WARNING: This page refers to a 1999-era version of VM. The curernt version is 8.2.0b. Caveat Lector!
Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this manual provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved on all copies.
VM (View Mail) is an Emacs subsystem that allows UNIX mail to be read and disposed of within Emacs. Commands exist to do the normal things expected of a mail user agent, such as generating replies, saving messages to folders, deleting messages and so on. There are other more advanced commands that do tasks like bursting and creating digests, message forwarding, and organizing message presentation according to various criteria.
To invoke VM, type M-x vm. VM gathers any mail that has arrived in your system mailbox and appends it to a file known as your primary inbox, and visits that file for reading. See section Starting Up. A file visited for reading by VM is called the current folder.
If there are any messages in the primary inbox, VM selects the first new
or unread message, and previews it. Previewing is VM's way of
showing you part of a message and allowing you to decide whether you want
to read it. See section Previewing. By default VM shows you the message's
sender, recipient, subject and date headers. Typing SPC
(vm-scroll-forward
) exposes the body of the message and flags the
message as read. Subsequent SPC's scroll forward through the
message, b or DEL scrolls backward. When you reach the end
of a message, typing SPC or n moves you forward to preview
the next message. See section Paging.
If you do not want to read a message that's being previewed, type n and VM will move to the next message (if there is one). See section Selecting Messages.
To save a message to a mail folder use s (vm-save-message
).
VM will prompt you for the folder name in the minibuffer.
See section Saving Messages.
Messages are deleted by typing d (vm-delete-message
) while
previewing or reading them. The message is not removed right away; VM
makes a note that you want the message to be removed later. If you
change your mind about deleting a message, select it and type u
(vm-undelete-message
), and the message will be undeleted.
See section Deleting Messages. The actual removal of deleted messages from
the current folder is called expunging and it is accomplished by
typing # (vm-expunge-folder
). The message is still present
in the on-disk version of the folder until the folder is saved.
Typing h (vm-summarize
) causes VM to display a window
containing a summary of the contents of the current folder. The summary is
presented one line per message, by message number, listing each message's
author, date sent, line and byte count, and subject. Also, various
letters appear beside the message number to indicate that a message is
new, unread, flagged for deletion, etc. An arrow `->' appears to
the left of the line summarizing the current message. The summary
format is user configurable, see section Summaries.
When you are finished reading mail the current folder must be saved, so
that the next time the folder is visited VM will know which messages
have been already read, replied to and so on. Typing S
(vm-save-folder
) saves the folder. Note that deleted messages are
not expunged automatically when you save a folder; this is a change from
version 4 of VM. The next time you visit the folder any deleted
messages will still be flagged for deleted.
If the folder is empty and the variable vm-delete-empty-folders
is non-nil
, VM will remove the zero length folder after saving it.
To quit visiting a folder you can type q (vm-quit
) or
x (vm-quit-no-change
). Typing q saves the current
folder before quitting. Also, any messages flagged new are changed to
be flagged as old and unread, before saving. The x command quits
a folder without changing the status of new messages, saving or
otherwise modifying the current folder.
If the variable vm-confirm-quit
is set to t
VM will always ask for confirmation before ending a VM
visit of a folder. A nil
value means VM will ask only
when messages will be lost unwittingly by quitting, i.e. not
removed by intentional delete and expunge. A value that is
neither nil
nor t
causes VM to ask only when
there are unsaved changes to message attributes or when messages
will be lost.
You do not have to quit a folder to continue using Emacs for other
purposes. (vm-quit-just-bury
) buries the buffers associated with
the current folder deep in Emacs' stack of buffers, but otherwise leaves
the folder visited so that you can resume reading messages quickly. You
can locate the folder's buffers again by using list-buffers
,
which is normally bound to C-x C-b.
Another command you can use if you are using a window system like X
Windows is vm-quit-just-iconify
. This command buries the
folder's buffers like vm-quit-just-bury
and also iconifies the
current frame.
At any time while reading mail in any folder you can type g
(vm-get-new-mail
) to check to see if new mail for that folder has
arrived. If new mail has arrived it will be moved from the spool file
or spool files associated with the current folder and merged into the
folder. If you are not in the middle of another message, VM will also
move to the first new or unread message.
If vm-get-new-mail
is given a prefix argument, it will prompt for
another file from which to gather messages instead of the usual spool
files. In this case the source folder is copied but no messages are
deleted from it as they would be for a spool file.
By default your primary inbox has your system mailbox associated with
it, e.g. `/var/spool/mail/kyle', and so typing g will retrieve
mail from this file. Your system mailbox is one example of a spool
file, a file that the mail transport system delivers messages into.
You can associate other spool files with your primary inbox and spool
files with other folders by setting the variable
vm-spool-files
. See section Spool Files.
The first time VM is started in an Emacs session, it attempts to load
the file specified by the variable vm-init-file
, normally
`~/.vm'. If present this file should contain Lisp code, much like
the `.emacs' file. Since VM has well over one hundred
configuration variables, use of the `~/.vm' can considerably reduce
clutter in the `.emacs' file. You can reload this file
by typing L (vm-load-init-file
) from within VM.
M-x vm causes VM to visit a file known as your primary
inbox. If the variable vm-auto-get-new-mail
is set
non-nil
, VM will gather any mail present in your system mailbox
and integrate it into your primary inbox. The default name of your
primary inbox is `~/INBOX', but VM will use whatever file is named
by the variable vm-primary-inbox
.
VM transfers the mail from the system mailbox to the primary inbox via a
temporary file known as the crash box. The variable
vm-crash-box
names the crash box file. VM first copies the mail
to the crash box, truncates the system mailbox to zero messages, merges
the crash box contents into the primary inbox, and then deletes the
crash box. If the system or Emacs should crash in the midst of this
activity, any message not present in the primary inbox will be either in
the system mailbox or the crash box. Some messages may be duplicated
but no mail will be lost.
If the file named by vm-crash-box
already exists when VM is
started up, VM will merge that file with the primary inbox before
retrieving any new messages from the system mailbox.
M-x vm-visit-folder (v from within VM) allows you to visit some other mail folder than the primary inbox. The folder name will be prompted for in the minibuffer.
Once VM has read the folder, any spool files associated with the folder
are checked for new messages if vm-auto-get-new-mail
is
non-nil
. See section Spool Files. After this, the first new or
unread message will be selected, if any. If there is no such message,
VM will select whatever the selected message was when this folder was last
saved. If this folder has never been visited and saved by VM, then the
first message in the folder is selected.
M-x vm-mode can be used on a buffer already loaded into Emacs
to put it into the VM major mode so that VM commands can be executed
on it. This command is suitable for use in Lisp programs, and for
inclusion in auto-mode-alist
to automatically start VM on a
file based on a particular filename suffix. vm-mode
skips
some of VM's startup procedures (e.g. starting up a summary) to make
non-interactive use easier.
The variable vm-startup-with-summary
controls whether VM
automatically displays a summary of the folder's contents at startup. A
value of nil
gives no summary; a value of t
always gives a
summary. A value that is a positive integer n means that VM
should generate a summary on if there are n or more messages in
the folder. A negative value -n means generate a summary only if
there are n or fewer messages. The default value of
vm-startup-with-summary
is t
.
A spool file is a file where the mail transport system delivers messages intended for you. Typically a program called `/bin/mail' or `/bin/mail.local' does this delivery, although agents such as `procmail', `filter' and `slocal' can be invoked from a user's `~/.forward' or `~/.qmail' files. No matter what the delivery agent, what all spool files have in common is that mail is delivered into them by one or more entities apart from VM and that all access to spool files must therefore be accompanied by the use of some file locking protocol.
VM leaves the task of accessing spool files to `movemail', a
program distributed with Emacs that is written for this purpose. The
variable vm-movemail-program
specifies the name of the movemail program
and defaults to `"movemail"'.
Every folder, including the primary inbox, can have one or more spool
files associated with it. You make these associations known to VM by
setting the variable vm-spool-files
.
If you only want to associate spool files with your primary inbox, you
can set vm-spool-files
to a list of strings. By default, the location
of your system mailbox (the spool file that is associated with your
primary inbox) is determined heuristically based on what type of system
you're using. VM can be told explicitly where the system mailbox is by
setting vm-spool-files
like this:
(setq vm-spool-files '("/var/spool/mail/kyle" "~/Mailbox"))
With this setting, VM will retrieve mail for the primary inbox from first `/var/spool/mail/kyle' and then `~/Mailbox'.
If the value of vm-spool-files
is nil
, a default value for
vm-spool-files
will be inherited from the shell environmental
variables MAILPATH or MAIL if either of these variables are defined.
This inheritance happens before your init file is loaded, so setting
vm-spool-files
in your init file will override any environmental
variables.
If you want to associate spool files with folders other than or in
addition to the primary inbox, the value of vm-spool-files
must be a
list of lists. Each sublist specifies three entities, a folder, a spool
file and a crash box. When retrieving mail for a particular folder, VM
will scan vm-spool-files
for folder names that match the current
folder's name. The spool file and crash box found in any matching
entries will be used to gather mail for that folder.
For example, you can set vm-spool-files
like this
(setq vm-spool-files '( ("~/INBOX" "/var/spool/mail/kyle" "~/INBOX.CRASH") ("~/INBOX" "~/Mailbox" "~/INBOX.CRASH") ("~/Mail/bugs" "/var/spool/mail/answerman" "~/Mail/bugs.crash") ) )
The folder `~/INBOX' has two spool files associated with it in this example, `/var/spool/mail/kyle' and `~/Mailbox'. Another folder, `"~/Mail/bugs"' has one folder `/var/spool/mail/answerman' associated with it. Note that both of the `~/INBOX' entries used the same crash box. The crash box can be the same if the folder name is the same. Different folders should use different crashboxes.
An alternate way of specifying folder/spool file associations
is to use the variables vm-spool-file-suffixes
and
vm-crash-box-suffix
.
The value of vm-spool-file-suffixes
should be a list of string suffixes
to be used to create possible spool file names for folders. Example:
(setq vm-spool-file-suffixes '(".spool" "-"))
With vm-spool-file-suffixes
set this way, if you visit a
folder `~/mail/beekeeping', when VM attempts to retrieve new mail for
that folder it will look for mail in `~/mail/beekeeping.spool'
and `~/mail/beekeeping-' in addition to scanning vm-spool-files
for matches. The value of vm-spool-files-suffixes
will not be used
unless vm-crash-box-suffix
is also defined, since a crash box is
required for all mail retrieval from spool files.
The value of vm-crash-box-suffix
should be a string suffix used to
create possible crash box file names for folders. When VM uses
vm-spool-file-suffixes
to create a spool file name, it will append
the value of vm-crash-box-suffix
to the folder's file name to
create a crash box name. If the value of vm-spool-files-suffixes
is nil
, then the value of vm-crash-box-suffix
is not used
by VM.
The idea behind vm-spool-file-suffixes
and
vm-crash-box-suffix
is to give you a way to have many
folders with individual spool files associated with them, without
having to list them all in vm-spool-files
. If you need
even more control of spool file and crash box names, use
vm-make-spool-file-name
and vm-make-crash-box-name
.
