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<Html>
<Head>
<Title>Exmh 2.0 - EXMH TOUR (1)</Title>
<!-- Author: bwelch -->
</Head>
<Body>



<h1><center>INTRO TO EXMH</center></h1>
<h2><a NAME="CONTENTS">Contents</a></h2>
<ul>
<h4><a HREF="#NAME">NAME</a></h4>
<h4><a HREF="#INTRODUCTION">INTRODUCTION</a></h4>
<h4><a HREF="#GETTING STARTED">GETTING STARTED</a></h4>
<h4><a HREF="#RUNNING EXMH">RUNNING EXMH</a></h4>
<h4><a HREF="#THE EXMH DISPLAY">THE EXMH DISPLAY</a></h4>
<h4><a HREF="#SENDING MAIL">SENDING MAIL</a></h4>
<h4><a HREF="#MOUSING AROUND">MOUSING AROUND</a></h4>
<h4><a HREF="#GETTING NEW MAIL">GETTING NEW MAIL</a></h4>
<h4><a HREF="#READING MIME MESSAGES">READING MIME MESSAGES</a></h4>
<h4><a HREF="#REPLYING TO MAIL">REPLYING TO MAIL</a></h4>
<h4><a HREF="#SELECTING MESSAGES">SELECTING MESSAGES</a></h4>
<h4><a HREF="#SEARCHING">SEARCHING</a></h4>
<h4><a HREF="#FORWARDING MESSAGES">FORWARDING MESSAGES</a></h4>
<h4><a HREF="#DELETING MESSAGES">DELETING MESSAGES</a></h4>
<h4><a HREF="#LEAVING EXMH">LEAVING EXMH</a></h4>
<h4><a HREF="#PREFERENCES">PREFERENCES</a></h4>
<h4><a HREF="#WHAT IS MH MAIL?">WHAT IS MH MAIL?</a></h4>
<h4><a HREF="#MORE ABOUT EXMH">MORE ABOUT EXMH</a></h4>
<h4><a HREF="#SEE ALSO">SEE ALSO</a></h4>
<h4><a HREF="#AUTHOR">AUTHOR</a></h4>
<h4><a HREF="#THANKS">THANKS</a></h4>
</ul>
<h3><a NAME="NAME" HREF="#CONTENTS">NAME</a></h3>
exmh - An introduction to the exmh mail user interface. 

<h3><a NAME="INTRODUCTION" HREF="#CONTENTS">INTRODUCTION</a></h3>
<p>
This man page provides a quick tour through some of the basic features
of <i>exmh</i>which provides a graphical user interface to the MH mail
system. 
<p>
After you read this tutorial you should be able to use <i>exmh</i>for
your basic daily mail reading needs. You will learn how to send mail,
read mail, manage your messages in folders, and adjust some of the
<i>exmh</i> features by means of its 
<button -command Preferences_Dialog>Preferences</button> user
interface. 
<p>
Other places to get information:
<dl>
  <dt><a HREF="guide.html">Guide</a>
  <dd>Provides information about using the more advanced features of
      <i>exmh</i>. If you are already an experienced email user, you
      may want to just read the <a HREF="#GETTING STARTED">GETTING
      STARTED</a> section here and then skip to 
      <a HREF="guide.html">the guide</a>. 

  <dt><a HREF="custom.html">Customization</a>
  <dd>Describes how to customize exmh to suit your needs.

  <dt><a HREF="reference.html">Reference</a>
  <dd>Lists each button and menu entry in <i>exmh</i> and explains
      what they do. If you are an experienced <i>exmh</i> user, this
      may be the most useful page for you.
</dl>
<p>
A cleaned up version of an earlier release of these pages appear in
the 3rd edition of the book by Jerry Peek, <i>MH &amp; xmh: email for
users and programmers</i>, which is published by O'Reilly &amp; Associates. 

<h3><a NAME="GETTING STARTED" HREF="#CONTENTS">GETTING STARTED</a></h3>
<p>
If you are already an MH or <i>xmh</i> user, you can start with the
examples given in this tour. If you are a new user, exmh will up your
basic MH environment. This includes a Mail directory which will have
one subdirectory for each mail folder, plus several files that MH mail
uses for its own purposes. You also get a ~/.mh_profile file that has
user settings for MH and exmh. 
<p>
<i>Exmh</i> uses the regular MH programs to manipulate your mail folders
and messages. This means it is compatible with command-line use of
MH programs, and its actions should be familiar if you are an experienced
MH user. If you are a new MH user, then the details of running MH programs
is hidden behind the graphical interface. The MH programs used by exmh
are described towards the end of this man page. 
<p>
When you run <i>exmh</i> for the first time it checks a few things
in your MH profile. In particular, it depends on the
<code>Draft-Folder</code> and <code>Unseen-Sequence</code> profile
components. If these profile components are not present, a dialog
appears and <i>exmh</i> can set them up for you. If you do not let
<i>exmh</i> create them nor set them up by hand, <i>exmh</i> will not
work properly. These profile entries are described 
<a HREF="reference.html">here</a>.
<p>
<i>Exmh</i> has been designed to be very flexible, although it will
work just fine "out of the box". The
<button -command Preferences_Dialog>Preferences</button> package used
to adjust some of the settings in exmh is introduced in this man page,
and some of the important settings are described here. A more complete
guide to customizing <i>exmh</i> is given <a HREF="custom.html">here</a>. 

