actively managed for child
8981 processes in interactive mode thereafter.
8985 Pathname of the directory lister to use in the
8987 command when operating on local mailboxes.
8990 (path search through
8995 Upon startup \*(UA will actively ensure that this variable refers to the
8996 name of the user who runs \*(UA, in order to be able to pass a verified
8997 name to any newly created child process.
9001 Is used as the user's primary system mailbox, unless
9005 This is assumed to be an absolute pathname.
9009 \*(OP Overrides the default path search for
9010 .Sx "The Mailcap files" ,
9011 which is defined in the standard RFC 1524 as
9012 .Ql ~/.mailcap:\:/etc/mailcap:\:/usr/etc/mailcap:\:/usr/local/etc/mailcap .
9013 .\" TODO we should have a mailcaps-default virtual RDONLY option!
9014 (\*(UA makes it a configuration option, however.)
9015 Note this is not a search path, but a path search.
9019 Is used as a startup file instead of
9022 When \*(UA scripts are invoked on behalf of other users,
9023 either this variable should be set to
9027 command line option should be used in order to avoid side-effects from
9028 reading their configuration files.
9029 This variable is only used when it resides in the process environment.
9033 The name of the user's mbox file.
9034 A logical subset of the special conventions that are documented for the
9036 command and the internal variable
9039 The fallback default is
9044 Traditionally this secondary mailbox is used as the file to save
9045 messages from the primary system mailbox that have been read.
9047 .Sx "Message states" .
9050 .It Ev NAIL_NO_SYSTEM_RC
9051 If this variable is set then reading of
9053 at startup is inhibited, i.e., the same effect is achieved as if \*(UA
9054 had been started up with the option
9056 This variable is only used when it resides in the process environment.
9060 \*(IN\*(OP This variable overrides the default location of the user's
9066 Pathname of the program to use for backing the command
9070 variable enforces usage of a pager for output.
9071 The default paginator is
9073 (path search through
9076 \*(UA inspects the contents of this variable: if its contains the string
9078 then a non-existing environment variable
9085 dependent on whether terminal control support is available and whether
9086 that supports full (alternative) screen mode or not (also see
9087 .Sx "On terminal control and line editor" ) .
9091 will optionally be set to
9098 A colon-separated list of directories that is searched by the shell when
9099 looking for commands, e.g.,
9100 .Ql /bin:/usr/bin:/usr/local/bin .
9103 .It Ev POSIXLY_CORRECT
9104 This variable is automatically looked for upon startup, see
9110 The shell to use for the commands
9115 .Sx "COMMAND ESCAPES"
9116 and when starting subprocesses.
9117 A default shell is used if this environment variable is not defined.
9120 .It Ev SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH
9121 If set, this specifies a time in seconds since the Unix epoch
9122 (1970-01-01) to be used in place of the current time.
9123 This is for the sake of reproduceability of tests, to be used during
9124 development or by software packagers.
9128 \*(OP The terminal type for which output is to be prepared.
9129 For extended colour and font control please refer to
9130 .Sx "Coloured display" ,
9131 and for terminal management in general to
9132 .Sx "On terminal control and line editor" .
9136 Used as directory for temporary files instead of
9139 This variable is only used when it resides in the process environment.
9145 (see there), but this variable is not standardized, should therefore not
9146 be used, and is only corrected if already set.
9150 Pathname of the text editor to use in the
9154 .Sx "COMMAND ESCAPES" .
9162 .Bl -tag -width ".It Pa _etc/mime.type_"
9164 File giving initial commands.
9167 System wide initialization file.
9171 \*(OP Personal MIME type handler definition file, see
9172 .Sx "The Mailcap files" .
9173 (RFC 1524 location, the actual path is a configuration option.)
9177 \*(OP System wide MIME type handler definition file, see
9178 .Sx "The Mailcap files" .
9179 (RFC 1524 location, the actual path is a configuration option.)
9182 .It Pa ~/.mime.types
9183 Personal MIME types, see
9184 .Sx "The mime.types files" .
9187 .It Pa /etc/mime.types
9188 System wide MIME types, see
9189 .Sx "The mime.types files" .
9193 \*(IN\*(OP The default location of the users
9195 file \(en the section
9196 .Sx "The .netrc file"
9197 documents the file format.
9200 .\" .Ss "The mime.types files" {{{
9201 .Ss "The mime.types files"
9203 When sending messages \*(UA tries to determine the content type of all
9205 When displaying message content or attachments \*(UA uses the content
9206 type to decide whether it can directly display data or whether it needs
9207 to deal with content handlers.
9208 It learns about M(ultipurpose) I(nternet) M(ail) E(xtensions) types and
9209 how to treat them by reading
9211 files, the loading of which can be controlled by setting the variable
9212 .Va mimetypes-load-control .
9215 can also be used to deal with MIME types.)
9217 files have the following syntax:
9220 .Dl type/subtype extension [extension ...]
9225 are strings describing the file contents, and one or multiple
9227 s, separated by whitespace, name the part of a filename starting after
9228 the last dot (of interest).
9229 Comments may be introduced anywhere on a line with a number sign
9231 causing the remaining line to be discarded.
9233 \*(UA also supports an extended, non-portable syntax in specially
9234 crafted files, which can be loaded via the alternative value syntax of
9235 .Va mimetypes-load-control
9236 and prepends an optional
9240 .Dl [type-marker ]type/subtype extension [extension ...]
9243 The following type markers are supported:
9246 .Bl -tag -compact -width ".It Ar _n_u"
9248 Treat message parts with this content as plain text.
9253 Treat message parts with this content as HTML tagsoup.
9254 If the \*(OPal HTML-tagsoup-to-text converter is not available treat
9255 the content as plain text instead.