The value of both of these should be a function or the name of a
function. When VM visits a folder, it will call the function
with the name of the folder as an argument, and the function
should return the spool file name or crash box name to be used
for that folder.
VM supports accessing spool files on remote hosts via the Post Office Protocol (POP). Instead of a spool file name as in the examples above, you would use a string that tells VM how to access the POP mailbox. The format of this string is:
``HOST:PORT:AUTH:USER:PASSWORD''
HOST is the host name of the POP server. PORT is the TCP port number to connect to (should normally be 110). USER is the user name sent to the server. PASSWORD is the secret shared by you and the server for authentication purposes. How it is used depends on the value of the AUTH parameter. If the PASSWORD is `*', VM will prompt you for the password the first time you try to retrieve mail from the maildrop. If the password is valid, VM will not ask you for the password again during this Emacs session.
AUTH is the authentication method used to convince the server you should
have access to the maildrop. Acceptable values are `pass',
`rpop' and `apop'. For `pass', the PASSWORD is
sent to the server with the POP PASS command. For `rpop', the
PASSWORD should be the string to be sent to the server via the RPOP
command. In this case the string is not really a secret; authentication
is done by other means. For `apop', an MD5 digest of the
PASSWORD appended to the server timestamp will be sent to the server
with the APOP command. In order to use `apop' you will have to
set the value of vm-pop-md5-program
appropriately to point at the
program that will generate the MD5 digest that VM needs.
By default VM will retrieve all the messages from a POP maildrop
before returning control of Emacs to you. If the maildrop is
large, the wait could be considerable. If you set
vm-pop-max-message-size
to a positive numeric value, VM will not
automatically retrieve messages larger than this size. If VM is
retrieving messages because you invoked vm-get-new-mail
interactively, then VM will ask whether it should retrieve the
large message. If VM is retrieving messages automatically
(e.g. vm-auto-get-new-mail
is set non-nil
) then VM will skip the
large message and you can retrieve it later.
The variable vm-pop-messages-per-session
controls how many messages
VM will retrieve from a POP maildrop before returning control to
you. Similarly, the variable vm-pop-bytes-per-session
limits the
number of bytes VM will retrieve from a POP maildrop before returning
control to you. By default, the value of both variables is nil, which
tells VM to retrieve all the messages in the POP maildrop regardless
of how many messages there are and how large the maildrop is.
After VM retrieves messages from the maildrop, the default action
is to delete the messages from there. If you want VM to leave
messages in the remote maildrop until you explicitly request
their removal, set vm-pop-expunge-after-retrieving
to
nil
. Messages will not be removed from the maildrop until you
run vm-expunge-pop-messages
; only those messages that VM has
retrieved into the current folder will be expunged.
The variable vm-pop-auto-expunge-alist
gives you a way to specify
on a per-maildrop basis which POP maildrops have messages
automatically removed when retrieved and which ones leave the
messages on the POP server. The value of
vm-pop-auto-expunge-alist
should be a list of POP mailboxes and
values specifying whether messages should be automatically
deleted from the mailbox after retrieval. The format of the list
is:
((MAILBOX . VAL) (MAILBOX . VAL) ...)
MAILBOX should be an POP maildrop specification as described
in the documentation for the variable vm-spool-files
. If
you have the POP password specified in the vm-spool-files
entry, you do not have to specify it here as well. Use `*'
instead; VM will still understand that this mailbox is the same as
the one in vm-spool-files
that contains the password.
VAL should be nil
if retrieved messages should be left in the
corresponding POP mailbox, t
if retrieved messages should be
removed from the mailbox immediately after retrieval.
Here is an example:
(setq vm-pop-auto-expunge-alist '( ("odin.croc.net:110:pass:kyle:*" . nil) ;; leave message on the server ("hilo.harkie.org:110:pass:kyle:*" . t) ;; expunge immediately ) )
VM can also use the IMAP protocol to access a mailbox on a remote
host. As with POP, instead of specifying a spool file name in
the vm-spool-files
definition, you would give a string that tells
VM how to access to remote maildrop.
An IMAP maildrop specification has the following format:
``imap:HOST:PORT:MAILBOX:AUTH:USER:PASSWORD''
HOST is the host name of the IMAP server.
PORT is the TCP port number to connect to (should normally be 143).
MAILBOX is the name of the mailbox on the IMAP server. This should be `"inbox"', to access your default IMAP maildrop on the server.
AUTH is the authentication method used to convince the server
you should have access to the maildrop. Acceptable values are
`"preauth"' and `"login"'. `"preauth"' causes VM to skip the
authentication stage of the protocol with the assumption that
the session was authenticated in some way external to VM. The
hook vm-imap-session-preauth-hook
is run, and it is
expected to return a process connected to an authenticated
session. The other value, `"login"', tells VM to use the IMAP LOGIN
command for authentication.
USER is the user name sent to the server for `"login"' style authentication.
PASSWORD is the secret shared by you and the server for authentication purposes. If the PASSWORD is `*', VM will prompt you for the password the first time you try to retrieve mail from the maildrop. If the password is valid, VM will not ask you for the password again during this Emacs session.
By default VM will retrieve all the messages from an IMAP maildrop
before returning control of Emacs to you. If the maildrop is
large, the wait could be considerable. If you set
vm-imap-max-message-size
to a positive numeric value, VM will not
automatically retrieve messages larger than this size. If VM is
retrieving messages because you invoked vm-get-new-mail
interactively, then VM will ask whether it should retrieve the
large message. If VM is retrieving messages automatically
(e.g. vm-auto-get-new-mail
is set non-nil
) then VM will skip the
large message and you can retrieve it later.
The variable vm-imap-messages-per-session
controls how many messages
VM will retrieve from an IMAP maildrop before returning control to
you. Similarly, the variable vm-imap-bytes-per-session
limits the
number of bytes VM will retrieve from an IMAP maildrop before returning
control to you. By default, the value of both variables is nil, which
tells VM to retrieve all the messages in the IMAP maildrop regardless
of how many messages there are and how large the maildrop is.
After VM retrieves messages from the maildrop, the default action
is to delete the messages from there. If you want VM to leave
messages in the remote maildrop until you explicitly request
their removal, set vm-imap-expunge-after-retrieving
to
nil
. Messages will not be removed from the maildrop until you
run vm-expunge-imap-messages
; only those messages that VM has
retrieved into the current folder will be expunged.
The variable vm-imap-auto-expunge-alist
gives you a way to specify
on a per-maildrop basis which IMAP maildrops have message
automatically removed when retrieved and which ones leave the
messages on the IMAP server. The value of
vm-imap-auto-expunge-alist
should be a list of IMAP mailboxes and
values specifying whether messages should be automatically
deleted from the mailbox after retrieval. The format of the list
is:
((MAILBOX . VAL) (MAILBOX . VAL) ...)
MAILBOX should be an IMAP maildrop specification as described
in the documentation for the variable vm-spool-files
. If
you have the IMAP password specified in the vm-spool-files
entry, you do not have to specify it here as well. Use `*'
instead; VM will still understand that this mailbox is the same as
the one in vm-spool-files
that contains the password.
VAL should be nil
if retrieved messages should be left in the
corresponding IMAP mailbox, t
if retrieved messages should be
removed from the mailbox immediately after retrieval.
Here is an example:
(setq vm-imap-auto-expunge-alist '( ;; leave message on the server ("imap:odin.croc.net:143:inbox:login:kyle:*" . nil) ;; expunge immediately ("imap:hilo.harkie.org:143:inbox:login:kyle:*" . t) ) )
Pressing g runs vm-get-new-mail
, which will retrieve mail
from all the spool files associated with the current folder.
See section Spool Files.
If the value of the variable vm-auto-get-new-mail
is non-nil
VM
will retrieve mail for a folder whenever the folder is visited. If the
value is a positive integer n, VM will also check for new mail
every n seconds for all folders currently being visited. If new
mail is present, VM will retrieve it.
If the value of the variable vm-mail-check-interval
is a
positive integer n, VM will check for new mail every n
seconds, but instead of retrieving mail, the word "Mail" will
appear on the Emacs mode line of folders that have mail waiting.
When Emacs crashes, its last action before dying is to try to write out an autosave file that contains changes to files that you were editing. VM folders are file buffers inside Emacs, so folders are autosaved also. Changes, with regard to VM folders, means attribute changes, label additions and deletions, message edits, and expunges. VM keeps track of whether a message is new or old, whether it has been replied to, whether it is flagged for deletion and so on, by writing special headers into the folder buffer. These headers are saved to disk when you save the folder. If Emacs crashes before the folder has been saved, VM may forget some attribute changes unless they were written to the autosave file.
Note that when VM retrieves mail from spool files it always writes them to disk immediately and at least one copy of the message is on disk at all times. So while you can lose attribute changes from crashes, you should not lose messages unless the disk itself is compromised.
When you visit a folder, VM checks for the existence of an autosave file that has been modified more recently than the folder file. If such an autosave file exists, there is a good chance that Emacs or your operating system crashed while VM was visiting a folder. VM will then write a message to the echo area informing you of the existence of the autosave file and visit the folder in read-only mode. Visiting the folder in read-only mode prevents you from modifying the folder, which in turn prevents Emacs from wanting to write new changes to the autosave file. VM will not retrieve new mail for a folder that is in read-only mode.
If you want to recover the lost changes, run M-x recover-file or use the Recover toolbar button, if you're using XEmacs. At the `Recover File: ' prompt press RET. Emacs will then display a detailed directory listing showing the folder file and the autosave file and ask if you want to recover from the autosave file. A good rule of thumb is to answer "yes" if the autosave file is larger than the folder file. If the autosave file is significantly smaller, Emacs may not have completed writing the autosave file. Or it could be that the smaller autosave file reflects the results of an expunge that you had not yet committed to disk before the crash. If so, answering "no" means you might have to do that expunge again, but this is better than not knowing whether the autosave file was truncated.
Assuming you answered "yes", the folder buffer's contents will be replaced by the contents of the autosave file and VM will reparse the folder. At this point the contents of the folder buffer and the disk copy of the folder are different. Therefore VM will not get new mail for this folder until the two copies of the folder are synchronized. When you are satisfied that the recovered folder is whole and intact, type S to save it to disk. After you do this, VM will allow you to use g to retrieve any new mail that has arrived in the spool files for the folder.
Assuming you answered "no" to the recovery question, you should type
C-x C-q, which is bound to vm-toggle-read-only
in VM folder
buffers. The folder will be taken out of read-only mode and you can
read and retrieve your mail normally.
In order to read, delete, or do anything to a message, you need to select it. In other words, make the message the current message.
The primary commands for selecting messages in VM are n
(vm-next-message
) and p
(vm-previous-message
). These commands move forward and
backward through the current folder. By default, these commands
skip messages flagged for deletion. This behavior can be
disabled by setting the value of the variable
vm-skip-deleted-messages
to nil
. These commands
can also be made to skip messages that have been read; set
vm-skip-read-messages
to t
to do this.