<h3><a NAME="RUNNING EXMH" HREF="#CONTENTS">RUNNING EXMH</a></h3>
<p>
The command to start <i>exmh</i> looks like this: 
<pre><blockquote>exmh -display <i>hostname</i>:0 &amp;
</blockquote></pre>
If your <code>DISPLAY</code> environment variable is set up properly,
then the <code>-display</code> argument is not needed, and the command
is even simpler. You do not need to specify a <code>-geometry</code>
argument, although <i>exmh</i> supports one. Instead, simply position
and size the window using your window manager. When <i>exmh</i> quits,
it saves the geometry information so you don't have to worry about
it. It does this with all its top level windows, so you can adjust
their position once and then forget about it. There are more command
line options described <a HREF="reference.html">here</a>. 
<p>
You can add the exmh command to your startup X environment by editing
your startup file (like <code>.xsession</code>). You might also want
to add it to the main menu of your window manager. The details about
this vary from X system to X system, so ask your local X guru for
help. <i>Exmh</i> also supports the window manager session protocol,
which means that session-smart window managers will automatically
start exmh for you if you quit X when <i>exmh</i> is running.

<h3><a NAME="THE EXMH DISPLAY" HREF="#CONTENTS">THE EXMH DISPLAY</a></h3>
<p>
This section describes the main parts of the <i>exmh</i> display. It 
probably makes sense to run exmh at this point so you can follow
along. There are three sets of buttons in the interface, and three
main sub-windows. 

<dl>
  <dt>Main Buttons
  <dd>Along the top of the window is a set of buttons and menus that
      apply to <i>exmh</i> itself. 
      <button -command Exmh_Done>Quit</button>,
      for example, quits <i>exmh</i>. The Help... button pops up a
      menu, and you can select the entries there to get more on-line
      information about <i>exmh</i>. Use the left mouse button to
      select the buttons and menus. A button will change its
      appearance when you press it, and it will be invoked when you
      release the mouse over the button. If you slide the mouse off
      the button before releasing it, nothing happens.

  <dt>Folder Display
  <dd>Below the main buttons is the folder display sub-window. It has
      a special button for each of your top-level folders, and these
      are called <i>folder labels</i>. As a new user you will see two
      folder labels, one for inbox and drafts. The inbox folder is for
      your new messages, and the drafts folder is for messages you are
      writing.  If you have used MH (or xmh) before, then you may have
      many more folders that will appear in this display. The mouse
      bindings for folder labels are explained 
      <a HREF="guide.html">here</a>. The
      <button -command Help_KeyDisplay>Color Legend</button> from the
      Help... menu also tells you how the folder labels respond to
      mouse clicks. 

  <dt>Folder Cache
  <dd>A second folder display called the <i>folder cache</i> may
      appear under the main folder display. This shows the folder
      labels for recently used folders. If you only have a few folders
      this wastes screen real estate. The 
      <a href="#PREFERENCES">PREFERENCES</a> section near the end of
      this page explains how to turn this off via the Folder Cache
      <button -command Preferences_Dialog>Preferences</button>
      setting. If you are a first-time exmh user, Exmh tries to guess
      if you need this display based on the number of folders and
      nested folders you have.

  <dt>Folder Buttons
  <dd>The middle set of buttons is for operations that apply to
      folders. For example, you can create a new folder with the
      <button -command "Folder_New">New</button> button here. The
      More... button displays a popup menu with several more
      operations you can apply to folders. Some of these buttons will
      be introduced in this page. All of these buttons and menus are
      explained in detail <a HREF="reference.html">here</a>. 
      <p>
      To the left of the folder buttons, summary information about the
      current folder is displayed. 

  <dt>Table of Contents
  <dd>The middle sub-window of the display shows a summary of the
      messages in the folder. It shows the message number, the date of
      the message, the subject of the message, and, space permitting,
      the first few words of the message. Left click on a line in the
      table of contents to view the corresponding message. The mouse
      bindings for the table of contents are described in more detail
      <a HREF="guide.html">here</a>. 
      <p>
      MH experts: The display in this window comes from both the MH
      scan program or MH inc programs, so it is affected by the form
      specification used by these programs. 