9259 but instead of falling back to plain text require an explicit content
9260 handler to be defined.
9265 for sending messages:
9267 .Va mime-allow-text-controls ,
9268 .Va mimetypes-load-control .
9269 For reading etc. messages:
9270 .Sx "HTML mail and MIME attachments" ,
9271 .Sx "The Mailcap files" ,
9273 .Va mime-counter-evidence ,
9274 .Va mimetypes-load-control ,
9275 .Va pipe-TYPE/SUBTYPE ,
9276 .Va pipe-EXTENSION .
9279 .\" .Ss "The Mailcap files" {{{
9280 .Ss "The Mailcap files"
9283 .Dq User Agent Configuration Mechanism
9284 which \*(UA \*(OPally supports.
9285 It defines a file format to be used to inform mail user agent programs
9286 about the locally-installed facilities for handling various data
9287 formats, i.e., about commands and how they can be used to display, edit
9288 etc. MIME part contents, as well as a default path search that includes
9289 multiple possible locations of
9293 environment variable that can be used to overwrite that (repeating here
9294 that it is not a search path, but instead a path search specification).
9295 Any existing files will be loaded in sequence, appending any content to
9296 the list of MIME type handler directives.
9300 files consist of a set of newline separated entries.
9301 Comment lines start with a number sign
9303 (in the first column!) and are ignored.
9304 Empty lines are also ignored.
9305 All other lines form individual entries that must adhere to the syntax
9307 To extend a single entry (not comment) its line can be continued on
9308 follow lines if newline characters are
9310 by preceding them with the reverse solidus character
9312 The standard does not specify how leading whitespace of follow lines
9313 is to be treated, therefore \*(UA retains it.
9317 entries consist of a number of semicolon
9319 separated fields, and the reverse solidus
9321 character can be used to escape any following character including
9322 semicolon and itself.
9323 The first two fields are mandatory and must occur in the specified
9324 order, the remaining fields are optional and may appear in any order.
9325 Leading and trailing whitespace of content is ignored (removed).
9328 The first field defines the MIME
9330 the entry is about to handle (case-insensitively, and no reverse solidus
9331 escaping is possible in this field).
9332 If the subtype is specified as an asterisk
9334 the entry is meant to match all subtypes of the named type, e.g.,
9336 would match any audio type.
9337 The second field defines the shell command which shall be used to
9339 MIME parts of the given type; it is implicitly called the
9346 shell commands message (MIME part) data is passed via standard input
9347 unless the given shell command includes one or more instances of the
9350 in which case these instances will be replaced with a temporary filename
9351 and the data will have been stored in the file that is being pointed to.
9354 shell commands data is assumed to be generated on standard output unless
9355 the given command includes (one ore multiple)
9357 In any case any given
9359 format is replaced with a(n already) properly quoted filename.
9360 Note that when a command makes use of a temporary file via
9362 then \*(UA will remove it again, as if the
9363 .Cd x-mailx-tmpfile ,
9364 .Cd x-mailx-tmpfile-fill
9366 .Cd x-mailx-tmpfile-unlink
9367 flags had been set; see below for more.
9370 The optional fields either define a shell command or an attribute (flag)
9371 value, the latter being a single word and the former being a keyword
9372 naming the field followed by an equals sign
9374 succeeded by a shell command, and as usual for any
9376 content any whitespace surrounding the equals sign will be removed, too.
9377 Optional fields include the following:
9380 .Bl -tag -width textualnewlines
9382 A program that can be used to compose a new body or body part in the
9389 field, but is to be used when the composing program needs to specify the
9391 header field to be applied to the composed data.
9395 A program that can be used to edit a body or body part in the given
9400 A program that can be used to print a message or body part in the given
9405 Specifies a program to be run to test some condition, e.g., the machine
9406 architecture, or the window system in use, to determine whether or not
9407 this mailcap entry applies.
9408 If the test fails, a subsequent mailcap entry should be sought; also see
9409 .Cd x-mailx-test-once .
9411 .It Cd needsterminal
9412 This flag field indicates that the given shell command must be run on
9413 an interactive terminal.
9414 \*(UA will temporarily release the terminal to the given command in
9415 interactive mode, in non-interactive mode this entry will be entirely
9416 ignored; this flag implies
9417 .Cd x-mailx-noquote .
9419 .It Cd copiousoutput
9420 A flag field which indicates that the output of the
9422 command will be an extended stream of textual output that can be
9423 (re)integrated into \*(UA's normal visual display.
9424 It is mutually exclusive with
9427 .Cd x-mailx-always .
9429 .It Cd textualnewlines
9430 A flag field which indicates that this type of data is line-oriented and
9433 all newlines should be converted to canonical form (CRLF) before
9434 encoding, and will be in that form after decoding.
9438 This field gives a file name format, in which
9440 will be replaced by a random string, the joined combination of which
9441 will be used as the filename denoted by
9442 .Ev NAIL_FILENAME_TEMPORARY .
9443 One could specify that a GIF file being passed to an image viewer should
9444 have a name ending in
9447 .Ql nametemplate=%s.gif .
9448 Note that \*(UA ignores the name template unless that solely specifies
9449 a filename suffix that consists of (ASCII) alphabetic and numeric
9450 characters, the underscore and dot only.
9453 Names a file, in X11 bitmap (xbm) format, which points to an appropriate
9454 icon to be used to visually denote the presence of this kind of data.
