1 10/19/80 RMAIL- Emacs mail reading/sending subsytem
2
3
4 **This file is intended to be perused via dprint, print, or via an**
5 **editor. It is not intended to be perused with the help command **
6
7
8
9
10 ^L
11 The Emacs mail system provides a facility for reading, sending, and
12 responding to Multics mail within Emacs, utilizing the standard Emacs features
13 and the interfaces of the Multics mail system. Known deficiencies/misfeatures
14 will be detailed below. RMAIL is modeled after ITS RMAIL.
15
16 ------------------------------ ------------------------------
17
18 There are two basic functions, sending mail and reading mail. The Emacs
19 command for sending mail is
20
21 ^XM send-mail
22
23 Issuing this command will prompt for a "Subject", which should be supplied,
24 terminated by a carriage return. This subject will be incorporated into the
25 buffer name, so it should be short. A buffer will be formatted up with the
26 mail in it, header prefabricated. The buffer will be placed in an available
27 window like ^X^E comout does. Fill mode will be turned on with a fill
28 column of 72. The buffer is now in MAIL mode, which defines the following
29 commands:
30
31 ^XA mail-append. Go to the end of the body of the mail. Use this to
32 start inputting the text after you have set the destination, or
33 to go back to the text after editing some header field.
34
35 ^XT mail-to. Go to the end of the "To:" line, to add a recipient.
36 You will be left here when the MAIL buffer is entered, to enter
37 the first recipient. Then use ^XA to continue. Separate
38 recipients like all header fields with commas, i.e.,
39
40 To: Washington.States, Consultant.c
41
42 ^XF mail-from. Go to the end of the "From:" line, to edit it, or
43 add more sender's names.
44
45 ^XJ mail-subject. Go to the end of the "Subject:" line, to edit it.
46
47 ^XC mail-cc. Go to the end of the "Cc:" carbon copy recipients
48 line, making one if there is none, so that you can type in the
49 destination of a carbon copy recipient.
50
51 ^XY mail-reply-to. Generate a "Reply-To" field, if none exists,
52 and go to it. The destination put here will be used for replies
53 if a recipient of your mail uses RMAIL or another mail system to
54 automatically reply to your message.
55
56 ^X^S send-the-mail. Send the buffer to the recipients specified in the
57 header. The relative success of the sendings will be displayed as
58 local output 2 linefeeds to restore display.
59
60 ESC-^F forward-mail-field. Move forward one recipient, cc recipient, etc.
61 on this header line. Circles around at end.
62
63 ESC-^B backward-mail-field. Move backward one recipient, cc recipient,
64 etc. on this header line. Circles around at end.
65
66 ESC-^D delete-mail-field. Delete, including necessary commas, the
67 single header item recipient etc. that the cursor is on.
68
69 ^XL rmail-logger-append. Log the message into a file, placing it at
70 the end, separated by a formfeed. With an argument, or the first
71 time, the pathname of the log file is prompted for. Otherwise,
72 the same file last used by ^XL or ^XP is used.
73
74 ^XP rmail-logger-append. Same as ^XL, but puts message at the front
75 of the file.
76
77 Three forms of recipient or cc recipient destinations are accepted:
78
79 Jones.States standard Multics person.project
80 Jones link mailbox in Daemon mailbox dir
81 Mxyptlk at KRYPTON-KL10 ARPANET address PERSON at SITE
82
83 Parenthetical comments in destinations are ignored, thus:
84
85 Muhammad I am the Greatest Ali at the WBA
86
87 gets set to "Muhammad Ali" at Site WBA, as per RFC 733. Quote processing
88 is done, too, and a field between <> brackets makes all outside it
89 in a given address a comment as per RFC 733 which is visible
90 on Multics as mail_format.gi.info.
91
92 Net mail sending is done via the Network Mailer Daemon; net connect
93 access is NOT required; you should be prepared for an acknowledgement message
94 from the Mailer Daemon.
95
96 Your name will be given as
97
98 From: Destructo.CHAOS
99
100 or, if this site is on the ARPANET
101
102 From: Destructo.CHAOS at RANDUM-MULTIX
103
104 If RMAIL knows your real name, you will get
105
106 From: Myron P. Destructo <Destructo.CHAOS at RANDUM-MULTIX>
107
108 RMAIL knows your name if either your site Emacs expert has placed it in the
109 "rmail-full-name-table" in the "emacs environment directory" see him or her
110 about this or if you have a form setting "my-personal-name" in your startup,
111 e.g.,
112
113 setq my-personal-name "Myron P. Destructo"
114
115 If the Lisp variable "mail-mode-hook" is bound by the user, the atomic
116 symbol to which it is bound will be called as a function with no arguments
117 whenever a mail-mode buffer is created. This be used to set mail-mode key
118 bindings.