  <dt>Color and Monochrome Highlights
  <dd>Both the folder display and table of contents windows use
      highlights to give you visual clues about the state of messages
      and folders. Your unread messages are highlighted in the table
      of contents and the folders that contain unread message are
      highlighted in the folder display. Pull down the main
      Help... menu and select <button -command Help_KeyDisplay>Color
      Legend</button> to display a key to the highlights for your
      display. The highlighting is covered in more detail later
      <a HREF="guide.html">here</a>, and controlling it yourself is
      covered <a HREF="custom.html">here</a>.

  <dt>Status Line
  <dd>Just below the table of contents is the status line. This has
      two parts. The left part shows the name of the folder and the
      message number for the current message, if any. The right part
      gives feedback about what <i>exmh</i> is doing. After it
      displays a message, the Subject component is displayed there.  

  <dt>Sub-window Resize Diamond
  <dd>The black diamond to the right of the status line is used to
      change the size of the internal windows. Press the first mouse
      button on this target and a horizontal line appears. Drag it up
      and down to adjust the window sizes. Try dragging it all the way
      to the top and bottom of the exmh window to see how the mode
      changes to adjust different windows.  

  <dt>Message Buttons
  <dd>The bottom row of buttons are for operations that apply to the
      current message. Several of these operations will be introduced
      in this man page. The right hand button labeled More... brings
      up a menu with several more advanced message operations.  
      <p>
      <i>Hint:</i> Many of these message operations have keyboard
      shortcuts that make it easy to use <i>exmh</i> with your hands
      on the keyboard. Some of the short-cuts are introduced in this
      page, and all of them are listed <a HREF="guide.html">here</a>. 

  <dt>Message Display
  <dd>The bottom sub-window displays the current message, if any. Some
      of the less interesting mail headers start out scrolled off the
      top of this window.  
</dl>

<h3><a NAME="SENDING MAIL" HREF="#CONTENTS">SENDING MAIL</a></h3>
<p>
A good way to test things out is to send a message to yourself. Here
are the steps you take to do that: 

<ol>
  <li>Click the <button -command "Msg_Compose">Comp</button> button,
      which is in the Message buttons in the bottom group. "Comp" is
      short for "compose".  A new window will open that contains the
      template for your message. The built-in editor, which is called
      <i>sedit</i>, will start out with the insert cursor positioned
      at the end of the first empty header line. Enter your user name
      after the To: header. If you want to send the message to more
      than one person, use a comma to separate the names.

  <li>Position the insert cursor on the next header line. You can do
      this a few different ways. The most direct way is to click the
      left mouse button where you want the cursor to be. There are
      keyboard shortcuts, too. If you press &lt;Tab&gt; the editor
      will take you to the end of the next header line. You can also
      use the arrow keys or some emacs-like bindings to move the
      cursor. &lt;Control-n&gt; goes to the next line,
      &lt;Control-f&gt; moves the cursor forward a
      character. &lt;Control-p&gt; moves up a line, and
      &lt;Control-b&gt; moves back a character. The <i>Simple Edit</i>
      menu entry shows you all the keybindings. 

  <li>The next header is the Cc: line. People listed in the Cc: line
      get a "courtesy" (or "carbon") copy of the message. By
      convention, the message is primarily for the people listed in
      the To: component, and the people in the Cc: component are
      getting the message "for information." In this case, you can
      leave the Cc: component empty. 
      <p>
      Move the insert cursor to the Subject: line and enter a
      Subject. The people that receive your message will get an idea
      of what the message is about from the subject, so take a moment
      to think of a good one. For this test, you can type something
      like "exmh test message".

  <li>Make sure the headers are OK. In particular, make sure there are
      no blank lines in the headers. The mail system treats a blank
      line as meaning "end-of-headers", so you don't want to
      prematurely end the header section. If you have a blank line,
      position the insert cursor on it and use Backspace to remove the
      empty line.
      <p>
      Position the cursor at the start of the message body. You can
      use the mouse for this, or you can press &lt;Tab&gt; twice
      quickly and the editor will position the cursor correctly. When
      using the default MH message templates, this will be right after
      the line of all dashes. 

  <li>Type in your message. When you type in a long message, the lines
      will wrap automatically at word boundaries. To get a blank line
      for paragraph boundaries, press &lt;Return&gt;. The built-in
      editor supports several editing commands that are based on emacs
      key bindings. If you select the <i>Simple Edit</i> menu entry
      under the main Bindings menu, you will bring up a dialog that
      lets you view and edit the key bindings. 