9455 This field is not used by \*(UA.
9458 A textual description that describes this type of data.
9460 .It Cd x-mailx-always
9461 Extension flag field that denotes that the given
9463 command shall be executed even if multiple messages will be displayed
9465 Normally messages which require external viewers that produce output
9466 which does not integrate into \*(UA's visual display (i.e., do not have
9468 set) have to be addressed directly and individually.
9469 (To avoid cases where, e.g., a thousand PDF viewer instances are spawned
9472 .It Cd x-mailx-even-if-not-interactive
9473 An extension flag test field \(em by default handlers without
9475 are entirely ignored in non-interactive mode, but if this flag is set
9476 then their use will be considered.
9477 It is an error if this flag is set for commands that use the flag
9480 .It Cd x-mailx-noquote
9481 An extension flag field that indicates that even a
9484 command shall not be used to generate message quotes
9485 (as it would be by default).
9487 .It Cd x-mailx-async
9488 Extension flag field that denotes that the given
9490 command shall be executed asynchronously, without blocking \*(UA.
9491 Cannot be used in conjunction with
9494 .It Cd x-mailx-test-once
9495 Extension flag which denotes whether the given
9497 command shall be evaluated once only and the (boolean) result be cached.
9498 This is handy if some global unchanging condition is to be queried, like
9499 .Dq running under the X Window System .
9501 .It Cd x-mailx-tmpfile
9502 Extension flag field that requests creation of a zero-sized temporary
9503 file, the name of which is to be placed in the environment variable
9504 .Ev NAIL_FILENAME_TEMPORARY .
9505 It is an error to use this flag with commands that include a
9509 .It Cd x-mailx-tmpfile-fill
9510 Normally the MIME part content is passed to the handler via standard
9511 input; if this flag is set then the data will instead be written into
9513 .Cd x-mailx-tmpfile .
9514 In order to cause deletion of the temporary file you will have to set
9515 .Cd x-mailx-tmpfile-unlink
9517 It is an error to use this flag with commands that include a
9521 .It Cd x-mailx-tmpfile-unlink
9522 Extension flag field that requests that the temporary file shall be
9523 deleted automatically when the command loop is entered again at latest.
9524 (Do not use this for asynchronous handlers.)
9525 It is an error to use this flag with commands that include a
9527 format, or without also setting
9530 .Cd x-mailx-tmpfile-fill .
9532 .It Cd x-mailx-tmpfile-keep
9535 implies the three tmpfile related flags above, but if you want, e.g.,
9537 and deal with the temporary file yourself, you can add in this flag to
9539 .Cd x-mailx-tmpfile-unlink .
9544 The standard includes the possibility to define any number of additional
9545 entry fields, prefixed by
9547 Flag fields apply to the entire
9549 entry \(em in some unusual cases, this may not be desirable, but
9550 differentiation can be accomplished via separate entries, taking
9551 advantage of the fact that subsequent entries are searched if an earlier
9552 one does not provide enough information.
9555 command needs to specify the
9559 command shall not, the following will help out the latter (with enabled
9563 level \*(UA will show information about handler evaluation):
9565 .Bd -literal -offset indent
9566 application/postscript; ps-to-terminal %s; needsterminal
9567 application/postscript; ps-to-terminal %s; compose=idraw %s
9571 In fields any occurrence of the format string
9573 will be replaced by the
9576 Named parameters from the
9578 field may be placed in the command execution line using
9580 followed by the parameter name and a closing
9583 The entire parameter should appear as a single command line argument,
9584 regardless of embedded spaces; thus:
9586 .Bd -literal -offset indent
9588 Content-type: multipart/mixed; boundary=42
9591 multipart/*; /usr/local/bin/showmulti \e
9592 %t %{boundary} ; composetyped = /usr/local/bin/makemulti
9594 # Executed shell command
9595 /usr/local/bin/showmulti multipart/mixed 42
9599 .\" TODO v15: Mailcap: %n,%F
9600 Note that \*(UA does not support handlers for multipart MIME parts as
9601 shown in this example (as of today).
9602 \*(UA does not support the additional formats
9606 An example file, also showing how to properly deal with the expansion of
9608 which includes any quotes that are necessary to make it a valid shell
9609 argument by itself and thus will cause undesired behaviour when placed
9610 in additional user-provided quotes:
9612 .Bd -literal -offset indent
9614 text/richtext; richtext %s; copiousoutput
9616 text/x-perl; perl -cWT %s
9620 trap "rm -f ${infile}" EXIT\e; \e
9621 trap "exit 75" INT QUIT TERM\e; \e
9623 x-mailx-async; x-mailx-tmpfile-keep
9625 application/*; echo "This is \e"%t\e" but \e
9626 is 50 \e% Greek to me" \e; < %s head -c 1024 | cat -vET; \e
9627 copiousoutput; x-mailx-noquote
9632 .Sx "HTML mail and MIME attachments" ,
9633 .Sx "The mime.types files" ,
9636 .Va mime-counter-evidence ,
9637 .Va pipe-TYPE/SUBTYPE ,
9638 .Va pipe-EXTENSION .
9641 .\" .Ss "The .netrc file" {{{
9642 .Ss "The .netrc file"
9646 file contains user credentials for machine accounts.
9647 The default location in the user's
9649 directory may be overridden by the
9651 environment variable.
9652 The file consists of space, tabulator or newline separated tokens.
9653 \*(UA implements a parser that supports a superset of the original BSD
9654 syntax, but users should nonetheless be aware of portability glitches
9655 of that file format, shall their
9657 be usable across multiple programs and platforms:
9660 .Bl -bullet -compact
9662 BSD does not support single, but only double quotation marks, e.g.,
9663 .Ql password="pass with spaces" .