The commands n and p also take prefix arguments that specify the number of messages to move forward or backward. If the magnitude of the prefix argument is greater than 1, no message skipping will be done regardless of the settings of the skip variables.
The variable vm-circular-folders
determines whether VM folders
will be considered circular by various commands. Circular means VM
will wrap from the end of the folder to the start and vice versa when
moving the message pointer, deleting, undeleting or saving messages
before or after the current message.
A value of t
causes all VM commands to consider folders circular.
A value of nil
causes all VM commands to signal an error if
the start or end of the folder would have to be passed to complete the
command. For movement commands, this occurs after the message pointer
has been moved as far as it can go. For other commands the error occurs
before any part of the command has been executed, i.e. no deletions, saves,
etc. will be done unless they can be done in their entirety. A value
other than nil
or t
causes only VM's movement
commands to consider folders circular. Saves, deletes and undeletes
will behave as if the value is nil
. The default value of
vm-circular-folders
is nil
.
You can also select messages by using the summary window.
See section Summaries. Move the cursor to the summary line for the message
you want to select and press RET. VM will select this message.
Instead of pressing RET you could run some other VM command that
operates based on the notion of a `current message'. VM will select the
message under the cursor in the summary window before executing such
commands. Example, if you type d, VM will select the message
under the cursor and then delete it. Note that this occurs only
when you execute a command when the cursor is in the summary buffer
window and only if the variable vm-follow-summary-cursor
is
non-nil
.
When a folder is visited or when you type g and VM retrieves some
mail, the default action is to move to the first new or unread message
in the folder. New messages are favored over old but unread messages.
If you set vm-jump-to-new-messages
to nil
, VM will favor old,
unread messages over new messages if the old, unread message appears
earlier in the folder. If you set vm-jump-to-unread-messages
to
nil
also, VM will not search for new or unread messages.
Other commands to select messages:
vm-goto-message
)
vm-goto-message-last-seen
)
vm-next-message-no-skip
)
vm-previous-message-no-skip
)
vm-next-unread-message
)
vm-previous-unread-message
)
vm-isearch-forward
)
vm-search-using-regexps
is non-nil
, a regular expression
may be used instead of a fixed string for the search pattern; VM
defaults to the fixed string search. If a prefix argument is given,
the value of vm-search-using-regexps
is temporarily reversed for
the search.
See section `Incremental Search' in the GNU Emacs Manual.
Once a message has been selected, VM will show it to you. By default, presentation is done in two stages: previewing and paging.
Previewing means showing you a small portion of a message and allowing you to decide whether you want to read it. Typing SPC exposes the body of the message, and from there you can repeatedly type SPC to page through the message.
By default, the sender, recipient, subject and date headers are shown
when previewing; the rest of the message is hidden. This behavior may
be altered by changing the settings of three variables:
vm-visible-headers
, vm-invisible-header-regexp
and
vm-preview-lines
.
If the value of vm-preview-lines
is a number, it tells VM how
many lines of the text of the message should be visible. The default
value of this variable is 0. If vm-preview-lines
is nil
,
then previewing is not done at all; when a message is first presented it
is immediately exposed in its entirety and is flagged as read. If
vm-preview-lines
is t
, the message body is displayed fully
but the message is not flagged as read until you type SPC.
The value of vm-visible-headers
should be a list of regular
expressions matching the beginnings of headers that should be made
visible when a message is presented. The regexps should be listed in
the preferred presentation order of the headers they match.
If non-nil
, the variable vm-invisible-header-regexp
specifies what headers should not be displayed. Its value should
be a string containing a regular expression that matches all headers you
do not want to see. Setting this variable non-nil
implies that
you want to see all headers not matched by it; therefore the value of
vm-visible-headers
is only used to determine the order of the
visible headers in this case. Headers not matched by
vm-invisible-header-regexp
or vm-visible-headers
are
displayed last.
If you change the value of either vm-visible-headers
or
vm-invisible-header-regexp
in the middle of a VM session the
effects will not be immediate. You will need to use the command
vm-discard-cached-data
on each message (bound to j by
default) to force VM to rearrange the message headers. A good way to do
this is to mark all the messages in the folder and apply
vm-discard-cached-data
to the marked messages. See section Message Marks.
Another variable of interest is vm-highlighted-header-regexp
.
The value of this variable should be a single regular expression that
matches the beginnings of any header that should be presented in inverse
video when previewing. For example, a value of
`"^From\\|^Subject"' causes the From and Subject headers to be
highlighted. Highlighted headers will be displayed using the face
specified by vm-highlighted-header-face
, which defaults to
'bold.
By default, VM will not preview messages that are flagged as read. To
have VM preview all messages, set the value of
vm-preview-read-messages
to t
.
Typing t (vm-expose-hidden-headers
) makes VM toggle
between exposing and hiding headers that would ordinarily be hidden.
Typing SPC during a message preview exposes the body of the
message. If the message was new or previously unread, it will be
flagged "read". At this point you can use SPC to scroll
forward, and b or DEL to scroll backward a windowful of
text at a time. A prefix argument n applied to these commands
causes VM to scroll forward or backward n lines. Typing space
at the end of a message moves you to the next message. If the value
of vm-auto-next-message
is nil
, SPC will not
move to the next message; you must type n explicitly.
If the value of vm-honor-page-delimiters
is non-nil
, VM
will recognize and honor page delimiters. This means that when you
scroll through a document, VM will display text only up to the next page
delimiter. Text after the delimiter will be hidden until you type
another SPC, at which point the text preceding the delimiter will
become hidden. The Emacs variable page-delimiter
determines what
VM will consider to be a page delimiter.
You can "unread" a message (so to speak) by typing U
(vm-unread-message
). The current message will be flagged
unread.
Sometimes you will receive messages that contain lines that are
too long to fit on your screen without wrapping. If you set
vm-fill-paragraphs-containing-long-lines
to a positive
numeric value N, VM will call fill-paragraph
on all
paragraphs that contain lines spanning N columns or more.
As with other things VM does that modifies the way the
message looks on the screen, this does not change message
contents. VM copies the message contents to a "presentation"
buffer before altering them. The fill column that VM uses is
controlled by vm-paragraph-fill-column
. Unlike the Emacs
variable fill-column
, this variable is not buffer-local
by default.
If the variable vm-display-using-mime
is non-nil
VM will display
messages using Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME). MIME
is a set of extensions to the standard Internet message format that
allows reliable transmission of arbitrary data including
images, audio and video, as well as ordinary text. A non-nil
value for
this variable means that VM will recognize MIME encoded messages and
display them as specified by the various MIME standards specifications.
A nil value means VM will display MIME messages as plain text messages.
At its most basic MIME is a set of transfer encodings used to ensure
error free transport, and a set of content types. VM understands the
two standard MIME transport encodings, Quoted-Printable and BASE64, and
will decode messages that use them as necessary. VM also will
try to recognize and decode messages using the UNIX "uuencode"
encoding system. While this is not an official MIME transfer
encoding and never will be, enough old mailers still use it
that it is worthwile to attempt to decode it.
VM has Emacs-Lisp based Quoted-Printable and BASE64 encoders and
decoders, but you can have VM use external programs to perform
these tasks and the process will almost certainly be faster.
The variables vm-mime-qp-decoder-program
,
vm-mime-qp-decoder-switches
,
vm-mime-qp-encoder-program
,
vm-mime-qp-encoder-switches
,
vm-mime-base64-decoder-switches
,
vm-mime-base64-encoder-switches
,
vm-mime-base64-decoder-program
,
vm-mime-base64-encoder-program
,
tell VM which programs to use
and what command line switches to pass to them. There are C
programs at VM's distribution sites on the Internet to handle BASE64
and Quoted-Printable. VM does not have a builtin "uuencode"
decoder, so vm-mime-uuencode-decoder-program
must be set
non-nil
for VM to decode uuencoded MIME objects.
By default VM will display as many content types as possible within Emacs. For FSF Emacs version 19.34 this means textual types only. If you're using XEmacs, images and audio are also supported if support for images and audio has been compiled in. Types that cannot be displayed internally within Emacs can be displayed using an external viewer.
The first step in displaying a MIME message is decoding it to
determine what object types it contains. The variable
vm-auto-decode-mime-messages
controls when this happens.
A value of t
means VM should decode the message as soon as
the message body is exposed, or during previewing if
vm-mime-decode-for-preview
is also set non-nil
. A
nil
value means wait until decoding is explicitly
requested. Type D (vm-decode-mime-message
) to
manually initiate MIME decoding.
After decoding you will see either the decoded MIME objects or
button lines that must be activated to attempt display of the
MIME object. The variable
vm-auto-displayed-mime-content-types
specifies the types
that are displayed immediately. Its value should be a list of
MIME content types that should be displayed immediately after
decoding. Other types will be displayed as a button that you
must activate to display the object. To activate a button,
either click the middle mouse button over it, or move the cursor
to the line and press RET. If you are running under a window
system, you can use the right mouse button over a MIME button to
display a menu of actions you can take on the MIME object. If
you prefer using keyboard commands, you can save the MIME object
with $ s, print it with $ p, or pipe it to a shell
command with $ |. If you want to display the object with
its characters displayed using Emacs' default face, use $ RET.
To display the object using an external viewer, type $ e.
Sometimes MIME objects are large and you may not want to save
them along with the message that contains them. If so, use
$ d (vm-delete-mime-object
while the cursor is on
the MIME button. The object will be deleted and replaced with
an object that indicated what the old object was and the fact
that it is gone. This is not an undoable operation, so use this
command with care. If you inadvertently delete an object, the
only way to get it back is to quit visiting the current folder
without saving and then revisit the folder. This works because
the object isn't removed from the disk copy of the folder until
you save the folder. By default VM will ask if you're sure
about deleting an object before doing the deletion. You can
make VM not ask this question by setting
vm-mime-confirm-delete
to nil
.
A value of t for vm-auto-displayed-mime-content-types
means that
all types should be displayed immediately. A nil value means
never display MIME objects immediately; only use buttons. If
the value of vm-auto-displayed-mime-content-types
is a list, it
should be a list of strings, which should all be MIME types or
type/subtype pairs. Example:
(setq vm-auto-displayed-mime-content-types '("text" "image/jpeg"))
If a top-level type is listed without a subtype, all subtypes of that type are assumed to be included. The example above specifies that all text types are displayed immediately, but only JPEG images are displayed this way.
The variable vm-auto-displayed-mime-content-type-exceptions
should be a list of MIME content types that should not be
displayed immediately after decoding. This variable acts as
an exception list for vm-auto-displayed-mime-content-types
;
all types listed there will be auto-displayed except those in
the exception list.
The value of vm-auto-displayed-mime-content-type-exceptions
should be either nil or a list of strings. The strings should
all be types or type/subtype pairs. Example:
(setq vm-auto-displayed-mime-content-type-exceptions '("text/html"))
Again, if a top-level type is listed without a subtype, all subtypes of that type are assumed to be included.