  <li>If you are happy with the message, you send it by pressing the
      Send button at the top-right corner of the window. The Send
      button will turn grey, and the window will disappear once the
      message has been sent successfully.
      <p>
      If you do not want to send the message, press the Abort button
      instead. If you want to save the message draft and continue to
      work on it later, press the Save&amp;Quit button. Working on a
      saved draft message is described <a HREF="guide.html">here</a>. 
</ol>
Send yourself a few messages, or have a friend send you a few test
messages. You will use these test messages to practice moving around
in a folder and deleting messages. Make one of the messages pretty
long so you can practice scrolling through it. 
<p>
Finally, try sending 
<a href="mailto:mh-mime-sample@online.ora.com">mh-mime-sample@online.ora.com</a>
a message. This addresses a program that will return a MIME message to
you. Just put this address in the To field with anything as the
message body and subject. Reading this message will be described below. 

<h3><a NAME="MOUSING AROUND" HREF="#CONTENTS">MOUSING AROUND</a></h3>
<p>
The selection is dragged out with the left mouse button. You can modify
the selection by holding the Shift key while pressing the left button.
A double-click begins a word-oriented selection, and a triple-click
begins a line-oriented selection. If you drag a selection off the bottom
or top of a window the text will be scrolled automatically and the
selection will be extended. 
<p>
Paste is done with the middle mouse button. If you drag the middle
mouse button, then the window is scrolled instead as described
below. There is also a key-binding for paste, which is
&lt;Control-y&gt;. Use &lt;Control-w&gt; or the &lt;Delete&gt; key to
delete the selection. If you have a wheel mouse, such as the Microsoft 
Intellimouse, and you have configured your X server, you can enable the 
wheel in the Windows + Scrolling preferences box.  For info on how
to configure XFree86 with most wheel mice, see <a href="http://www.inria.fr/koala/colas/mouse-wheel-scroll/">http://www.inria.fr/koala/colas/mouse-wheel-scroll/</a> 

<p>
The middle mouse button is used for "drag-scrolling". To scroll, simply
press the middle mouse button over the text and drag the text. If you
press the Shift key, the scrolling is faster. Drag-scrolling works
in the text widgets, for vertical scrolling, and the one-line entry
widgets, for horizontal scrolling. The text widgets are used to display
the folder contents and the current message. The entry widgets are
used in various dialogs in order to enter values. You can change the
scrolling button to the right button or to only work with shift-middle.
Set this up in the Simple Edit Bindings... dialog. 
<p>
Buttons and menus are also sensitive to which mouse button is pressed.
Only the left button activates a button, and it is the &lt;ButtonRelease&gt;
event that is important. If you accidentally move the mouse off of
the button as you release it, nothing will happen. Don't worry, the
wrong button will not be invoked. 
<p>
Press the left button over a menubutton to pull down a menu. Most of
the menus in <i>exmh</i> are distinguished with a "..." in their label,
e.g. "More...". The menu will go away when the button is released.
Release the mouse button off the menu if you do not want to invoke
any menu item. (In some versions of Tk, the middle button will "tear
off" a Tk menu. This is quite handy if you use the menu often. To get
the menu to go away, you must click the left button over the menubutton.
This will reattach the menu to the menubutton, and another left click
will make the menu go away. In the latest versions of Tk, the first
menu entry is a dashed line that invokes this tear-off operation.)


<h3><a NAME="GETTING NEW MAIL" HREF="#CONTENTS">GETTING NEW MAIL</a></h3>
<p>
By now you should have some new mail waiting. Press the 
<button -command "Inc">Inc</button> button from the middle set of
buttons that do Folder operations. This will transfer messages from
your system spool file into your inbox folder. You will hear an
audible cue if there was new mail, and the table of contents will be
updated to reflect the new messages in your inbox. New messages will
be underlined (on a monochrome screen), or blue (on a color screen),
to indicate that you have not read them yet.
<p>
To view the new message, click on its line in the table of contents,
or press the <button -command "Ftoc_Next show">Next</button> button in
the bottom group of buttons. The message will be displayed in the
bottom sub-window, and the line in the table of contents will be
highlighted to remind you which message is being displayed. 
<p>
To view the next message, click the 
<button -command "Ftoc_Next show">Next</button> button. The keyboard
shortcut for this is the 'n' key.
<p>
The view the previous message, click the
<button -command "Ftoc_Prev show">Prev</button> button. The keyboard
shortcut for this is the 'p' key. 
<p>
<b>Scrolling through messages</b>. If you get a message that is too
long to fit into the message window, then the scrollbar will change
its appearance to indicate how much text is displayed. The scrollbar
is Motif-like. You can click on the arrows at either end to go up and
down one line. If you click above or below the elevator box you go
up and down one page. You can drag the elevator box to scroll, too.