9665 BSD (only?) supports escaping of single characters via a reverse solidus
9666 (e.g., a space can be escaped via
9668 in- as well as outside of a quoted string.
9670 BSD does not require a final quotation mark of the last user input token.
9672 The original BSD (Berknet) parser also supported a format which allowed
9673 tokens to be separated with commas \(en whereas at least Hewlett-Packard
9674 still seems to support this syntax, \*(UA does not!
9676 As a non-portable extension some widely-used programs support
9677 shell-style comments: if an input line starts, after any amount of
9678 whitespace, with a number sign
9680 then the rest of the line is ignored.
9682 Whereas other programs may require that the
9684 file is accessible by only the user if it contains a
9690 \*(UA will always require these strict permissions.
9694 Of the following list of supported tokens \*(UA only uses (and caches)
9699 At runtime the command
9701 can be used to control \*(UA's
9705 .Bl -tag -width password
9706 .It Cd machine Ar name
9707 The hostname of the entries' machine, lowercase-normalized by \*(UA
9709 Any further file content, until either end-of-file or the occurrence
9714 first-class token is bound (only related) to the machine
9717 As an extension that should not be the cause of any worries
9718 \*(UA supports a single wildcard prefix for
9720 .Bd -literal -offset indent
9721 machine *.example.com login USER password PASS
9722 machine pop3.example.com login USER password PASS
9723 machine smtp.example.com login USER password PASS
9729 .Ql pop3.example.com ,
9733 .Ql local.smtp.example.com .
9734 Note that in the example neither
9735 .Ql pop3.example.com
9737 .Ql smtp.example.com
9738 will be matched by the wildcard, since the exact matches take
9739 precedence (it is however faster to specify it the other way around).
9744 except that it is a fallback entry that is used shall none of the
9745 specified machines match; only one default token may be specified,
9746 and it must be the last first-class token.
9748 .It Cd login Ar name
9749 The user name on the remote machine.
9751 .It Cd password Ar string
9752 The user's password on the remote machine.
9754 .It Cd account Ar string
9755 Supply an additional account password.
9756 This is merely for FTP purposes.
9758 .It Cd macdef Ar name
9760 A macro is defined with the specified
9762 it is formed from all lines beginning with the next line and continuing
9763 until a blank line is (consecutive newline characters are) encountered.
9766 entries cannot be utilized by multiple machines, too, but must be
9767 defined following the
9769 they are intended to be used with.)
9772 exists, it is automatically run as the last step of the login process.
9773 This is merely for FTP purposes.
9780 .\" .Sh EXAMPLES {{{
9783 .\" .Ss "An example configuration" {{{
9784 .Ss "An example configuration"
9786 .Bd -literal -offset indent
9787 # This example assumes v15.0 compatibility mode
9790 # Where are the up-to-date SSL certificates?
9791 #set ssl-ca-dir=/etc/ssl/certs
9792 set ssl-ca-file=/etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt
9794 # (Since we manage up-to-date ones explicitly, do not use any,
9795 # possibly outdated, default certificates shipped with OpenSSL)
9796 set ssl-no-default-ca
9798 # Do not use protocols older than TLS v1.2.
9799 # Change this only when the remote server does not support it:
9800 # maybe use ssl-protocol-HOST (or -USER@HOST) syntax to define
9801 # such explicit exceptions, then
9802 set ssl-protocol='-ALL,+TLSv1.2'
9804 # Explicitly define the list of ciphers, which may improve security,
9805 # especially with protocols older than TLS v1.2. See ciphers(1).
9806 # Including "@STRENGTH" will sort the final list by algorithm strength.
9807 # In reality it is possibly best to only use ssl-cipher-list-HOST
9808 # (or -USER@HOST), as necessary, again..
9809 set ssl-cipher-list=TLSv1.2:!aNULL:!eNULL:!MEDIUM:!LOW:!EXPORT:@STRENGTH
9810 # ALL:!aNULL:!MEDIUM:!LOW:!MD5:!RC4:!EXPORT:@STRENGTH
9812 # Request strict transport security checks!
9813 set ssl-verify=strict
9815 # Essential setting: select allowed character sets
9816 set sendcharsets=utf-8,iso-8859-1
9818 # A very kind option: when replying to a message, first try to
9819 # use the same encoding that the original poster used herself!
9820 set reply-in-same-charset
9822 # When replying to or forwarding a message the comment and name
9823 # parts of email addresses are removed unless this variable is set
9826 # When sending messages, wait until the Mail-Transfer-Agent finishs.
9827 # Only like this you will be able to see errors reported through the
9828 # exit status of the MTA (including the builtin SMTP one)!
9831 # Only use builtin MIME types, no mime.types(5) files
9832 set mimetypes-load-control
9834 # Default directory where we act in (relative to $HOME)
9836 # A leading "+" (often) means: under *folder*
9837 # *record* is used to save copies of sent messages
9838 set MBOX=+mbox.mbox record=+sent.mbox DEAD=+dead.txt
9840 # Make "file mymbox" and "file myrec" go to..
9841 shortcut mymbox %:+mbox.mbox myrec +sent.mbox
9843 # Not really optional, e.g., for S/MIME
9844 set from='Your Name <address@exam.ple>'
9846 # It may be necessary to set hostname and/or smtp-hostname
9847 # if the "SERVER" of mta and "domain" of from do not match.