The variable vm-mime-internal-content-types
specifies
which types should be displayed internally within Emacs. Like
vm-auto-displayed-mime-content-types
its value should be a
list of MIME content types. A value of t means that VM
should always display an object internally if possible. VM
knows which object types can be displayed internally, so you
can specify the types you want without worrying about errors
if Emacs can't handle them. A nil
value means never
display MIME objects internally, which means VM will have to
run an external viewer to display all MIME objects.
If the value is a list, it should be a list of strings. Example:
(setq vm-mime-internal-content-types '("text" "image/jpeg"))
If a top-level type is listed without a subtype, all subtypes of that type are assumed to be included. Note that multipart types are always handled internally regardless of the setting of this variable.
The variable vm-mime-internal-content-type-exceptions
serves as
the exception list for vm-mime-internal-content-types
. Its value
should be a list of types that should not be displayed internally.
For types that you want displayed externally, set the value
of vm-mime-external-content-types-alist
to specify external
viewers for the types. The value of this variable should be an
associative list of MIME content types and the external programs
used to display them. If VM cannot display a type internally or
a type is not listed in vm-mime-internal-content-types
VM will
try to launch an external program to display that type.
The alist format is a list of lists, each sublist having the form
(TYPE PROGRAM ARG ARG ... )
or
(TYPE COMMAND-LINE)
TYPE is a string specifying a MIME type or type/subtype pair. For example "text" or "image/jpeg". If a top-level type is listed without a subtype, all subtypes of that type are assumed to be included.
In the first form, PROGRAM is a string naming a program to run to display an object. Any ARGs will be passed to the program as arguments. The octets that compose the object will be written into a temporary file and the name of the file can be inserted into an ARG string by writing `%f' in the ARG string. In earlier versions of VM the filename was always added as the last argument; as of VM 6.49 this is only done if `%f' does not appear in any of the ARG strings.
If the COMMAND-LINE form is used, the program and its arguments are specified as a single string and that string is passed to the shell ("sh -c" typically) for execution. Since the command line will be passed to the shell, you can use shell variables and input/output redirection if needed. As with the PROGRAM/ARGS form, the name of the temporary file that contains the MIME object will be appended to the command line if `%f' does not appear in the command line string.
In either the PROGRAM/ARG or COMMAND-LINE forms, all the
program and argument strings will have any %-specifiers in
them expanded as described in the documentation for the
variable vm-mime-button-format-alist
. The only difference
is that `%f' refers to the temporary file VM creates to store
the object to be displayed, not the filename that the sender
may have associated with the attachment.
Example:
(setq vm-mime-external-content-types-alist '( ("text/html" "netscape") ("image/gif" "xv") ("image/jpeg" "xv") ("video/mpeg" "mpeg_play") ("video" "xanim") ) )
The first matching list element will be used.
No multipart message will ever be sent to an external viewer.
External viewer processes are normally killed when you select a
a new message in the current folder. If you want viewer
processes to not be killed, set
vm-mime-delete-viewer-processes
to a non-nil
value.
Any type that cannot be displayed internally or externally will be displayed as a button that allows you to save the body to a file.
As with the internal type list, there is an exception list that
you can use to specify types that you do not want displayed
externally. When VM is considering whether it should
automatically launch an external viewer, it will consult the
variable vm-mime-external-content-type-exceptions
. If the
type to be displayed is listed, VM will not launch a viewer.
This allows you to setup viewers for types that ordinarily you
would not want VM to display or for types that you norally want
to convert to some other type using vm-mime-type-converter-alist
.
You can still display such a type with anexternal viewer by using
$ e.
For text type messages, MIME also requires that a character set be specified, so that the recipient's mail reader knows what character glyphs to use to display each character code. To display a message properly VM needs to know how to choose a font for a given character set.
The variable vm-mime-default-face-charsets
tells VM what character
sets your default face can display. For most American and European
users using X windows, Emacs' default face displays the ISO-8859-1
and US-ASCII characters, US-ASCII being a subset of ISO-8859-1. The
value of vm-mime-default-face-charsets
must be a list of strings
specifying the character sets that your default face can display.
This variable is useful for making bogus, unregistered character sets
that are slight variants of US-ASCII and ISO-8859-1 visible.
Example:
(add-to-list 'vm-mime-default-face-charsets "Windows-1251") (add-to-list 'vm-mime-default-face-charsets "Windows-1252") (add-to-list 'vm-mime-default-face-charsets "Windows-1257")
Messages sent using such character sets would normally be considered undisplayable by VM, and a button would be displayed that offers to save the message body to a file.
The variable vm-mime-charset-font-alist
tells VM what font to use
to display a character set that cannot be displayed using
the default face. The value of this variable should be an
assoc list of character sets and fonts that can be used to display
them. The format of the list is:
( (CHARSET . FONT) ...)
CHARSET is a string naming a MIME registered character set such
as `"iso-8859-5"'.
FONT is a string naming a font that can be used to display
CHARSET.
An example setup might be:
(setq vm-mime-charset-font-alist '( ("iso-8859-7" . "-*-*-medium-r-normal-*-16-160-72-72-c-80-iso8859-7") ) )
This variable is only useful for character sets whose characters can all be encoded in single 8-bit bytes. Also multiple fonts can only be displayed if you're running under a window system e.g. X windows. So this variable will have no effect if you're running Emacs on a tty. Note that under FSF Emacs 20.4 and any earlier Emacs release, any fonts you use must be the same height as your default font. XEmacs does not have this limitation. MIME allows a message to be sent with its content encoded in multiple formats, simultaneously, in the same message. Such messages have a content type of multipart/alternative. The idea is that the sender might have different MIME decoding or display capabilities than some of his recipients. For instance, the sender may be able to compose a message using fancy text formatting constructs like tables, italics and equations but some of the recipients may only be able to display plain text. The multipart/alternative type message is the solution to this dilemma. Such a message would contain at least two text subparts, one in plaintext and the other in the full featured text formatting language that the sender used.
To control how VM displays multipart/alternative messages, you must
set the variable vm-mime-alternative-select-method
. Its value must be
a symbol. A value of best
tells VM to display the message
using the subpart closest in appearance to what the sender used to
compose the message. In the example above this would mean displaying
the fully featured text subpart, if VM knows how to display that type.
VM will display the type using either internally or externally. A
value of best-internal
tells VM to use the closest subpart that
it can display internally. External viewers won't be used in this
case.
Some mailers incorrectly use the generic
`application/octet-stream' type when sending files that
really have a specific MIME type. For example, a JPEG image
might be sent using `application/octet-stream' type instead
of `image/jpeg', which would be the correct type. In many
cases the filename sent along with the mistyped file
(e.g. `foo.jpg') suggests the correct type. If the variable
vm-infer-mime-types
is set non-nil
, VM will attempt to use
the filename sent with a MIME attachment to guess an attachment's
type if the attachment is of type `application/octet-stream'.
When sending messages from within VM, you will be using the standard Mail major mode provided with GNU Emacs, plus some extensions added by VM. See section `Mail Mode' in the GNU Emacs Manual. However, mail composition buffers created by VM have some extra command keys.
vm-yank-message
)
vm-included-text-prefix
. All message headers are yanked along
with the text. Point is left before the inserted text, the mark after.
Any hook functions bound to mail-yank-hooks
are run, after inserting
the text and setting point and mark. If a prefix argument is given,
this tells VM to ignore mail-yank-hooks
, don't set the mark, don't prepend the
value of vm-included-text-prefix
to every yanked line, and don't yank
any headers other than those specified in
vm-visible-headers
and vm-invisible-headers
. To yank a message from
a different folder than the parent of this composition, use
M-x vm-yank-message-other-buffer.
vm-mime-attach-file
)
vm-send-using-mime
must be set non-nil
for this command to work.
You will be asked for the file's type, and a brief description of
the attachment. The description is optional. If the file's type
is a text type, you will also be asked for the character set
in which the text should be displayed.
The new attachment will appear as a highlighted tag in the
composition buffer. You can use mouse button 3 on this tag
to set the default content disposition of the attachment. The
content disposition gives a hint to the recipient's mailer how to
treat the attachment. Specifically the disposition will indicate
whether the attachment should be displayed along with the message
or saved to a file. Any text in the composition that appears
before the tag will appear in a MIME text part before the
attachment when the message is encoded and sent. Similarly, any
text after the tag will appear after the attachment in the
encoded message. If you change your mind about using the
attachment, you can remove it from the composition with C-k.
If you want to move the attachment to some other part of the message,
you can kill it C-k and yank it back with C-y.
vm-mime-attach-message
)
vm-mime-attach-buffer
)
vm-mime-encode-composition
)
undo
command can be used to undo
the encoding, so that you can continue composing the unencoded
message.
vm-preview-composition
)
The simplest command is m (vm-mail
) which sends a mail
message much as M-x mail does but allows the added commands
described above.
vm-mail
can be invoked outside of VM by typing M-x vm-mail.
However, only (vm-yank-message-other-folder
) will work; all the
other commands require a parent folder.
If you send a message and it is returned by the mail system
because it was undeliverable, you can resend the message by
typing M-r (vm-resend-bounced-message
). VM will
extract the old message and its pertinent headers from the
returned message, and place you in a VM Mail mode buffer. A
Resent-To header will be added, which you can fill in with
the corrected addresses of the recipients that bounced. You
can also added a Resent-Cc header, which has the same meaning
as a Cc header in a normal message. Mail will only be sent to
the addresses in the Resent-To and Resent-Cc headers unless
you delete both of those headers. In that case the To and Cc
headers will be used.
To use VM's MIME composition features, you must have
vm-send-using-mime
set to a non-nil
value. With MIME composition
enabled, VM will allow you to add file attachments to your
composition and will analyze your message when you send it and
MIME encode it as necessary.
To attach a file to your composition, use C-c C-a
(vm-mime-attach-file
). VM will ask you for the name of the file,
its type, a brief description and its character set if it is a
text attachment. The attachment will be represented in the
composition as a tag line like this
[ATTACHMENT ~/sounds/chronophasia_scream.au, audio/basic]
You can type text before and after this tag and it will appear before or after the text in the final MIME message when VM encodes it. You can kill the tag with C-k and yank it back with C-y to move it to another place in the message. You can yank back the tag multiple times to duplicate the attachment in the message. Or you can leave the tag killed and the attachment won't appear in the message when it is sent.
If you click the right mouse button on the attachment tag, a menu will appear that allows you to change the content disposition of the attachment. The content disposition of a MIME object gives a mail reader a hint as to whether an object should be displayed inline or as an inert tag or button that you must activate in some fashion. Inline display usually means that the object will be display within or alongside the message text, if that is possible. Attachment, when used as a content disposition, means that the object will likely be displayed as a tag. By default, VM specifies an inline disposition for all MIME types except `application' and `model' types.
To attach a buffer instead of a file, use C-c C-b (normally
bound to vm-mime-attach-buffer
. You must not kill the
buffer that you attach until after the message has been sent.
To preview what a MIME message will look like to a recipient,
use C-c C-p (vm-mime-preview-composition
). VM
will encode a copy of the message and present it to you in a
temporary mail folder. You can scroll through the message
using normal VM mail reading commands. Typing q in this
folder will return you to your composition where you can make
further changes.