119
120 ------------------------------ ------------------------------
121
122 Mail reading is performed via the command
123
124 ^XR rmail
125
126 By default, mail is read in your personal default mailbox,
127 >udd>your-project>you>you.mbx. If ^XR is given an argument, e.g., ^U^XR, the
128 "mailbox name" is prompted for. This may take any of the forms
129
130 Person.Project
131 <pathname> with or without ".mbx" suffix
132 Person if a link to Person.mbx exists in the ARPANET
133 mailbox link directory
134
135 If you have no mail in the selected mailbox, a message will be issued to this
136 effect. Otherwise, the first message in the mailbox will be displayed in a
137 buffer, in RMAIL mode. This buffer is read-only; the following extra
138 commands all normal commands are here too apply in RMAIL mode: NB: these
139 are mostly NOT control characters, but regular characters!: note also
140 that numeric araguments may be typed directly e.g. 3 g to go
141 to message 3 without ESC or ^U:
142
143
144 n Move on to the next message.
145 p Move back to the previous message.
146 l Move to the last message in your mailbox.
147 g Move to message number argument, i.e.,
148 3 g to go to message # 3.
149 j Same as g.
150 d Delete i.e. queue for deletion when rmail is exited
151 this message, move on to next undeleted message.
152 D Same as d, but moves backward.
153 u Undelete the last stacked deleted message.
154 c Copy the message to some other mailbox. A mailbox name will
155 be prompted for; anything acceptable to ^XR as above is ok.
156 q Quit out of rmail, returning to buffer from which
157 rmail was invoked, deleting all messages marked for
158 deletion.
159 s Summarize as local output all undeleted messages.
160 May take a little time for full mailboxes.
161 ^XL Log the message to an ASCII file, at the end of the file.
162 See the description above under the mail-sending commands.
163 ^XP Same as ^XL, but "prepends" to the front. See the description
164 above under mail-sending commands.
165
166 m Send mail, not necessarily a reply see r. Indentical to
167 ^XM, send-mail, but ESC-^Y, ^X^Q and ^X^S are defined as below
168 for the r command, for convenience while RMAIL'ing.
169
170 r Reply to sender, via MAIL mode. Formats up a MAIL mode buffer to
171 reply to the current message, copying the subject if any, or
172 making one up, and setting up as a destination the sender's address
173 that he/she would like to be responded to at. With a numeric
174 argument, i.e, 1r, responds to other recipients as well:
175 we do not do so by default. This command is EXTREMELY effective
176 in 2-window mode, in which case the response will be put in the
177 other window, and ESC-^V page-other-window may be used to "page"
178 the letter you are responding to as you respond. When in RMAIL
179 reply mode, variant of MAIL mode set up for this purpose, the
180 following three ADDITIONAL commands apply, other than the normal MAIL
181 mode commands and the standard Emacs commands:
182
183 ESC-^Y rmail-yank-mail
184
185 Yanks the text and header of the original piece of
186 mail being responded to, indented, by default, by
187 4 opt rmail-original-yank-indent controls this number.
188
189 ^X^Q return-to-rmail
190
191 returns to RMAIL, and its window without sending the
192 message.
193
194 ^X^S send-from-rmail
195
196 Actually sends the reply, and returns to RMAIL and its
197 window.
198
199
200
201
202 It is important to quit q out of RMAIL before leaving Emacs; Messages
203 do not actually get deleted unless you quit out of RMAIL or equivalently
204 answer "yes" to "All messages deleted. Quit RMAIL?".
205
206 If the Lisp variable "rmail-mode-hook" is bound by the user,
207 the atomic symbol to which it is bound will be called as a function with
208 no arguments before the first message is displayed. This can
209 be used to set RMAIL-mode key bindings.
210
211 ------------------------------ ------------------------------
212 People who receive a lot of mail from a lot of people and or
213 ARPAnet sites may want to set the variable "rmail-names-for-me"
214 in their startup. This variable is set to a list of valid
215 addresses which should NOT be included among recipients of any
216 piece of mail generated by rmail-reply with an argument.
217 This is to prevent sending yourself mail. Project names of
218 "*" as well as host names of "*" are permitted.
219
220 Example:
221 setq rmail-names-for-me
222 '"bsg.*" "Greenberg.*" "BSG1.*" "Greenb1 @ Foo-Unix"
223 "BSG @ *"
224
225 By default, rmail-reply will suppress responding the the same
226 name as would be put in the From field by send-mail ^XM.
227 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
228 Current lossages, deficiencies, and unimplementeds 3/17/79
229
230 1. We don't send mail acknowledgements.
231
232 2. We currently have no facility for forwarding mail.
233
234 END