<p>
You can also scroll text windows in <i>exmh</i> by dragging with the
middle mouse button. Press the middle button over the text area, not
the scrollbar, and hold it down while you move the mouse up or down.
If you hold the shift key at the same time, the scrolling is faster.
This works in the folder Table of Contents window, too. 
<p>
<i>Hint</i>. The space bar is a keyboard short-cut that does a combination
of scrolling and advancing to the next message. If the message is long,
then space will scroll by one screen. Once you are at the end of the
message, space will advance to the next message, just like the 'n'
key. You can use the BackSpace key to scroll back through a message.


<h3><a NAME="READING MIME MESSAGES" HREF="#CONTENTS">READING MIME
MESSAGES</a></h3>
<p>
By now you should have also received the sample MIME message from 
<a href="mailto:mh-mime-sample@online.ora.com">mh-mime-sample@online.ora.com</a>.
The MIME message has three parts to it, and these are numbered and 
labeled in the display. The first part is a multipart/alternative content,
which means there are a few different ways to view the content. This
is indicated by the message under the heading <b>1.</b> that there
are alternative views of the following content. <i>Exmh</i> will go
ahead and display what it thinks is the best alternative, and you see
the text/plain content displayed in part <b>1.2</b>. If you want
to see the other alternatives, then you can press the right button
over section 1 to get a popup menu with some choices. 
<p>
The next two parts are an audio clip and a picture in GIF format. The
audio clip displays two active text buttons labeled "Play attached
audio" and "Save audio file". Click on either of these with the left
mouse button. The part corresponding to the image displays the image
in the window. You can always press the right button to get a MIME
menu that has type-specific options for parts of your message. If you
press the right button over part <b>2.</b>, then the popup menu will
offer you these choices:  

<pre><blockquote>Decode part as MIME
Save Hello from the author...
View using mailcap rule...
Print Hello from the author as text...
Pass an audio fragment to metamail...
</blockquote></pre>

The first item is a checkbox menu item that lets you view the raw
content if you want to. The Save... menu entry displays a file
selection box so you can choose a non-temporary file to store the
content. This same function is available through the text button, but
not all MIME parts displays buttons like this. The next two entries
should result in the same thing. They use the mailcap specifications
to run another program that displays the content. In the first case,
View using mailcap rule..., <i>exmh</i> runs the program directly. In
the other case, Pass to metamail..., the <i>metamail</i> program is
run first, and it decodes the mailcap file and runs the external
program. Again, the text button labeled "Play attached audio" also
plays the audio.

<h3><a NAME="REPLYING TO MAIL" HREF="#CONTENTS">REPLYING TO MAIL</a></h3>
<p>
Select one of the messages from your friend that you'd like to answer.
Press the left button over the Reply... menu button. A menu with a
few entries will be displayed. Select the 
<button -command "Msg_Reply -nocc to -nocc cc">Reply to
sender</button> menu entry by dragging the mouse down to that entry
and letting up over it. The menu entry has a &lt;Key-r&gt; in it,
which means that you could also press the 'r' key to invoke this function.
<p>
This time the built-in editor will open a window with a message that
is partly filled in. All the headers are initialized based on the header
components from the original message. The built-in editor will automatically
position the cursor at the beginning of the message body. You can enter
your reply message like you did with the previous messages. You should
also double-check the header components. In this case, add yourself
to the Cc: component so you will get a copy of the reply message. When
you are done, press the Send button in the editor window to send the
message. 
<p>
There are a number of ways to control the format of your reply
messages. The MH <code>repl</code> command has several formatting
options, and because <i>exmh</i> uses <code>repl</code> to set up the
reply message, you can customize your reply format. <i>Exmh</i> lets
you define several variations on reply and add them to the
Reply... menu. This is described <a HREF="custom.html">here</a>.
<p>
It should not take long for you to get the copy of the reply message.
Wait a minute or so and press the <button -command "Inc">Inc</button>
button. The keyboard short-cut for <button -command "Inc">Inc</button>
is the 'i' key.

<h3><a NAME="SELECTING MESSAGES" HREF="#CONTENTS">SELECTING MESSAGES</a></h3>
<p>
Before we go on to more things you can do with messages, we need to
talk about selecting multiple messages at once. Several of the message
operations in <i>exmh</i> can operate on a set of messages. You can
manually select multiple messages by using the mouse, or you can select
messages based on their content. 
<p>
<b>Using the Mouse</b>. To select messages with the mouse, press the
left button and then drag out a selection. This will select a contiguous
range of messages. If the messages you want to select are not so nicely
organized, you can make a disjoint selection by holding down the Shift
key while making your selection. This adds new messages to the selection.
If you shift-click on a message that is already selected, then it becomes
unselected. If you need to select a lot of messages, simply drag the
mouse off the top or bottom of the window. It will be scrolled automatically
and the selection will be extended. 