9848 # The `urlencode' command can be used to encode USER and PASS
9849 set mta=(smtps?|submission)://[USER[:PASS]@]SERVER[:PORT] \e
9850 smtp-auth=login/plain... \e
9853 # Never refuse to start into interactive mode, and more
9855 colour-pager crt= \e
9856 followup-to followup-to-honour=ask-yes \e
9857 history-file=+.\*(uAhist history-size=-1 history-gabby \e
9858 mime-counter-evidence=0xE \e
9859 prompt='[\e${-account-name} \e${-mailbox-display}]? ' \e
9860 reply-to-honour=ask-yes \e
9863 # Only include the selected header fields when typing messages
9864 headerpick type retain add from_ date from to cc subject \e
9865 message-id mail-followup-to reply-to
9866 # ...when forwarding messages
9867 headerpick forward retain add subject date from to cc
9868 # ...when saving message, etc.
9869 #headerpick save ignore add ^Original-.*$ ^X-.*$
9871 # Some mailing lists
9872 mlist '@xyz-editor\e.xyz$' '@xyzf\e.xyz$'
9873 mlsubscribe '^xfans@xfans\e.xyz$'
9875 # A real life example of a very huge free mail provider
9877 set folder=~/spool/XooglX inbox=+syste.mbox sent=+sent
9878 set from='Your Name <address@examp.ple>'
9879 set mta=smtp://USER:PASS@smtp.gmXil.com smtp-use-starttls
9882 # Here is a pretty large one which does not allow sending mails
9883 # if there is a domain name mismatch on the SMTP protocol level,
9884 # which would bite us if the value of from does not match, e.g.,
9885 # for people who have a sXXXXeforge project and want to speak
9886 # with the mailing list under their project account (in from),
9887 # still sending the message through their normal mail provider
9889 set folder=~/spool/XandeX inbox=+syste.mbox sent=+sent
9890 set from='Your Name <address@exam.ple>'
9891 set mta=smtps://USER:PASS@smtp.yaXXex.ru:465 \e
9892 hostname=yaXXex.com smtp-hostname=
9895 # Create some new commands so that, e.g., `ls /tmp' will..
9896 wysh ghost lls '!ls ${LS_COLOR_FLAG} -aFlrS'
9897 wysh ghost llS '!ls ${LS_COLOR_FLAG} -aFlS'
9898 wysh ghost ls '!ls ${LS_COLOR_FLAG} -aFrS'
9899 wysh ghost lS '!ls ${LS_COLOR_FLAG} -aFS'
9900 wysh ghost lla '!ls ${LS_COLOR_FLAG} -aFlr'
9901 wysh ghost llA '!ls ${LS_COLOR_FLAG} -aFl'
9902 wysh ghost la '!ls ${LS_COLOR_FLAG} -aFr'
9903 wysh ghost lA '!ls ${LS_COLOR_FLAG} -aF'
9904 wysh ghost ll '!ls ${LS_COLOR_FLAG} -aFltr'
9905 wysh ghost lL '!ls ${LS_COLOR_FLAG} -aFlt'
9906 wysh ghost l '!ls ${LS_COLOR_FLAG} -aFtr'
9907 wysh ghost L '!ls ${LS_COLOR_FLAG} -aFt'
9909 # We do not support gpg(1) directly yet. But simple --clearsign'd
9910 # message parts can be dealt with as follows:
9912 wysh set pipe-text/plain=$'@*#++=@\e
9913 < "${NAIL_FILENAME_TEMPORARY}" awk \e
9914 -v TMPFILE="${NAIL_FILENAME_TEMPORARY}" \e'\e
9916 /^-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----/,/^$/{\e
9919 print "--- GPG --verify ---";\e
9920 system("gpg --verify " TMPFILE " 2>&1");\e
9921 print "--- GPG --verify ---";\e
9925 /^-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----/,\e
9926 /^-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----/{\e
9936 !printf 'Key IDs to gpg --recv-keys: ';\e
9938 gpg --recv-keys ${keyids};
9944 When storing passwords in
9946 appropriate permissions should be set on this file with
9947 .Ql $ chmod 0600 \*(ur .
9950 is available user credentials can be stored in the central
9952 file instead; e.g., here is a different version of the example account
9953 that sets up SMTP and POP3:
9955 .Bd -literal -offset indent
9957 set folder=~/spool/XandeX inbox=+syste.mbox sent=+sent
9958 set from='Your Name <address@exam.ple>'
9960 # Load an encrypted ~/.netrc by uncommenting the next line
9961 #set netrc-pipe='gpg -qd ~/.netrc.pgp'
9963 set mta=smtps://smtp.yXXXXx.ru:465 \e
9964 smtp-hostname= hostname=yXXXXx.com
9965 set pop3-keepalive=240 pop3-no-apop-pop.yXXXXx.ru
9966 ghost xp fi pop3s://pop.yXXXXx.ru
9975 .Bd -literal -offset indent
9976 machine *.yXXXXx.ru login USER password PASS
9980 This configuration should now work just fine:
9983 .Dl $ echo text | \*(uA -vv -AXandeX -s Subject user@exam.ple
9986 .\" .Ss "Signed and encrypted messages with S/MIME" {{{
9987 .Ss "Signed and encrypted messages with S/MIME"
9989 \*(OP S/MIME provides two central mechanisms:
9990 message signing and message encryption.
9991 A signed message contains some data in addition to the regular text.
9992 The data can be used to verify that the message was sent using a valid
9993 certificate, that the sender's address in the message header matches
9994 that in the certificate, and that the message text has not been altered.
9995 Signing a message does not change its regular text;
9996 it can be read regardless of whether the recipient's software is able to
10000 It is thus usually possible to sign all outgoing messages if so desired.
10001 Encryption, in contrast, makes the message text invisible for all people
10002 except those who have access to the secret decryption key.