To encode a MIME message without sending it, use C-c C-e
(vm-mime-encode-composition
). This is useful if you use
PGP and want to sign a message before sending it. VM will encode
the message for transport, inserting all necessary headers and
boundary markers. You can then sign the message and send it with
C-c C-c and be confident that VM won't invalidate the signature
by making further modifications to the message. Or if you want
to resume editing the message you can run the Emacs undo
(normally bound to C-x u) command which will revert the
encoded MIME bodies back to tags and you can continue entering
your composition.
By default, when you type text into a composition buffer VM
assumes that if all the character codes are less than 128, you
are using the US-ASCII character set and that is the character
set declared in the encoding of the message when it is sent. If
you are using some other character set, you must specify it by
setting the variable vm-mime-7bit-composition-charset
. The
value of this variable should be a string specifying the character
set.
If there are character codes in the composition greater than 128, the
variable vm-mime-8bit-composition-charset
tells VM what character
set to assume when encoding the message. The default is
`iso-8859-1'.
Character codes greater than 128 may not be transported reliably across the Internet in mail messages. Some machines will refuse to accept messages containing such characters and some will accept them but zero the eighth bit, garbling the message. To avoid these problems, VM transfer encodes 8-bit text by default.
MIME has two transfer encodings that convert 8-bit data to 7-bit data for safe transport. Quoted-printable leaves the text mostly readable even if the recipient does not have a MIME-capable mail reader. BASE64 is unreadable without a MIME-capable mail reader.
VM's text transfer encoding behavior is controlled by the
variable vm-mime-8bit-text-transfer-encoding
. Its value should
be a symbol that specifies what kind of transfer encoding to do
for 8-bit text. A value of `quoted-printable', means to use
quoted-printable encoding. A value of `base64' means to use
BASE64 encoding. A value of `8bit' means to send the message as
is. Note that this variable usually only applies to textual MIME
content types. Images, audio, video, etc. typically will have
some attribute that makes VM consider them to be "binary",
which moves them outside the scope of this variable. For
example, messages with line lengths of 1000 characters or more
are considered binary, as are messages that contain carriage
returns (ASCII code 13) or NULs (ASCII code 0).
VM has special commands that make it easy to reply to a message. When a
reply command is invoked, VM fills in the subject and recipient headers
for you, since it is apparent to whom the message should be sent and
what the subject should be. There is an old convention of prepending
the string `"Re: "' to the subject of replies if the string isn't
present already. VM supports this indirectly by providing the variable
vm-reply-subject-prefix
. Its value should be a string to prepend
to the subject of replies, if the string isn't present already. A
nil
value means don't prepend anything to the subject (this is
the default). In any case you can edit any of the message headers
manually, if you wish.
VM also helps you quote material from a message to which you are
replying by providing included text as a feature of some of the
commands. Included text is a copy of the message being replied to with
some fixed string prepended to each line so that included text can be
distinguished from the text of the reply. The variable
vm-included-text-prefix
specifies what the prepended string will
be.
The variable vm-included-text-attribution-format
specifies the
format for the attribution of included text. This attribution is a line
of text that tells who wrote the text that is to be included; it will be
inserted before the included text. If non-nil
, the value of
vm-included-text-attribution-format
should be a string format
specification similar to vm-summary-format
. See section Summaries. A
nil
value causes the attribution to be omitted.
The variable vm-in-reply-to-format
specifies the format of the
In-Reply-To header that is inserted into the header section of the reply
buffer. Like vm-included-text-attribution-format
,
vm-in-reply-to-format
should be a string similar to that of
vm-summary-format
. A nil
value causes the In-Reply-To
header to be omitted.
The recipient headers generated for reply messages are created by
copying the appropriate headers from the message to which you are
replying. This includes any full name information, comments, etc. in
these headers. If the variable vm-strip-reply-headers
is
non-nil
, the recipient headers will be stripped of all information
except the actual addresses.
The reply commands are:
vm-reply
)
vm-reply-include-text
)
vm-followup
)
vm-followup-include-text
)
These commands all accept a numeric prefix argument n, which if present, causes VM to reply to the next (or previous if the argument is negative) n-1 messages as well as the current message. Also, all the reply commands set the "replied" attribute of the messages to which you are responding, but only when the reply is actually sent. The reply commands can also be applied to marked messages, see section Message Marks.
If you are one of multiple recipients of a message and you use f
and F, your address will be included in the recipients of the
reply. You can avoid this by judicious use of the variable
vm-reply-ignored-addresses
. Its value should be a list of
regular expressions that match addresses that VM should automatically
remove from the recipient headers of replies.
VM has three commands to forward messages: z
(vm-forward-message
), @ (vm-send-digest
) and
B (vm-resend-message
).
Typing z puts you into a VM Mail mode buffer just like m,
except the current message appears as the body of the message in the VM
Mail mode buffer. The forwarded message encapsulated as specified by the
variable vm-forwarding-digest-type
. Recognized values are
`"rfc934"', `"rfc1153"' and `"mime"'. If the variable
vm-forwarding-subject-format
is non-nil
it should specify
the format of the Subject header of the forwarded message. A nil
value causes the Subject header to be left blank. The forwarded message
is flagged "forwarded" when the message is sent.
The command @ (vm-send-digest
) works like z except
that a digest of all the messages in the current folder is made and
inserted into the VM Mail mode buffer. Also, vm-send-digest
can
be applied to just marked messages. See section Message Marks. When applied
to marked messages, vm-send-digest
will only bundle marked
messages, as opposed to the usual bundling of all messages in the
current folder. The message encapsulation method is specified by the
variable vm-digest-send-type
, which accepts the same values as
vm-forwarding-digest-type
. All the messages included in the digest will
be flagged "forwarded" when the digest message is sent.
If you give vm-send-digest
a prefix argument, VM will insert a
list of preamble lines at the beginning of the digest, one line per
digestified message. The variable vm-digest-preamble-format
determines the format of the preamble lines. If the value of
vm-digest-center-preamble
is non-nil
, the preamble lines
will be centered.
If you wish to forward a message and want to send it without the
encapsulation used by vm-forward-message
, use B
(vm-resend-message
). Instead of encapsulating the message, VM
will use essentially the same message and headers and add a Resent-To
header that you should fill in with the new recipients. Use C-c
C-c as usual to send the message. The resent message will be flagged
as "redistributed".
Mail messages are normally saved to files that contain only mail messages. Such files are called folders. Folders are distinguished from spool files in that VM does not expect other programs to modify them while VM is visiting them. This is important to remember. VM does no locking of folders when visiting them. If the disk copy of a folder is modified behind VM's back, Emacs will complain with the dreaded "File changed on disk" message when you try to save the folder.
The VM command to save a message to a folder is s
(vm-save-message
); invoking this command causes the current
message to be saved to a folder whose name you specify in the
minibuffer. If vm-save-message
is given a prefix argument
n, the current message plus the next n-1 messages are saved.
If n is negative, the current message and the previous n-1
messages are saved. Messages saved with vm-save-message
are
flagged "filed".
If the value of the variable vm-confirm-new-folders
is
non-nil
, VM will ask for confirmation before creating a new
folder on interactive saves.
If you have a directory where you keep all your mail folders, you should
set the variable vm-folder-directory
to point to it. If this
variable is set, vm-save-message
will insert this directory name
into the minibuffer before prompting you for a folder name; this will save
you some typing.
Another aid to selecting folders in which to save mail is the variable
vm-auto-folder-alist
. The value of this variable should be a
list of the form:
((header-name (regexp . folder-name) ...) ...)
where header-name and regexp are strings, and folder-name is a string or an s-expression that evaluates to a string.
If any part of the contents of the message header named by
header-name is matched by the regular expression
regexp, VM will evaluate the corresponding
folder-name and use the result as the default when
prompting for a folder to save the message in. If the resulting
folder name is a relative pathname it resolves to the directory
named by vm-folder-directory
, or the
default-directory
of the currently visited folder if
vm-folder-directory
is nil
.
When folder-name is evaluated, the current buffer will contain only
the contents of the header named by header-name. It is safe to
modify this buffer. You can use the match data from any `\( ...
\)' grouping constructs in regexp along with the function
buffer-substring
to build a folder name based on the header information.
If the result of evaluating folder-name is a list, then the list will
be treated as another auto-folder-alist and will be descended
recursively.
Whether matching is case sensitive depends on the value of the variable
vm-auto-folder-case-fold-search
. A non-nil
value makes
matching case insensitive. The default value is t
, which means
matching is case insensitive. Note that the matching of header names is
always case insensitive because the Internet message standard RFC 822
specifies that header names are case indistinct.
VM can save messages to a folder in two distinct ways. The message can be
appended directly to the folder on disk, or the folder can be visited as
Emacs would visit any other file and the message appended to that
buffer. In the latter method you must save the buffer yourself to change
the on-disk copy of the folder. The variable vm-visit-when-saving
controls which method is used. A value of t
causes VM to always
visit a folder before saving message to it. A nil
value causes VM
to always append directly to the folder file. In this case VM will not
save messages to the disk copy of a folder that is being visited. This
restriction is necessary to insure that the buffer and on-disk copies of
the folder are consistent. If the value of vm-visit-when-saving is
not nil
and not t
(e.g. 0, the default), VM will append to
the folder's buffer if the buffer is currently being visited, otherwise VM
will append to the file itself.
After a message is saved to a folder, the usual thing to do next is to
delete it. If the variable vm-delete-after-saving
is
non-nil
, VM will flag messages for deletion automatically after
saving them. This applies only to saves to folders, not for the w
or A commands (see below). The variable vm-delete-after-archiving
works like vm-delete-after-saving
but applies to the A
(vm-auto-archive-messages
) command instead.
Other commands:
vm-save-message-sans-headers
)
vm-save-message
does. Messages saved this way are flagged "written".
vm-auto-archive-messages
)
vm-auto-folder-alist
to their appropriate folders. Messages that
are flagged for deletion are not saved by this command. If invoked with a
prefix argument, confirmation will be requested for each save.
vm-pipe-message-to-command
)
A non-nil
value of vm-berkeley-mail-compatibility
means to read and write BSD Mail(1) style Status: headers.
This makes sense if you plan to use VM to read mail archives
created by Mail.
In VM, messages are flagged for deletion, and then are subsequently expunged or removed from the folder. The messages are not removed from the on-disk copy of the folder until the folder is saved.
vm-delete-message
)
vm-undelete-message
)
vm-kill-subject
)
vm-expunge-folder
)
Setting the variable vm-move-after-deleting
non-nil
causes
VM to move past the messages after flagging them for deletion. Setting
vm-move-after-undeleting
non-nil
causes similar movement
after undeletes. Setting vm-move-after-kill
non-nil
causes VM to move after killing messages with vm-kill-subject
.
Note that the movement is done by calling vm-next-message
which
means that the value of vm-circular-folders
applies to the
post-command motion as for a motion command, not as for a non-motion
command.
To edit a message, type e (vm-edit-message
). The current
message is copied into a temporary buffer, and this buffer is selected
for editing. The major mode of this buffer is controlled by the
variable vm-edit-message-mode
. The default is Text mode.