<h3><a NAME="SEARCHING" HREF="#CONTENTS">SEARCHING</a></h3>
<p>
The Search... menu has several operations for finding messages and
finding text within a message. There is also a help entry that explains
searching in more detail. If you select "Find in message body" or "Find
in table of contents" a small search dialog appears. Enter the search
string and use the Next or Prev buttons to find the next match. When
you are searching over the table of contents, you can select All to
select all matching messages. 
<p>
The other way to search a folder is with "Pick by attributes". The
MH pick program is used to search the current folder for messages that
match mail headers like From or Subject. You can build up boolean expressions
among search criteria. This is a much more general search mechanism
than the "Find in table of contents" operation. 
<p>
Get started in the Pick dialog by pressing the "Choose pick attribute"
button. A menu of attribute types appears, including the Subject, From,
To, and Cc header components. You can type a regular expression pattern
in these entries to search for messages that have a matching header
component. 
<p>
The Before and After attributes are dates. You can find all messages
before or after a given date by using these fields. You can specify
dates as mm/dd/yy. Be sure to include the year. Dates can also be keywords
like "today", "yesterday", "tomorrow", and any day of the week ("Sunday",
"Monday", and so on.) 
<p>
The Search attribute is used to search for something in the body of
a message. This will run little slower because <code>pick</code> must
read through all of your messages, not just their headers. 
<p>
If you select more than one attribute, <code>pick</code> finds
messages that match all the criteria. In other words, it does the
logical <i>and</i> of the search criteria. If you want to search for
this <i>or</i> that, then you need to press the Or button in the
dialog. This adds another set of fields to the dialog, and pick will
search for everything that matches the first set <i>or</i> matches the
second set.
<p>
The "Add to Sel" checkbutton should be set <i>before</i> you do the
search. This controls whether or not the selected messages are added
to any existing selection. 
<p>
Finally, use the "Pick" button to do the search. Once the search has
completed you can perform a few operations on the selection. You can
<button -command "Msg_Remove">Delete</button> and refile messages as
described later. You can also display a new table of contents that
only contains the selected messages. Use the "New FTOC" button for
this. You can also clear the unseen state of the messages with the
"Mark Seen" button.
<p>
The "Clear" button resets the fields. 
<p>
The two entries in the dialog are used to control MH sequences. 
You can define up to 10 sequences in each folder, but they won't be
displayed properly unless you also <a href=custom.html#sequences>
define resources</a> for them.
<p>
If you use New FTOC to get a new scan listing, it would be better if
it appeared in a new window, but currently it replaces the table of
contents. You can move around and manipulate messages in this table
of contents. However, if you do another pick, it will only find things
in this limited table of contents, not the whole folder. (Yes, this
is a bug .) Use the Rescan Folder menu entry in the folder More...
menu to get a complete folder listing. 

<h3><a NAME="FORWARDING MESSAGES" HREF="#CONTENTS">FORWARDING MESSAGES</a></h3>
<p>
If you want to send someone a copy of a message or messages that you
have received, use the Forward message operation. Select the messages
as described in the previous section, then press the
<button -command "Msg_Forward">Forward</button> button. The keyboard
short-cut for forward is the 'f' key.
<p>
The message template will have a copy of the selected messages. You
fill in the headers, and you can also add a short message before the
start of the forwarded messages. When you are done, press Send to forward
the messages. 

<h3><a NAME="DELETING MESSAGES" HREF="#CONTENTS">DELETING MESSAGES</a></h3>
<p>
After you have read a message, you might want to remove it to keep
your mail folders tidy. <i>Exmh</i> uses two steps to remove mail.
In the first step you <i>mark</i> a message as being deleted. In the
second step you <i>commit</i> the operations on all marked messages.
It turns out that <button -command "Msg_Remove">Delete</button> just
renames your message files. They will survive until you get another
message by the same number and remove it, too. In addition, exmh has a
<button -command Folder_PurgePg>Purge Folder</button> operation that
removes these renamed files if they are more than a week old.
<p>
The <button -command "Msg_Remove">Delete</button> operation applies to
the current message, or you can also select a range of messages by
dragging out a selection in the table of contents. You can delete the
current message(s) by pressing the 
<button -command "Msg_Remove">Delete</button> button. The keyboard
short-cut is the 'd' key. The deleted message(s) will be highlighted
after the <button -command "Msg_Remove">Delete</button> operation so
you can easily see the state of the message. On a monochrome screen, a
cross hatching will be drawn through the table of contents line for
the message. On a color screen, the table of contents line will get a
dark grey background. 