10003 To encrypt a message, the specific recipient's public encryption key
10005 It is therefore not possible to send encrypted mail to people unless their
10006 key has been retrieved from either previous communication or public key
10008 A message should always be signed before it is encrypted.
10009 Otherwise, it is still possible that the encrypted message text is
10013 A central concept to S/MIME is that of the certification authority (CA).
10014 A CA is a trusted institution that issues certificates.
10015 For each of these certificates it can be verified that it really
10016 originates from the CA, provided that the CA's own certificate is
10018 A set of CA certificates is usually delivered with OpenSSL and installed
10020 If you trust the source of your OpenSSL software installation,
10021 this offers reasonable security for S/MIME on the Internet.
10023 .Va smime-no-default-ca
10024 to avoid using the default certificate and point
10028 to a trusted pool of certificates.
10029 In general, a certificate cannot be more secure than the method its CA
10030 certificate has been retrieved with.
10033 The first thing you need for participating in S/MIME message exchange is
10034 your personal certificate, including a private key.
10035 The certificate contains public information, in particular your name and
10036 your email address(es), and the public key that is used by others to
10037 encrypt messages for you,
10038 and to verify signed messages they supposedly received from you.
10039 The certificate is included in each signed message you send.
10040 The private key must be kept secret.
10041 It is used to decrypt messages that were previously encrypted with your
10042 public key, and to sign messages.
10045 For personal use it is recommended that you get a S/MIME certificate
10046 from one of the major CAs on the Internet using your WWW browser.
10047 Many CAs offer such certificates for free.
10049 .Lk https://www.CAcert.org
10050 which issues client and server certificates to members of their
10051 community for free; their root certificate
10052 .Pf ( Lk https://\:www.cacert.org/\:certs/\:root.crt )
10053 is often not in the default set of trusted CA root certificates, though,
10054 which means you will have to download their root certificate separately
10055 and ensure it is part of our S/MIME certificate validation chain by
10058 or as a vivid member of the
10059 .Va smime-ca-file .
10060 But let us take a step-by-step tour on how to setup S/MIME with
10061 a certificate from CAcert.org despite this situation!
10064 First of all you will have to become a member of the CAcert.org
10065 community, simply by registrating yourself via the web interface.
10066 Once you are, create and verify all email addresses you want to be able
10067 to create signed and encrypted messages for/with using the corresponding
10068 entries of the web interface.
10069 Now ready to create S/MIME certificates, so let us create a new
10070 .Dq client certificate ,
10071 ensure to include all email addresses that should be covered by the
10072 certificate in the following web form, and also to use your name as the
10076 Create a private key and a certificate request on your local computer
10077 (please see the manual pages of the used commands for more in-depth
10078 knowledge on what the used arguments etc. do):
10081 .Dl openssl req -nodes -newkey rsa:4096 -keyout key.pem -out creq.pem
10084 Afterwards copy-and-paste the content of
10086 into the certificate-request (CSR) field of the web form on the
10087 CAcert.org website (you may need to unfold some
10088 .Dq advanced options
10089 to see the corresponding text field).
10090 This last step will ensure that your private key (which never left your
10091 box) and the certificate belong together (through the public key that
10092 will find its way into the certificate via the certificate-request).
10093 You are now ready and can create your CAcert certified certificate.
10094 Download and store or copy-and-paste it as
10099 In order to use your new S/MIME setup you will have to create
10100 a combined private key/public key (certificate) file:
10103 .Dl cat key.pem pub.crt > ME@HERE.com.paired
10106 This is the file \*(UA will work with.
10107 If you have created your private key with a passphrase then \*(UA will
10108 ask you for it whenever a message is signed or decrypted.
10109 Set the following variables to henceforth use S/MIME (setting
10111 is of interest for verification only):
10113 .Bd -literal -offset indent
10114 set smime-ca-file=ALL-TRUSTED-ROOT-CERTS-HERE \e
10115 smime-sign-cert=ME@HERE.com.paired \e
10116 smime-sign-message-digest=SHA256 \e
10121 From each signed message you send, the recipient can fetch your
10122 certificate and use it to send encrypted mail back to you.
10123 Accordingly if somebody sends you a signed message, you can do the same,
10126 command to check the validity of the certificate.
10129 Variables of interest for S/MIME signing:
10131 .Va smime-ca-file ,
10132 .Va smime-crl-dir ,
10133 .Va smime-crl-file ,
10134 .Va smime-no-default-ca ,
10136 .Va smime-sign-cert ,
10137 .Va smime-sign-include-certs
10139 .Va smime-sign-message-digest .
10142 After it has been verified save the certificate via
10144 and tell \*(UA that it should use it for encryption for further
10145 communication with that somebody:
10147 .Bd -literal -offset indent
10149 set smime-encrypt-USER@HOST=FILENAME \e
10150 smime-cipher-USER@HOST=AES256
10154 Additional variables of interest for S/MIME en- and decryption:
10157 .Va smime-encrypt-USER@HOST .
10160 You should carefully consider if you prefer to store encrypted messages
10162 If you do, anybody who has access to your mail folders can read them,
10163 but if you do not, you might be unable to read them yourself later if
10164 you happen to lose your private key.
10167 command saves messages in decrypted form, while the
10171 commands leave them encrypted.
10174 Note that neither S/MIME signing nor encryption applies to message
10175 subjects or other header fields yet.
10176 Thus they may not contain sensitive information for encrypted messages,
10177 and cannot be trusted even if the message content has been verified.