Use C-c ESC (vm-edit-message-end
) when you have finished
editing the message. The message will be inserted into its folder,
replacing the old version of the message. If you want to quit the edit
without your edited version replacing the original, use C-c C-]
(vm-edit-message-abort
), or you can just kill the edit buffer
with C-x k (kill-buffer
).
If you give a prefix argument to vm-edit-message
, then the
current message will be flagged unedited.
As with VM Mail mode buffers, all VM commands can be accessed from the edit buffer through the command prefix C-c C-v.
VM provides general purpose marks that may be applied to any and all messages within a given folder. Certain VM commands can be subsequently invoked only on those messages that are marked.
To mark the current message, type M M
(vm-mark-message
). If you give a numeric prefix argument
n, the next n-1 messages will be marked as well. A negative
prefix argument means mark the previous n-1. An asterisk
(`*') will appear to the right of the message numbers of all marked
messages in the summary window.
To remove a mark from the current message, use M U
(vm-unmark-message
). Prefix arguments work as with
vm-mark-message
.
Use M m to mark all messages in the current folder; M u removes marks from all messages.
Other marking commands:
vm-mark-matching-messages
)
vm-unmark-matching-messages
)
vm-mark-thread-subtree
)
vm-unmark-thread-subtree
)
vm-mark-same-subject
)
vm-unmark-same-subject
)
vm-mark-same-author
)
vm-unmark-same-author
)
To apply a VM command to all marked messages you must prefix it with the
key sequence M N (vm-next-command-uses-marks
). The next VM
command will apply to all marked messages, provided the command can be
applied to such messages in a meaningful and useful way.
Each message in a folder has a set of attributes that VM will remember from session to session. Various VM commands set and unset these attributes. Here are the attributes maintained by VM.
new
unread
filed
written
edited
vm-edit-message
) since it arrived.
deleted
forwarded
vm-forward-message
or vm-send-digest
.
redistributed
vm-resend-message
command.
replied
You can set and unset these attributes directly by using a
(vm-set-message-attributes
). You will be prompted in the
minibuffer for names of the attributes and you can enter them with
completion. Every attribute has an "un-" prefixed name you can use
to unset the attribute, excepting "new" and "unread", which are both
negated by "read". You can use a prefix argument with this command to
affect multiple messages, and you can apply this command to marked
messages with M N.
VM provides a special form of undo which allows changes to message
attributes to be undone. Typing C-x u or C-_
(vm-undo
) undoes the last attribute change. Consecutive
vm-undo
's undo further and further back. Any intervening command
breaks the undo chain, after which the undo's themselves become undoable
by subsequent invocations of vm-undo
.
Note that expunges, saves and message edits are not undoable.
Labels are user-defined message attributes. They can have any
name and be assigned any meaning by you. Labels are added with
l a (vm-add-message-labels
and l e
(vm-add-existing-message-labels
, and are removed by l d
(vm-delete-message-labels
). BABYL format folders use labels to
store basic attributed like "deleted" and "unread". When visiting a
BABYL folder VM uses these labels also in order to be compatible with
other BABYL mailers. The labels used are "recent", "unseen",
"deleted", "answered", "forwarded", "redistributed", "filed",
"edited" and "written". If (and only if) you are using BABYL format
folders, you should not use these label names for your own purposes.
All message attributes are stored in the folder. In order for
attribute changes to be saved to disk, they must be written to
the folder's buffer prior to the buffer being saved. The
variable vm-flush-interval
controls how often that is done. A
value of t
means write the new attributes to the folder
buffer whenever a change occurs. A value of nil
means
wait until just before the folder is saved before writing out the
attributes. VM will work faster with this setting, but if Emacs
or your system crashes, the autosave file will contain no useful
data pertaining to message attribute changes. The autosave file
will still reflect message edits and expunges. See section Crash Recovery. A positive integer value n instructs VM to write
out attribute changes every n seconds. The default value
of this variable is t
.
In order to make numerous related messages easier to cope with, VM
provides the command G (vm-sort-messages
), which sorts
all messages in a folder using one or more sort keys.
By default the actual order of the messages in the folder is not
altered; that is, if you looked at the folder file outside of VM the
message order would be unchanged. VM numbers and presents the messages
in a different order internally. If you want the message order to be
changed in the folder so that other programs can see the change, you
can either invoke vm-sort-messages
with a prefix argument, or
you can set vm-move-message-physically
non-nil
before
sorting. Either way, VM will shift the actual messages around in the
folder buffer, and when you save the folder, the order change will be
visible to other programs.
Valid sort keys are: "date", "reversed-date", "author", "reversed-author", "subject", "reversed-subject", "recipients", "reversed-recipients", "line-count", "reversed-line-count", "byte-count", "reversed-byte-count", "physical-order", and "reversed-physical-order".
When sorting by subject (or threading using subjects, or killing
messages by subject) the subject of the message is
normalized before comparisons are done. A normalized
subject has uninteresting prefixes and suffixes stripped off, and
multiple consecutive whitespace characters are collapsed to a single
space. The variable vm-subject-ignored-prefix
should be
a regular expression that matches all strings at the beginning of
a subject that you do not want to be considered when message
subjects are compared. A nil
value means VM should not ignore
any prefixes. The analogous variable for subject suffixes is
vm-subject-ignored-suffix
.
Once the subject has been normalized, the variable
vm-subject-significant-chars
controls how much of what
remains is considered significant for matching purposes. The
first vm-subject-significant-chars
will be considered
significant. Characters beyond this point in the subject string
will be ignored. A nil
value for this variable means all
characters in the subject are significant.
If you want to move messages around by hand, use C-M-n
(vm-move-message-forward
) and C-M-p
(vm-move-message-backward
). The default is to move the current
message forward or backward by one message in the message list. A
prefix argument n can specify a longer move. The value of
vm-move-messages-physically
applies to these commands.
A thread is a group of messages that are either related by subject or that have a common ancestor. Threading is the process of determining the relationship between such messages and displaying them so that those relationships are evident.
To enable and disable threading, type C-t
(vm-toggle-threads-display
. In the summary buffer related
messages are grouped together and the subject part of the summary
listings of messages are indented to show hierarchical relationships.
Parent messages are displayed before their children and children are
indented a default two spaces to the right for each level of descendence
from their ancestors. The amount of indentation per level is controlled by the
variable vm-summary-thread-indent-level
.
Message relationships are discovered by examining References,
In-Reply-To, and Subject headers. The first two headers are more
reliable sources of information but not all mailers provide them.
If you don't want VM to use Subject headers, set the variable
vm-thread-using-subject
to nil
.
If you want VM to always display messages using threads, you should set
the default value of the variable vm-summary-show-threads
non-nil
in your VM init file. Exmaple:
(setq-default vm-summary-show-threads t)
Do not use setq
, as this will only set the value of the variable in
a single buffer. Once you've started VM you should not change the value
of this variable. Rather you should use C-t to control the thread
display.
Note that threading is really a specialized form of sorting, and so the
value of the variable vm-move-messages-physically
applies.
A digest is one or more mail messages encapsulated within another message.
VM supports digests by providing a command to "burst" them into their individual messages. These messages can then be handled like any other messages under VM.
The command * (vm-burst-digest
) bursts a digest into its
individual messages and appends them to the current folder. These
messages are then assimilated into the current folder as new messages.
The original digest message is not altered, and the messages extracted
from it are not part of the on-disk copy of the folder until a save is
done. You will be prompted for the type of digest to burst. VM
understands three formats, "rfc934", "rfc1154" and "mime". If you
don't know what kind of digest you've received, type "guess" and VM
will try to figure out the digest type on its own. VM is pretty smart
about digests and will usually make the correct choice if the digest is
properly formatted.
Typing h (vm-summarize
) causes VM to display a summary of
contents of the current folder. The information in the summary is
automatically updated as changes are made to the current folder. An
arrow `->' appears to the left of the line summarizing the current
message. The variable vm-auto-center-summary
controls whether VM
will keep the summary arrow vertically centered within the summary
window. A value of t
causes VM to always keep the arrow
centered. A value of nil
(the default) means VM will never
bother centering the arrow. A value that is not nil
and not
t
causes VM to center the arrow only if the summary window is not
the only existing window. You can change what the summary arrow looks
like by setting vm-summary-arrow to a string depicting the new arrow.
You should set this variable before VM creates the summary buffer.
The variable vm-summary-format
controls the format of each
message's summary. Its value should be a string. This string should
contain printf-like "%" conversion specifiers which substitute
information about the message into the final summary.
Recognized specifiers are:
a
A
c
d
f
F
h
H
i
I
l
L
m
M
n
s
t
T
U
w
y
z
*
Use "%%" to get a single "%".
A numeric field width may be specified between the "%" and the specifier; this causes right justification of the substituted string. A negative field width causes left justification. The field width may be followed by a "." and a number specifying the maximum allowed length of the substituted string. If the string is longer than this value, it is truncated.
If you save copies of all your outbound messages in a folder and
later visit that folder, the `%F' format specifier will normally
display your own name. If you would rather see the recipient
addresses in this case, set the variable
vm-summary-uninteresting-senders
. This variable's value,
if non-nil
, should be a regular expression that matches
addresses that you don't consider interesting enough to appear in
the summary. When such senders would be displayed by the `%F' or
`%f' summary format specifiers VM will substitute the value of
vm-summary-uninteresting-senders-arrow
(default "To: ")
followed by what would be shown by the `%T' and `%t' specifiers
respectively.
The summary format need not be one line per message but it must end with a newline, otherwise the message pointer will not be displayed correctly in the summary window.
You can have a summary generated automatically at VM startup
by setting the variable vm-startup-with-summary
non-nil.
See section Starting Up.
All VM commands are available in the summary buffer just as they are in
the folder buffer itself. If you set vm-follow-summary-cursor
non-nil
, VM will select the message under the cursor in the
summary window before executing commands that operate on the current
message. Note that this occurs only when executing a command
from the summary buffer window.
A non-nil
value of vm-gargle-uucp means to use a crufty
regular expression that does surprisingly well at beautifying UUCP
addresses that are substituted for `%f' and `%t' as part
of summary and attribution formats.
A virtual folder is a mapping of messages from one or more real folders into a container that in most ways acts like a real folder but has no real existence outside of VM. You can have a virtual folder that contains a subset of messages in a real folder or several real folders. A virtual folder can also contain a subset of messages from another virtual folder.
A virtual folder is defined by its name, the folders that it contains
and its selectors. The variable vm-virtual-folder-alist
is a list of
the definitions of all named virtual folders. In order to visit a
virtual folder with the vm-visit-virtual-folder
(V V) command,
a virtual folder must have an entry in vm-virtual-folder-alist.
Each virtual folder definition should have the following form:
(VIRTUAL-FOLDER-NAME ( (FOLDER-NAME ...) (SELECTOR [ARG ...]) ... ) ... )
VIRTUAL-FOLDER-NAME is the name of the virtual folder being defined. This is the name by which you and VM will refer to this folder.