<p>
After you mark a message for 
<button -command "Msg_Remove">Delete</button>, you are automatically
advanced to the next message. This makes it easy to go through your
folder and clean it up. Click 'd' to delete, or click 'n' to leave it
alone. 
<p>
<i>Hint</i>. If you are really in a hurry, use 'D' and 'N' as your
keyboard short-cuts. This prevents the next message from being displayed,
which can be slow for complex multi-media messages. 
<p>
When you are ready to commit the pending 
<button -command "Msg_Remove">Delete</button> actions, press the
<button -command "Folder_Commit">Commit</button> button. The keyboard
shortcut for <button -command "Folder_Commit">Commit</button> is
&lt;Control-Return&gt;.

<p>
If you decide you do not want to
<button -command "Msg_Remove">Delete</button> a message you can unmark
it.  Use the <button -command "Ftoc_Unmark">Unmark (Undo)</button>
menu entry that is under the message More... menu. The unmark
operation applies to the current message or messages, so you have to
select the messages to unmark first. The keyboard short-cut for unmark
is 'u'.
<p>
<i>Hint</i>. The minus, '-', keyboard shortcut takes you to the
previous message, even if it has been marked for
<button -command "Msg_Remove">Delete</button>. Ordinarily the
<button -command "Ftoc_Prev show">Prev</button> operation, and the 'p'
short-cut for it, will skip over marked messages. 

<h3><a NAME="LEAVING EXMH" HREF="#CONTENTS">LEAVING EXMH</a></h3>
<p>
Press the <button -command Exmh_Done>Quit</button> button to leave
exmh. It will take a few moments to close down because it saves some
state information before quitting. The
<button -command Exmh_Done>Quit</button> button will grey out after
you click it, and you will see a few status messages as it shuts
itself down.

<h3><a NAME="PREFERENCES" HREF="#CONTENTS">PREFERENCES</a></h3>
<p>
Try out the <button -command Preferences_Dialog>Preferences</button>
by turning off the folder cache. This just takes up display space if
you don't have many folders. If you have lots of nested folders,
though, you might even want to make this display bigger! 
<p>
Click the <button -command Preferences_Dialog>Preferences</button>
button, which brings up a dialog that has buttons for several of the
modules that make up <i>exmh</i>. Click on the Folder Cache button to
bring up the preference items that control the folder cache. In this
case there are just two items: the number of lines of labels in the
cache, and the names of folders that are always in the cache. Click in
the first field and backspace over the default value of 1. Type in 0
instead, and press &lt;Return&gt;. Voila! The folder cache
disappears.
<p>
If you like this setting, press Save one the main Preference dialog
and your changes will be saved to a file named ~/.exmh/exmh-defaults. Press
Reset if you want to undo your changes. You should be a little careful
here, because you are allowed to Dismiss the preference dialog without
saving. 
<p>
Another useful preference item to set is under Background Processing.
You can arrange for <i>exmh</i> to periodically run 
<button -command "Inc">Inc</button> so your messages are automatically
transferred into your inbox. The advantage of doing this is that the
folder label highlighting works best this way. Unfortunately,
<i>exmh</i> does not give you any visual clues when mail is only 
waiting in your system spool file.
<p>
More details about the 
<button -command Preferences_Dialog>Preferences</button> dialog are
given <a HREF="guide.html">here</a>, and an overview of the various
preference sections is given <a HREF="custom.html">here</a>. 

<h3><a NAME="WHAT IS MH MAIL?" HREF="#CONTENTS">WHAT IS MH MAIL?</a></h3>
<p>
MH is a collection of UNIX programs that store, manipulate, and display
your mail. MH originated from RAND, and it is now in the public domain.
Exmh uses these programs to do all the hard work, while it concentrates
on the user interface. 
<p>
You can use the MH programs to read your mail. Run them from the UNIX
command line like you would cd, ls, cc, or make. They are useful when
you are connecting over a slow line or cannot run exmh for some other
reason. For more details, there are individual man pages for each MH
program, plus one overview man page called MH. Below is a short summary
of the main MH programs used by exmh. 
<dl>
  <dt><code>folder</code>
  <dd>Query or set the current folder. 

  <dt><code>Inc</code> 
  <dd>Incorporate mail from your system spool file into your folders.

  <dt><code>scan</code>
  <dd>Display a listing of a mail folder. 

  <dt><code>show</code>
  <dd>Display a mail message. 

  <dt><code>Next</code>
  <dd>Display the next mail message. (Exmh doesn't actually run this.)

  <dt><code>Prev<code>
  <dd>Display the previous mail message. (Exmh doesn't actually run this.)

  <dt><code>rmm</code>
  <dd>Delete a mail message. 

  <dt><code>refile</code>
  <dd>Move a message into another mail folder. 

  <dt><code>repl</code>
  <dd>Reply to a mail message 

  <dt><code>forw</code>
  <dd>Forward one or more mail messages. 

