Attachment #6174 for bug #14212

View | Details | Raw Unified | Return to bug 14212
Collapse All | Expand All




installed the MH package on your FreeBSD machine. If you installed
from CDROM you should be able to execute the following to load mh:
<informalexample>
<screen>&prompt.root; <userinput>pkg_add /cdrom/packages/mh-6.8.3.tgz</></screen>
</informalexample>
You will notice that it created a <filename>/usr/local/lib/mh</>
directory for you as well as adding several binaries to the

the MH defaults and ask you about creating a Mail directory. If you
have mail waiting to be downloaded you will see something that looks
like:
</para>
<informalexample>
<screen>  29  01/15 Doug White         Re: Another Failed to boot problem&lt;&lt;On Mon, 15 J
  30  01/16 "Jordan K. Hubbar  Re: FBSD 2.1&lt;&lt;&gt; Do you want a library instead of

  32  01/16 "Jordan K. Hubbar  Re: video is up&lt;&lt;&gt; Anyway, mrouted won't run, ev
  33  01/16 Michael Smith      Re: FBSD 2.1&lt;&lt;Nate Williams stands accused of sa</screen>
</informalexample>
<para>
This is the same thing you will see from a <command>scan</> (see
<xref linkend="scan">). If you just run <command>inc</> with no
arguments it will look on your computer for email that is supposed to

<para>A lot of people like to use POP for grabbing their email. MH can do
POP to grab your email. You will need to give <command>inc</> a few command
line arguments. 
</para>
<informalexample>
<screen>&prompt.user; <userinput>inc -host mail.pop.org -user <replaceable>username</> -norpop</></screen>
</informalexample>
<para>
That tells <command>inc</> to go to <parameter>mail.pop.org</> to
download your email, and that your username on their system is
<replaceable>username</>. The <option>-norpop</option> option tells

command. If you just type <userinput>show</> and hit <keycap>return</>
then it displays the current message. You can also give specific
message numbers to show:
</para>
<informalexample>
<screen>&prompt.user; <userinput>show 32 45 56</></screen>
</informalexample>
<para>
This would display message numbers 32, 45 and 56 right after each
other. Unless you change the default behavior <command>show</>
basically just does a <command>more</> on the email message.</para>

<para><command>scan</> will display a brief listing of the messages
in your current folder. This is an example of what the
<command>scan</> command will give you.
</para>
<informalexample>
<screen>  30+ 01/16 "Jordan K. Hubbar  Re: FBSD 2.1&lt;&lt;&gt; Do you want a library instead of
  31  01/16 Bruce Evans        Re: location of bad144 table&lt;&lt;&gt;&gt; &gt;It would appea
  32  01/16 "Jordan K. Hubbar  Re: video is up&lt;&lt;&gt; Anyway, mrouted won't run, ev
  33  01/16 Michael Smith      Re: FBSD 2.1&lt;&lt;Nate Williams stands accused of sa</screen>
</informalexample>
<para>
Like just about everything in MH this display is very configurable.
This is the typical default display. It gives you the message number,
the date on the email, the sender, the subject line, and a sentence

<para>The first thing that you will want to do is <command>inc</>
your new mail. So at a shell prompt just type in <command>inc</> and
hit <keycap>return</>.
</para>
<informalexample>
<screen>&prompt.user; <userinput>inc</>
Incorporating new mail into inbox...

  36+ 01/19 "Stephen L. Lange  Request...&lt;&lt;Please remove me as contact for pind
  37  01/19 Matt Thomas        Re: kern/950: Two PCI bridge chips fail (multipl
  38  01/19 "Amancio Hasty Jr  Re: FreeBSD and VAT&lt;&lt;&gt;&gt;&gt; Bill Fenner said: &gt; In 
&prompt.user;</screen>
</informalexample>
<para>
This shows you the new email that has been added to your mailbox. So
the next thing to do is <command>show</> the email and move around.
</para>
<informalexample>
<screen>&prompt.user; <userinput>show</>
Received: by sashimi.wwa.com (Smail3.1.29.1 #2)
        id m0tdMZ2-001W2UC; Fri, 19 Jan 96 13:33 CST
Date: Fri, 19 Jan 1996 13:33:31 -0600 (CST)


Please remove me as contact for pindat.com

&prompt.user; <userinput>rmm</>
&prompt.user; <userinput>next</>
Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by whydos.lkg.dec.com (8.6.11/8
.6.9) with SMTP id RAA24416; Fri, 19 Jan 1996 17:56:48 GMT
Message-Id: &lt;199601191756.RAA24416@whydos.lkg.dec.com&gt;


This is due to a typo in pcireg.h (to
which I am probably the guilty party).</screen>
</informalexample>

<para>The <command>rmm</> removed the current message and the
<command>next</> command moved me on to the next message.
Now if I wanted to look at ten most recent messages so I could read
one of them here is what I would do:
</para>
<informalexample>
<screen>&prompt.user; <userinput>scan last:10</>
  26  01/16 maddy              Re: Testing some stuff&lt;&lt;yeah, well, Trinity has 
  27  01/17 Automatic digest   NET-HAPPENINGS Digest - 16 Jan 1996 to 17 Jan 19
  28  01/17 Evans A Criswell   Re: Hey dude&lt;&lt;&gt;From matt@tempest.garply.com Tue 

  35  01/19 support@foo.garpl  [garply.com #1138] parlor&lt;&lt;Hello. This is the Ne
  37+ 01/19 Matt Thomas        Re: kern/950: Two PCI bridge chips fail (multipl
  38  01/19 "Amancio Hasty Jr  Re: FreeBSD and VAT&lt;&lt;&gt;&gt;&gt; Bill Fenner said: &gt; In 
&prompt.user;</screen>
</informalexample>
<para>
Then if I wanted to read message number 27 I would do a
<userinput>show 27</> and it would be displayed. As you can probably
tell from this sample session MH is pretty easy to use and looking