FOLDER-NAME should be the name of a real folder. There may be more than one FOLDER-NAME listed, the SELECTORs within that sublist will apply to them all. If FOLDER-NAME is a directory, VM will assume this to mean that all the folders in that directory should be searched.
The SELECTOR is a Lisp symbol that tells VM how to decide whether a message from one of the folders specified by the FOLDER-NAMEs should be included in the virtual folder. Some SELECTORs require an argument ARG; unless otherwise noted ARG may be omitted.
author
author-or-recipient
and
(and (author "Derek McGinty") (new))matches all new messages from Derek McGinty.
and
takes any number of arguments.
any
deleted
edited
filed
forwarded
vm-forward-message
or vm-send-digest
.
header
header-or-text
label
less-chars-than
less-lines-than
more-chars-than
more-lines-than
marked
vm-mark-message
.
new
not
(not (deleted))matches messages that are not deleted.
or
(or (author "Dave Weckl") (subject "drum"))matches messages from Dave Weckl or messages with the string "drum" in their Subject header.
or
takes any number of arguments.
read
recent
recipient
redistributed
vm-resend-message
.
replied
sent-after
``31 Dec 1999 23:59:59 GMT''although the parts can appear in any order. You can leave out any part and it will default to the current date's value for that part, with the exception of the `hh:mm:ss' part which defaults to midnight.
sent-before
``31 Dec 1999 23:59:59 GMT''although the parts can appear in any order. You can leave out any part and it will default to the current date's value for that part, with the exception of the hh:mm:ss part which defaults to midnight.
subject
text
unanswered
unreplied
selector.
undeleted
unedited
unfiled
unforwarded
vm-forward-message
or vm-send-digest
or one
of their variants.
unread
unseen
unread
selector.
unredistributed
vm-resend-message
.
unreplied
virtual-folder-member
written
Here is an example that you may find useful as a template to create virtual folder definitions.
(setq vm-virtual-folder-alist '( ;; start virtual folder definition ("virtual-folder-name" (("/path/to/folder" "/path/to/folder2") (header "foo") (header "bar") ) (("/path/to/folder3" "/path/to/folder4") (and (header "baz") (header "woof")) ) ) ;; end of virtual folder definition ) )
Again, you visit virtual folders you have defined in
vm-virtual-folder-alist
with V V. Once you've
visited a virtual folder most VM commands work as they do in a
normal folder. There are exceptions. If you use S
(vm-save-folder
, the folder save command will be invoked
on each real folder in turn. Similarly if you use g
(vm-get-new-mail
in a virtual folder, mail is retrieved
from the spool files associated with each of the real folders.
If any of the retrieved messages are matched by the virtual
folder's selector, they will be added to the virtual folder.
These commands will signal an error when invoked if the current folder is a virtual folder:
vm-save-buffer vm-write-file vm-change-folder-type vm-expunge-imap-messages vm-expunge-pop-messages
Normally messages in a virtual folder share attributes with the
underlying real messages. For example, if you delete a message
in a virtual folder, it is also flagged as deleted in the real
folder. If you then run vm-expunge-folder
in the virtual folder,
the deleted message is expunged from the virtual folder and from
the real folder. Labels are shared between virtual and real
messages. However virtual folders have their own set of message
marks.
To make virtual folders not share message attributes with real
folders by default, set the variable vm-virtual-mirror
to nil.
This should be done in your VM init file and you should use
setq-default
, as this variable is automatically local to all
buffers.
(setq-default vm-virtual-mirror nil)
If you want to change whether the currently visited virtual
folder shares attributes with the underlying real folders, use the
command vm-toggle-virtual-mirror
(bound to V M). If the
virtual folder is currently sharing attributes it will no longer
be. If it is not sharing attributes with the underlying folders
then it will be.
The command vm-create-virtual-folder
(bound to V C) lets
you interactively create a virtual folder from the messages of
the current folder, using exactly one selector to choose the
messages. If you type V C header RET pigs, VM will create
a folder containing only those messages that contain the string
`pigs' in the header.
The command vm-apply-virtual-folder
(bound to V X) tries
the selectors of a named virtual folder against the messages of
the current folder and creates a virtual folder containing the
matching messages.
The keys V S and V A invoke
vm-create-virtual-folder-same-subject
and
vm-create-virtual-folder-same-author
which create virtual folders
containing all the messages in the current folder with the same
subject or author as the current message.
VM uses Emacs frames and windows to display messages and summaries and to provide a place for you to compose messages. Using VM's frame configuration facilities you can control when VM creates new frames and the size and attributes associated with new frames. Inside each frame you can associate different window setups with commands and classes of commands by using VM's window configuration facilities.
To use VM's frame configuration features, the variable
vm-mutable-frames
must be set non-nil
. This is the default. If
vm-mutable-frames
is set to nil VM will only use the current
frame, and VM will not create, delete or resize frames.
To use window configurations, the variable vm-mutable-windows
must be set non-nil
. If vm-mutable-windows
is set to nil, VM
will only use the selected window, and will not create, delete or
resize windows.
VM has a set of variables that let you specify when VM creates frames and what attributes the new frames will have.
If vm-frame-per-folder
is set non-nil
, when you visit a folder,
VM will create a new frame and display that folder in the new
frame. When you quit the folder, VM will delete the frame.
If vm-frame-per-summary
is set non-nil
, the vm-summarize
command will create a new frame in which to display a folder's summary
buffer. This works best if a full-screen window configuration has
been assigned to the vm-summarize
command. When you quit the folder
or kill the summary, VM will delete the frame.
Setting vm-frame-per-composition
non-nil
causes VM to create a
new frame for the composition buffer when you run any of VM's
message composition commands. E.g. vm-reply-include-text
,
vm-mail
, vm-forward-message
. When you finish editing the
composition and send it, or when you kill the composition buffer,
the frame will be deleted.
The variable vm-frame-per-edit
, if non-nil
, tells VM to create a
new frame when the vm-edit-message command is run. When you
finish editing the message, or abort the edit, the frame will be
deleted.
If vm-frame-per-help
is set non-nil
, VM will create a new frame
to display any help buffer produced by the vm-help command.
If vm-frame-per-completion
is set non-nil
, VM will create a new
frame on mouse initiated completing reads. A mouse initiated
completing read occurs when you invoke a VM command using the
mouse, either with a menu or a toolbar button. That command
must then prompt you for information, and there must be a
limited set of valid responses. If these conditions are met
and vm-frame-per-completion
's value is non-nil
, VM will
create a new frame containing a list of responses that you can
select with the mouse.
When VM is deciding whether to create a new frame, it checks
other existing frames to see if a buffer that it wants to display in a
frame is already being displayed somewhere. If so, then VM will
not create a new frame. If you don't want VM to search other
frames, set the variable vm-search-other-frames
to nil
. VM will
still search the currently selected frame and will not create a
new frame if the buffer that it wants to display is visible there.
The variable vm-frame-parameter-alist
allows you to specify the
frame parameters for newly created frames.
The value of vm-frame-parameter-alist
should be of this form
((SYMBOL PARAMLIST) (SYMBOL2 PARAMLIST2) ...)
SYMBOL must be one of "completion", "composition", "edit", "folder", "primary-folder" or "summary". It specifies the type of frame that the following PARAMLIST applies to.
completion
vm-frame-per-completion
.)
composition
edit
vm-edit-message-other-frame
)
folder
vm-visit-
commands.
primary-folder
vm
without any arguments.
summary
vm-summarize-other-frame
)
PARAMLIST is a list of pairs as described in the documentation for
the function make-frame
.
Window configurations allow you to specify how the windows within
a frame should look for a particular command or class of
commands. Each command can have a configuration associated with
it and you can also associate a configuration with command
classes like "reading-message" or "composing-message". To
setup a window configuration, first use Emacs' window management
commands (split-window
, enlarge-window
, etc.) to make the
windows in the frame look the way you want. Then use the
switch-to-buffer command to put the buffers you want to see into
the windows. Next type W S, which invokes the
vm-save-window-configuration
command. Type the name of the
command or class of commands to which you want the configuration
to apply. Nearly all VM commands can be entered here. Valid
classes are:
default startup quitting reading-message composing-message marking-message searching-message
When a VM command is executed, window configurations are searched
for as follows. First, a command specific configuration is
searched for. If one is found, it is used. Next a class
configuration is searched for. Not all commands are in command
classes. Message composition commands are in the
"composing-message" class. All the vm-quit*
commands are in the
"quitting" class. All the VM commands that set and clear
message marks are in the "marking-message" class, and so on.
If such a class configuration is found it is used. If no
matching class configuration is found, the "default" class
configuration is used, if it is defined.
Note that when a window configuration is saved the selected
window at that time will be the selected window when that window
configuration is used. So if you prefer for the cursor to be in
a particular window, make sure you invoke
vm-save-window-configuration
window from that window. Remember
that you can invoke the command with M-x if VM's normal
keymap is not in effect.
To delete a window configuration, use W D which is bound to
vm-delete-window-configuration
. You will be prompted for the
name of the configuration to delete.
To see what an existing configuration looks like, type W W
which invokes vm-apply-window-configuration
.
VM saves information about your window configurations in the file
named by the variable vm-window-configuration-file
. The default
location of the configuration file is `"~/.vm.windows"'.
Do not make vm-window-configuration-file
point to the same
location as vm-init-file
, as the window configuration save
commands will then overwrite the content of your init file.
If you're using XEmacs, VM can display a toolbar that allows you to run VM commands with a single mouse click. By default the toolbar is displayed on the left of the XEmacs frame and is only visible if you're running under a window system like X Windows or Microsoft Windows.
To make VM not display the toolbar, set vm-use-toolbar
to nil.