  <dt><code>Comp</code>
  <dd>Compose a new mail message. 

</dl>
<p>
MH keeps track of the current folder and the current message in between
uses of these MH programs. For example: 

<pre><blockquote>% scan +inbox unseen
1713  04/14 foote.PARC@xerox.  Have you started blasting cdroms yet?&lt;&lt;Probably.
1715  04/14 FlashBack Publish  1232: Tactix Introduces Break through in Unix Ad
1716  04/14 FlashBack Publish  1234: CERT Advisory - NCSA HTTP Daemon for UNIX&lt;
1717 M04/15 To:welch           PGP test&lt;&lt;-----BEGIN PGP MESSAGE----- Version: 2
1718 M04/17 flash@flashback.c  mime-flashback-w MIME FlashBack April 13th, 1995
1719 -04/16 Bill Wohler        Notes for MH Chapters 20-22&lt;&lt;Brent, I have been 
1720+-04/17 "Allen R. Carl"    Re: Tabs&lt;&lt;Brent, where is this -tabs resource se
% show 1717
(Message 1717 displayed)
% next
(Message 1718 displayed)
% rmm
(Message 1718 deleted)
% repl 1717
(Set up template for reply to message 1717, invoke editor)
</blockquote></pre>
<p>
Each user has a <code>.mh_profile</code> file that stores general MH
settings as well as per-command settings. Each line has a key, and a
value. For example, your mail directory is set with the Path profile
entry:  
<pre><blockquote>Path: Mail
</blockquote></pre>
<p>
If your old mail system uses that directory already, just edit your
<code>.mh_profile</code> to change the name used for your MH mail
folders.

<h3><a NAME="MORE ABOUT EXMH" HREF="#CONTENTS">MORE ABOUT EXMH</a></h3>
<p>
This man page should get you started with <i>exmh</i>. If you decide
you want to know more about it, here are some of the features described
in the other <i>exmh</i> pages. 
<p>
<dl>
  <dt>MIME support
  <dd><i>Exmh</i> can display MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail
      Extensions) messages, either directly or with the help of the
      <i>metamail</i> package. The built-in editor lets you compose
      enriched text messages and insert files as parts of a multipart
      message. 

  <dt>Mail Folders
  <dd>You can create other mail folders to hold messages about certain
      topics or from certain people. You can create a hierarchical
      arrangement of folders, just like the hierarchical directory
      structure of the file system. The folder display supports these
      <i>nested folders</i>, and it allows you to nest folders to any
      depth. 

  <dt>Mail Filtering
  <dd>Mail filtering lets you sort mail into different folders
      <i>before</i> you read it. If you get lots of mail, this is a
      great way to avoid plowing through junk mail just to get your
      important messages. The folder labels are highlighted to
      indicate which folders have unread mail in them.

  <dt>Facesaver bitmap display
  <dd>If you have a facesaver database on your system, <i>exmh</i>
      displays the bitmap face of the person that sent the current
      message (or their organization).

  <dt>Background processing
  <dd>You can set <i>exmh</i> to run 
      <button -command "Inc">Inc</button></i> periodically, check for
      new messages arriving asynchronously in folders, run the MH
      <code>msgchk</code> program, or count up the messages in your
      mail spool file. 

  <dt>Editor interface
  <dd>You can hook <i>exmh</i> to your favorite editor using the
  <code>exmh-async</code> script. Or, Tcl-based editors such as
  <code>mxedit</code> can interact with <i>exmh</i> directly.

  <dt>Keybinding User Interface
  <dd>You can define new key bindings for Tcl commands that are part
      of the implementation. 

  <dt>Aliases User Interface
  <dd>A browser for your MH aliases lets you define new aliases and
      insert aliases into mail messages. 

  <dt>Pretty Good Privacy (PGP)
  <dd>If you have PGP, you can use it from <i>exmh</i> to digitally
      sign, encrypt, and decrypt messages. 

  <dt>NNTP News support
  <dd><i>Exmh</i> can retrieve new messages using NNTP (Network News
      Transfer Protocol) from user-specified newsgroups. This can be
      performed automatically every so often. 

  <dt>User Programming
  <dd>If the preference settings are not enough for you, you can
      program <i>exmh</i> more directly. You can define new buttons
      and menus and add new Tcl code to its implementation. 
</dl>

<h3><a NAME="AUTHOR" HREF="#CONTENTS">AUTHOR</a></h3>
welch@acm.org "Brent Welch"

<h3><a NAME="THANKS" HREF="#CONTENTS">THANKS</a></h3>
To Xerox PARC/CSL, for supporting this work initially, to Sun Microsystems
Laboratories for continuing the support, and to all the exmh
users that contributed ideas and code. 
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