<citerefentry><refentrytitle>pick</><manvolnum>1</></> man page for a
more thorough understanding. At its simplest level you can do
something like
</para>
<informalexample>
<screen>&prompt.user; <userinput>pick -search pci</>
15
42
55
56
57</screen>
</informalexample>
<para>
This will tell <command>pick</> to look through every single line in
every message in your current folder and tell you which message
numbers it found the word <literal>pci</> in. You can then

<command>rmm</> them. You would have to specify something like
<command>show 15 42 55-57</> to display them though. A slightly more
useful thing to do is this:
</para>
<informalexample>
<screen>&prompt.user; <userinput>pick -search pci -seq pick</>
5 hits
&prompt.user; <userinput>show pick</></screen>
</informalexample>
<para>
This will show you the same messages you just didn't have to work as
hard to do it. The <option>-seq</option> option is really an
abbreviation of <option>-sequence</option> and <command>pick</> is

consuming than just searching for message from someone, or to
someone. So <command>pick</> allows you to use the following
predefined search criteria:
</para>

<variablelist>


</listitem>
</varlistentry>

</variablelist>
  
<para>This allows you to do things like
<informalexample>
<screen>&prompt.user; <userinput>pick -to freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.org -seq hackers</></screen>
</informalexample>
to get a list of all the email send to the FreeBSD hackers mailing
list. <command>pick</> also allows you to group these criteria in
different ways using the following options:
</para>
<itemizedlist>

<listitem>

</listitem>

</itemizedlist>
<para>
These commands allow you to do things like
</para>
<informalexample>
<screen>&prompt.user; <userinput>pick -to freebsd-hackers -and -cc freebsd-hackers</></screen>
</informalexample>
<para>
That will grab all the email in your inbox that was sent to
freebsd-hackers or cc'd to that list. The brace options allow you to
group search criteria together. This is sometimes very necessary as
in the following example
</para>
<informalexample>
<screen>&prompt.user; <userinput>pick -lbrace -to freebsd-hackers -and 
  -not -cc freebsd-questions -rbrace -and -subject pci</></screen>
</informalexample>

<para>Basically this says <quote>pick (to freebsd-hackers and not cc'd on
freebsd-questions) and the subject is pci</quote>. It should look through your

folders is the same one you get when you change to a folder with
<command>folder +foldername</>. A <command>folders</> command looks
like this:
</para>
<informalexample>
<screen>                Folder      # of messages (  range  ); cur  msg  (other files)
              announce  has    1 message  (   1-   1).


                     TOTAL=  199 messages in 13 folders.
</screen>
</informalexample>
  
<para>The <command>refile</> command is what you use to move messages
between folders. When you do something like <command>refile 23

-editor /usr/local/bin/pico/</> instead. Once you have run
<emphasis>comp</emphasis> you are in your editor and you see
something that looks like this:
</para>
<informalexample>
<screen>To:
cc:
Subject:
--------
</screen>
</informalexample>

<para>You need to put the person you are sending the mail to after the
<literal>To:</> line. It works the same way for the other headers

lot of email programs have special requesters that ask you for this
information but there really isn't any point to that. Plus this
really gives you excellent flexibility.
</para>
<informalexample>
<screen>To:<userinput>freebsd-rave@FreeBSD.org</>
cc:

--------
<userinput>Wow this is an amazing operating system. Thanks!</></screen>
</informalexample>
<para>
You can now save this message and exit your editor. You will see the
<prompt>What now?</> prompt and you can type in
<userinput>send</> or <userinput>s</> and hit

<filename>components</> file and then edits it. You can add any
kind of valid RFC822 header you want. For instance you could have
something like this in your <filename>components</> file:
</para>
<informalexample>
<screen>To:
Fcc: out

X-Home-Page: http://www.FreeBSD.org/
-------</screen>
</informalexample>
<para>
MH would then copy this components file and throw you into your
editor. The <filename>components</> file is fairly simple. If you
wanted to have a signature on those messages you would just put your


<para>The <filename>replcomps</> file is a bit more complex. The default
<filename>replcomps</> looks like this:
</para>
<informalexample>
<screen>%(lit)%(formataddr %&lt;{reply-to}%?{from}%?{sender}%?{return-path}%&gt;)\
%&lt;(nonnull)%(void(width))%(putaddr To: )\n%&gt;\

             %{message-id}%&gt;\n%&gt;\
--------
</screen>
</informalexample>

<para>It's in the same basic format as the <filename>components</> file but
it contains quite a few extra formatting codes. The

address. The next part is <literal>%&lt;</literal> which means if and
the <literal>{reply-to}</> means the reply-to field in the original
message. So that might be translated this way:
</para>
<informalexample>
<screen>%&lt;<emphasis remap=bf>if</emphasis> {reply-to} <emphasis remap=bf>the original message has a reply-to</emphasis> 
then give that to formataddr, %? <emphasis remap=bf>else</emphasis> {from} <emphasis remap=bf>take the
from address</emphasis>, %? <emphasis remap=bf>else</emphasis> {sender} <emphasis remap=bf>take the sender address</emphasis>, %?
<emphasis remap=bf>else</emphasis> {return-path} <emphasis remap=bf>take the return-path from the original
message</emphasis>, %&gt; <emphasis remap=bf>endif</emphasis>.</screen>
</informalexample>
  
<para>As you can tell MH formatting can get rather involved. You can
probably decipher what most of the other functions and variables

Return to bug 14212