To configure what buttons are displayed on the toolbar, you must
change the value of vm-use-toolbar
. If non-nil
, the value of
vm-use-toolbar
should be a list of symbols and integers, which
specify which buttons appear on the toolbar and the layout of the
buttons. These are the allowed symbols along with the buttons
they represent.
autofile
vm-toolbar-autofile-message
. This command will save the current
message into the folder matched by vm-auto-folder-alist
, if there
is a match.
compose
vm-toolbar-compose-command
. This command is normally just an
alias for the vm-mail
command. If you want the Compose button to
do something else, redefine vm-toolbar-compose-command
using
either fset
or defun
.
delete/undelete
file
vm-toolbar-file-command
. This command is normally just an
alias for the vm-mail
command. If you want the File button to
do something else, redefine vm-toolbar-file-command
using
either fset
or defun
.
getmail
vm-toolbar-getmail-command
. This command is normally just an
alias for the vm-get-new-mail
command. If you want the
Get Mail button to
do something else, redefine vm-toolbar-getmail-command
using
either fset
or defun
.
help
vm-toolbar-helper-command
. This command normally just runs
vm-help
, but it also does context specific things under certain
conditions. If the current message is a MIME message that needs
decoding, the Helper button becomes the Decode MIME button. If the
current folder has an autosave file that appears to be the result
of an Emacs or system crash, the Helper button becomes the Recover
button. Clicking on the Recover button runs recover-file
,
so you can recover your folder from an existing autosave file.
mime
vm-toolbar-mime-command
. This command is normally just an
alias for the vm-decode-mime-message
command.
next
vm-toolbar-next-command
. This command is normally just an
alias for the vm-next-message
command. If you want the Next button to
do something else, redefine vm-toolbar-next-command
using
either fset
or defun
.
previous
vm-toolbar-previous-command
. This command is normally just an
alias for the vm-previous-message
command. If you want the Previous button to
do something else, redefine vm-toolbar-previous-command
using
either fset
or defun
.
print
vm-toolbar-print-command
. This command is normally just an
alias for the vm-print-message
command. If you want the
Print button to
do something else, redefine vm-toolbar-print-command
using
either fset
or defun
.
quit
vm-toolbar-quit-command
. This command is normally just an
alias for the vm-quit
command. If you want the Quit button to
do something else, redefine vm-toolbar-quit-command
using
either fset
or defun
.
reply
vm-toolbar-reply-command
. This command is normally just an
alias for the vm-reply-include-text
command. If you want
the Reply button to
do something else, redefine vm-toolbar-reply-command
using
either fset
or defun
.
visit
vm-toolbar-visit-command
. This command is normally just an
alias for the vm-visit-folder
command. If you want the Visit button to
do something else, redefine vm-toolbar-visit-command
using
either fset
or defun
.
nil
If an positive integer appears in the the vm-use-toolbar
list, it
specifies the number of pixels of blank space to display between
the button that comes before and the button that comes after the
integer.
The variable vm-toolbar-orientation
controls on which side of the
frame the toolbar is displayed. E.g.
(setq vm-toolbar-orientation 'top)
causes the toolbar to be displayed at the top of the frame. The
top
in the example can be replaced with bottom
,
right
and left
to make the toolbar appear in those
places instead.
VM finds the images for the toolbar in the directory specified by
vm-toolbar-pixmap-directory
. This variable should already be set
properly by whoever installed VM on your system, so you should
not need to set it.
VM uses Emacs' menubar and popup menus when they are available to
give you access to more of VM's commands. By default VM puts a
context sensitive popup menu on mouse button 3 (usually the
rightmost mouse button). If you don't want this menu, set the
variable vm-popup-menu-on-mouse-3
to nil.
If you set vm-use-menus
to nil, VM will not generate a menubar
for VM folder buffers and VM won't use popup menus either. If
you set vm-use-menus
to `1', VM will add a single `VM'
entry to the existing menubar instead of using the whole menubar
for its purposes. That single entry will have all the VM command
submenus under it.
To make VM use the whole menubar, you must set variable vm-use-menus
to a list of symbols. The symbols and the order in which they are listed
determine which menus will be in the menubar and how they are ordered.
Valid symbol values are:
dispose
emacs
folder
help
label
mark
motion
send
sort
undo
vm-undo
command.
virtual
nil
VM uses Emacs faces to emphasize text in the folder and summary buffers. Instead of defining VM specific faces, VM's face usage is controlled by customization variables that can point to faces. This allows you to use standard Emacs faces, or to create your own. So when you want to change which face is used, write code like this:
(setq vm-summary-highlight-face 'bold-italic)
In the summary buffer, VM displays the summary entry for the current
message using the face specified by the vm-summary-highlight-face
variable. The value of this variable should be a symbol that names a
face, or nil which means don't display the summary entry of the
current message in a special way.
The variable vm-mouse-track-summary
controls whether summary
entries are highlighted when the mouse pointer passes over
them. The highlighting is done using the standard Emacs
highlight
face.
In the folder buffer, the header contents of headers matched by
the vm-highlighted-header-regexp
variable are displayed using
the face named by vm-highlighted-header-face
. This variable is
ignored under XEmacs if vm-use-lucid-highlighting
is non-nil
.
The XEmacs highlight-headers
package is used instead. See the
documentation for the function highlight-headers
to find out
how to customize header highlighting using this package.
URL's that occur in message bodies are displayed using the face
named by vm-highlight-url-face
. Searching for URLs in a
large message can take a long time. Since URLs often occur near
the beginning and near the end of messages, VM offers a way to
search just those parts of a message for URLs. The variable
vm-url-search-limit
specifies how much of a message to search.
If vm-url-search-limit
has a positive numeric value N, VM
will search the first N / 2 characters and the last
N / 2 characters in the message for URLs.
The face named by vm-mime-button-face
is used to display the
textual buttons that trigger the display of MIME objects.
VM uses the following layout for the mouse buttons in the folder and summary buffers.
vm-url-browser
.
In mail composition buffers only mouse button-3 is affected. Context sensitive menus are produced when that button is clicked.
VM has many hook variables that allow you to run functions when certain events occur. Here is a list of the hooks and when they are run. (If you don't write Emacs-Lisp programs you can skip this chapter.)
vm-select-new-message-hook
vm-select-unread-message-hook
vm-select-message-hook
vm-arrived-message-hook
vm-get-new-mail
,
or from a digest with vm-burst-digest
. When the hooks are run,
the current buffer will be the folder containing the message and the
start and end of the message will be bracketed by (point-min) and
(point-max).
vm-spooled-mail-waiting-hook
vm-arrived-messages-hook
vm-get-new-mail
, or from a digest with
vm-burst-digest
. When the hooks are run, the new
messages will have already been added to the message list
but may not yet appear in the summary. When the hooks are
run the current buffer will be the folder containing the
messages.
vm-reply-hook
vm-mail-mode-hook
before leaving you in the Mail
mode buffer.
vm-forward-message-hook
vm-mail-mode-hook
before leaving the
user in the Mail mode buffer.
vm-resend-bounced-message-hook
vm-mail-mode-hook
before leaving
you in the Mail mode buffer.
vm-resend-message-hook
vm-mail-mode-hook
before leaving you in
the Mail mode buffer.
vm-send-digest-hook
m-mail-mode-hook
before leaving you in the Mail
mode buffer.
vm-mail-hook
vm-mail-mode-hook
before
leaving you in the Mail mode buffer.
vm-summary-update-hook
vm-summary-redo-hook
vm-visit-folder-hook
vm
or vm-visit-folder
is called interactively.
It is not run after vm-mode
is called.
vm-retrieved-spooled-mail-hook
vm-edit-message-hook
vm-edit-message
does before leaving you
in the edit buffer.
vm-mail-mode-hook
vm-mode-hook
vm-mode
.
These hook functions should generally be used to set key bindings
and local variables.
vm-mode-hooks
vm-mode-hook
.
Supported for backward compatibility.
You should use the new name.
vm-summary-mode-hook
vm-summary-mode-hooks
vm-summary-mode-hook
.
Supported for backward compatibility.
You should use the new name.
vm-virtual-mode-hook
vm-presentation-mode-hook
vm-quit-hook
vm-summary-pointer-update-hook
vm-display-buffer-hook
vm-undisplay-buffer-hook
vm-iconify-frame-hook
vm-menu-setup-hook
vm-mime-display-function
nil
, this should name a function to be called inside
vm-decode-mime-message
to do the MIME display of the current
message. The function is called with no arguments, and at the
time of the call the current buffer will be the presentation
buffer for the folder, which is a temporary buffer that VM uses
for the display of MIME messages. A copy of the current message
will be in the presentation buffer at that time. The normal work
that vm-decode-mime-message
would do is not done, because this
function is expected to subsume all of it.
vm-mail-send-hook
vm-confirm-mail-send
but before MIME encoding
and FCC processing.
mail-yank-hooks
vm-yank-message
to see when VM will run
these hooks.
mail-citation-hook
nil
, a default action is taken
instead of no action.
Jump to: # - $ - * - @ - a - b - c - d - f - g - h - k - l - m - n - p - q - r - s - t - u - v - w - x - z - |
Jump to: v
Version 2, June 1991
Copyright (C) 1989, 1991 Free Software Foundation, Inc. 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this license document, but changing it is not allowed.
The licenses for most software are designed to take away your freedom to share and change it. By contrast, the GNU General Public License is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change free software--to make sure the software is free for all its users. This General Public License applies to most of the Free Software Foundation's software and to any other program whose authors commit to using it. (Some other Free Software Foundation software is covered by the GNU Library General Public License instead.) You can apply it to your programs, too.
When we speak of free software, we are referring to freedom, not price. Our General Public Licenses are designed to make sure that you have the freedom to distribute copies of free software (and charge for this service if you wish), that you receive source code or can get it if you want it, that you can change the software or use pieces of it in new free programs; and that you know you can do these things.
To protect your rights, we need to make restrictions that forbid anyone to deny you these rights or to ask you to surrender the rights. These restrictions translate to certain responsibilities for you if you distribute copies of the software, or if you modify it.
For example, if you distribute copies of such a program, whether gratis or for a fee, you must give the recipients all the rights that you have. You must make sure that they, too, receive or can get the source code. And you must show them these terms so they know their rights.
We protect your rights with two steps: (1) copyright the software, and (2) offer you this license which gives you legal permission to copy, distribute and/or modify the software.
Also, for each author's protection and ours, we want to make certain that everyone understands that there is no warranty for this free software. If the software is modified by someone else and passed on, we want its recipients to know that what they have is not the original, so that any problems introduced by others will not reflect on the original authors' reputations.
Finally, any free program is threatened constantly by software patents. We wish to avoid the danger that redistributors of a free program will individually obtain patent licenses, in effect making the program proprietary. To prevent this, we have made it clear that any patent must be licensed for everyone's free use or not licensed at all.
The precise terms and conditions for copying, distribution and modification follow.
NO WARRANTY
If you develop a new program, and you want it to be of the greatest possible use to the public, the best way to achieve this is to make it free software which everyone can redistribute and change under these terms.
To do so, attach the following notices to the program. It is safest to attach them to the start of each source file to most effectively convey the exclusion of warranty; and each file should have at least the "copyright" line and a pointer to where the full notice is found.
one line to give the program's name and an idea of what it does. Copyright (C) 19yy name of author This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
Also add information on how to contact you by electronic and paper mail.
If the program is interactive, make it output a short notice like this when it starts in an interactive mode:
Gnomovision version 69, Copyright (C) 19yy name of author Gnomovision comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; for details type `show w'. This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it under certain conditions; type `show c' for details.
The hypothetical commands `show w' and `show c' should show the appropriate parts of the General Public License. Of course, the commands you use may be called something other than `show w' and `show c'; they could even be mouse-clicks or menu items--whatever suits your program.
You should also get your employer (if you work as a programmer) or your school, if any, to sign a "copyright disclaimer" for the program, if necessary. Here is a sample; alter the names:
Yoyodyne, Inc., hereby disclaims all copyright interest in the program `Gnomovision' (which makes passes at compilers) written by James Hacker. signature of Ty Coon, 1 April 1989 Ty Coon, President of Vice
This General Public License does not permit incorporating your program into proprietary programs. If your program is a subroutine library, you may consider it more useful to permit linking proprietary applications with the library. If this is what you want to do, use the GNU Library General Public License instead of this License.
This document was generated on 14 January 2000 using texi2html 1.56k.