10178 When sending signed messages,
10179 it is recommended to repeat any important header information in the
10183 .\" .Ss "Using CRLs with S/MIME or SSL/TLS" {{{
10184 .Ss "Using CRLs with S/MIME or SSL/TLS"
10186 \*(OP Certification authorities (CAs) issue certificate revocation
10187 lists (CRLs) on a regular basis.
10188 These lists contain the serial numbers of certificates that have been
10189 declared invalid after they have been issued.
10190 Such usually happens because the private key for the certificate has
10192 because the owner of the certificate has left the organization that is
10193 mentioned in the certificate, etc.
10194 To seriously use S/MIME or SSL/TLS verification,
10195 an up-to-date CRL is required for each trusted CA.
10196 There is otherwise no method to distinguish between valid and
10197 invalidated certificates.
10198 \*(UA currently offers no mechanism to fetch CRLs, nor to access them on
10199 the Internet, so you have to retrieve them by some external mechanism.
10202 \*(UA accepts CRLs in PEM format only;
10203 CRLs in DER format must be converted, like, e.\|g.:
10206 .Dl $ openssl crl \-inform DER \-in crl.der \-out crl.pem
10209 To tell \*(UA about the CRLs, a directory that contains all CRL files
10210 (and no other files) must be created.
10215 variables, respectively, must then be set to point to that directory.
10216 After that, \*(UA requires a CRL to be present for each CA that is used
10217 to verify a certificate.
10220 .\" .Ss "Handling spam" {{{
10221 .Ss "Handling spam"
10223 \*(OP \*(UA can make use of several spam interfaces for the purpose of
10224 identification of, and, in general, dealing with spam messages.
10225 A precondition of most commands in order to function is that the
10227 variable is set to one of the supported interfaces.
10228 Once messages have been identified as spam their (volatile)
10230 state can be prompted: the
10234 message specifications will address respective messages and their
10236 entries will be used when displaying the
10238 in the header display.
10243 rates the given messages and sets their
10246 If the spam interface offers spam scores those can also be displayed in
10247 the header display by including the
10257 will interact with the Bayesian filter of the chosen interface and learn
10258 the given messages as
10262 respectively; the last command can be used to cause
10264 of messages; it adheres to their current
10266 state and thus reverts previous teachings.
10271 will simply set and clear, respectively, the mentioned volatile
10273 message flag, without any interface interaction.
10282 requires a running instance of the
10284 server in order to function, started with the option
10286 shall Bayesian filter learning be possible.
10288 .Bd -literal -offset indent
10289 $ spamd -i localhost:2142 -i /tmp/.spamsock -d [-L] [-l]
10290 $ spamd --listen=localhost:2142 --listen=/tmp/.spamsock \e
10291 --daemonize [--local] [--allow-tell]
10295 Thereafter \*(UA can make use of these interfaces:
10297 .Bd -literal -offset indent
10298 $ \*(uA -Sspam-interface=spamc -Sspam-maxsize=500000 \e
10299 -Sspamc-command=/usr/local/bin/spamc \e
10300 -Sspamc-arguments="-U /tmp/.spamsock" -Sspamc-user=
10302 $ \*(uA -Sspam-interface=spamc -Sspam-maxsize=500000 \e
10303 -Sspamc-command=/usr/local/bin/spamc \e
10304 -Sspamc-arguments="-d localhost -p 2142" -Sspamc-user=
10308 Using the generic filter approach allows usage of programs like
10310 Here is an example, requiring it to be accessible via
10313 .Bd -literal -offset indent
10314 $ \*(uA -Sspam-interface=filter -Sspam-maxsize=500000 \e
10315 -Sspamfilter-ham="bogofilter -n" \e
10316 -Sspamfilter-noham="bogofilter -N" \e
10317 -Sspamfilter-nospam="bogofilter -S" \e
10318 -Sspamfilter-rate="bogofilter -TTu 2>/dev/null" \e
10319 -Sspamfilter-spam="bogofilter -s" \e
10320 -Sspamfilter-rate-scanscore="1;^(.+)$"
10324 Because messages must exist on local storage in order to be scored (or
10325 used for Bayesian filter training), it is possibly a good idea to
10326 perform the local spam check last:
10328 .Bd -literal -offset indent
10329 define spamdelhook {
10331 spamset (header x-dcc-brand-metrics "bulk")
10332 # Server-side spamassassin(1)
10333 spamset (header x-spam-flag "YES")
10334 del :s # TODO we HAVE to be able to do `spamrate :u ! :sS'
10335 move :S +maybe-spam
10338 move :S +maybe-spam
10340 set folder-hook-FOLDER=spamdelhook
10344 See also the documentation for the variables
10345 .Va spam-interface , spam-maxsize ,
10346 .Va spamc-command , spamc-arguments , spamc-user ,
10347 .Va spamfilter-ham , spamfilter-noham , spamfilter-nospam , \
10350 .Va spamfilter-rate-scanscore .
10358 In general it is a good idea to turn on
10364 twice) if something does not work well.
10365 Very often a diagnostic message can be produced that leads to the
10366 problems' solution.
10368 .\" .Ss "\*(UA shortly hangs on startup" {{{
10369 .Ss "\*(UA shortly hangs on startup"
10371 This can have two reasons, one is the necessity to wait for a file lock
10372 and cannot be helped, the other being that \*(UA calls the function
10374 in order to query the nodename of the box (sometimes the real one is
10375 needed instead of the one represented by the internal variable
10377 You may have varying success by ensuring that the real hostname and
10381 or, more generally, that the name service is properly setup \(en
10384 return what you would expect?
10385 Does this local hostname has a domain suffix?
10386 RFC 6762 standardized the link-local top-level domain
10390 .\" .Ss "\*(UA exits quick, and output is cleared away" {{{
10391 .Ss "\*(UA exits quick, and output is cleared away"
10393 When this happens even with
10395 set, then this most likely indicates a problem with the creation of
10396 so-called dotlock files: setting
10397 .Va dotlock-ignore-error
10398 should overcome this situation.
10399 This only avoids symptoms, it does not address the problem, though.
10400 Since the output is cleared away \*(UA has support for
10401 .Sx "On terminal control and line editor" ,
10402 and switches to the
10404 which causes the output clearance: by doing
10405 .Ql set termcap='smcup='
10406 this mode can be suppressed, and by setting
10408 (twice) the actual problem should be reported.
10411 .\" .Ss "I cannot login to Google mail aka GMail" {{{
10412 .Ss "I cannot login to Google mail aka GMail"
10414 Since 2014 some free service providers classify programs as
10416 unless they use a special authentification method (OAuth 2.0) which
10417 was not standardized for non-HTTP protocol authentication token query
10418 until August 2015 (RFC 7628).
10421 Different to Kerberos / GSSAPI, which is developed since the mid of the
10422 1980s, where a user can easily create a local authentication ticket for
10423 her- and himself with the locally installed
10425 program, that protocol has no such local part but instead requires
10426 a world-wide-web query to create or fetch a token; since there is no
10427 local cache this query has to be performed whenever \*(UA is invoked
10428 from the command line (in interactive sessions situation may differ).
10431 \*(UA does not support OAuth.
10432 Because of this it is necessary to declare \*(UA a
10433 .Dq less secure app
10434 (on the providers account web page) in order to read and send mail.
10435 However, it also seems possible to take the following steps instead:
10440 give the provider the number of a mobile phone,
10443 .Dq 2-Step Verification ,
10445 create an application specific password (16 characters), and
10447 use that special password instead of your real Google account password in
10448 \*(UA (for more on that see the section
10449 .Sx "On URL syntax and credential lookup" ) .
10453 .\" .Ss "Not \(dqdefunctional\(dq, but the editor key does not work" {{{
10454 .Ss "Not \(dqdefunctional\(dq, but the editor key does not work"
10456 It can happen that the terminal library (see
10457 .Sx "On terminal control and line editor",
10460 reports different codes than the terminal really sends, in which case
10461 \*(UA will tell that a key binding is functional, but will not be able to
10462 recognize it because the received data does not match anything expected.
10463 The verbose listing of
10465 ings will show the byte sequences that are expected.
10468 To overcome the situation, use, e.g., the program
10470 in conjunction with the
10472 flag if available, to see the byte sequences which are actually produced
10473 by keypresses, and use the variable
10475 to make \*(UA aware of them.
10476 E.g., the terminal this is typed on produces some false sequences, here
10477 an example showing the shifted home key:
10479 .Bd -literal -offset indent
10482 # 1B 5B=[ 31=1 3B=; 32=2 48=H
10487 ? \*(uA -v -Stermcap='kHOM=\eE[H'
10496 .\" .Sh "SEE ALSO" {{{
10506 .Xr spamassassin 1 ,
10515 .Xr mailwrapper 8 ,
10520 .\" .Sh HISTORY {{{
10523 M. Douglas McIlroy writes in his article
10524 .Dq A Research UNIX Reader: Annotated Excerpts \
10525 from the Programmer's Manual, 1971-1986
10528 command already appeared in First Edition
10532 .Bd -ragged -offset indent
10533 Electronic mail was there from the start.
10534 Never satisfied with its exact behavior, everybody touched it at one
10535 time or another: to assure the safety of simultaneous access, to improve
10536 privacy, to survive crashes, to exploit uucp, to screen out foreign
10537 freeloaders, or whatever.
10538 Not until v7 did the interface change (Thompson).
10539 Later, as mail became global in its reach, Dave Presotto took charge and
10540 brought order to communications with a grab-bag of external networks
10546 Mail was written in 1978 by Kurt Shoens and developed as part of the
10549 distribution until 1995.
10550 Mail has then seen further development in open source
10552 variants, noticeably by Christos Zoulas in
10554 Basing upon this Nail, later Heirloom Mailx, was developed by Gunnar
10555 Ritter in the years 2000 until 2008.
10556 Since 2012 S-nail is maintained by Steffen (Daode) Nurpmeso.
10557 This man page is derived from
10558 .Dq The Mail Reference Manual
10559 that was originally written by Kurt Shoens.
10565 .An "Kurt Shoens" ,
10566 .An "Edward Wang" ,
10567 .An "Keith Bostic" ,
10568 .An "Christos Zoulas" ,
10569 .An "Gunnar Ritter" ,
10570 .An "Steffen Nurpmeso" Aq Mt s-nail-users@lists.sourceforge.net
10572 .Mt s-mailx@sdaoden.eu ) .
10575 .\" .Sh CAVEATS {{{
10578 \*(ID Interrupting an operation via
10582 is often problematic: many library functions cannot deal with the
10584 that this software (still) performs.
10587 The SMTP and POP3 protocol support of \*(UA is very basic.
10588 Also, if it fails to contact its upstream SMTP server, it will not make
10589 further attempts to transfer the message at a later time (setting
10594 If this is a concern, it might be better to set up a local SMTP server
10595 that is capable of message queuing.
10601 After deleting some message of a POP3 mailbox the header summary falsely
10602 claims that there are no messages to display, you need to perform
10603 a scroll or dot movement to restore proper state.
10605 In threaded display a power user may encounter crashes very
10606 occasionally (this is may and very).
10610 in the source repository lists future directions.