mblaze.7: update man page

pull/89/merge
Larry Hynes 6 years ago committed by Leah Neukirchen
parent b0dc63d61b
commit a112b0e7a7

@ -3,81 +3,81 @@
.Os
.Sh NAME
.Nm mblaze
.Nd introduction to mblaze
.Nd introduction to the mblaze message system
.Sh DESCRIPTION
The
.Nm
message system is a set of Unix utilities to deal with
mail kept in Maildir folders.
message system is a set of Unix utilities for processing and
interacting with mail messages which are stored in maildir folders.
.Pp
Its design is roughly inspired by MH, the RAND Message Handling
System, but it is a complete implementation from scratch.
.Pp
.Nm
consists of these Unix tools that each do one job:
consists of these Unix utilities that each do one job:
.Pp
.Bl -tag -width 11n -compact
.It Xr maddr 1
extract addresses from mail
extract mail addresses from messages
.It Xr magrep 1
find mails matching a pattern
print messages matching a pattern
.It Xr mbnc 1
bounces mail
bounce messages
.It Xr mcom 1
compose and send mail
compose and send messages
.It Xr mdeliver 1
deliver messages or import mailboxes
deliver messages or import mbox file
.It Xr mdirs 1
find Maildir folders
list maildir folders, recursively
.It Xr mexport 1
export Maildir folders as mailboxes
export messages as mbox file
.It Xr mflag 1
change flags (marks) of mail
manipulate maildir flags
.It Xr mflow 1
reflow format=flowed plain text mails
reflow format=flowed plain text messages
.It Xr mfwd 1
forward mail
forward messages
.It Xr mgenmid 1
generate Message-IDs
generate a Message-ID
.It Xr mhdr 1
extract mail headers
print message headers
.It Xr minc 1
incorporate new mail
incorporate new messages
.It Xr mless 1
conveniently read mail in
conveniently read messages in
.Xr less 1
.It Xr mlist 1
list and filter mail messages
list and filter messages
.It Xr mmime 1
create MIME messages
encode MIME messages
.It Xr mmkdir 1
create new Maildir
create new maildir folders
.It Xr mpick 1
advanced mail filter
advanced message filter
.It Xr mrep 1
reply to mail
reply to messages
.It Xr mscan 1
generate one-line summaries of mail
generate one-line message summaries
.It Xr msed 1
manipulate mail headers
manipulate message headers
.It Xr mseq 1
manipulate mail sequences
manipulate message sequences
.It Xr mshow 1
render mail and extract attachments
render messages and extract MIME parts
.It Xr msort 1
sort mail
sort messages
.It Xr mthread 1
arrange mail into discussions
arrange messages into discussions
.El
.Sh PRINCIPLES
.Pp
.Nm
is a classic command line MUA and has no features
for receiving or transferring mail;
you are expected to fetch your mail using
for receiving or transferring messages;
you are expected to fetch your messages using
.Xr fdm 1 ,
.Xr getmail 1
.Xr getmail 1 ,
.Xr offlineimap 1 ,
.Xr procmail 1 ,
or similar ,
or similar utilities,
and send it using
.Xr dma 8 ,
.Xr msmtp 1 ,
@ -87,92 +87,122 @@ OpenSMTPD,
Postfix,
or similar.
.Nm
expects your mail to reside in Maildir folders.
expects your messages to reside in maildir folders.
.Pp
.Nm
operates directly on Maildir folders and doesn't
operates directly on maildir folders and doesn't
use its own caches or databases.
There is no setup needed for many uses.
All tools have been written with performance in mind.
Enumeration of all mails in a Maildir is avoided unless necessary,
All utilities have been written with performance in mind.
Enumeration of all messages in a maildir is avoided unless necessary,
and then optimized to limit syscalls.
Parsing mail metadata is optimized to limit I/O requests.
Initial operations on a large Maildir may feel slow, but as soon as they
Parsing message metadata is optimized to limit I/O requests.
Initial operations on a large maildir may feel slow, but as soon as they
are in the file system cache, everything is blazingly fast.
The tools are written to be memory efficient (i.e. not wasteful), but
whole messages are assumed to fit into RAM easily (one at a time).
The utilities are written to be memory efficient
.Po
i.e. not wasteful
.Pc ,
but whole messages are assumed to fit into RAM easily
.Po
one at a time
.Pc .
.Pp
.Nm
has been written from scratch and tested on a large corpus of personal mail,
but is not actually 100% RFC-conforming
(which is neither worth it nor desirable).
has been written from scratch and is now well tested,
but it is not 100% RFC-conforming
.Po
which is neither worth it, nor desirable
.Pc .
There may be issues with very old, nonconforming, messages.
.Pp
.Nm
is written in portable C, using only POSIX functions (apart from a tiny
Linux-only optimization),
is written in portable C, using only POSIX functions
.Po
apart from a tiny Linux-only optimization
.Pc ,
and has no external dependencies.
It supports MIME and more than 7-bit messages (everything the host
It supports MIME and more than 7-bit messages
.Po
everything the host
.Xr iconv 3
can decode).
can decode
.Pc .
It assumes you work in a UTF-8 environment.
.Nm
works well together with other Unix mail tools such as
works well with other Unix utilities such as
.Xr mairix 1 ,
.Xr mu 1 ,
or
.Xr offlineimap 1 .
.Sh EXAMPLES
.Nm
tools are designed to be composed together in a pipe.
utilities are designed to be composed together in a pipe.
They are suitable for interactive use and for scripting,
and integrate well into a Unix workflow.
.Pp
For example, you could decide you want to look at all unseen mail in your
For example, you could decide you want to look at all unseen messages in your
INBOX, oldest first.
.Dl mlist -s ~/Maildir/INBOX | msort -d | mscan
.Dl mlist -s ~/maildir/INBOX | msort -d | mscan
.Pp
To operate on a set of mails in multiple steps,
To operate on a set of messages in multiple steps,
you can save it as a sequence,
e.g. add a call to
.Ql mseq -S
to the above command:
.Dl mlist -s ~/Maildir/INBOX | msort -d | mseq -S | mscan
.Dl mlist -s ~/maildir/INBOX | msort -d | mseq -S | mscan
.Pp
Now mscan will show message numbers and you could look at the first
five mails at once, for example:
five messages at once, for example:
.Dl mshow 1:5
.Pp
Likewise, you could decide to incorporate (by moving from
Likewise, you could decide to incorporate
.Po
by moving from
.Pa new
to
.Pa cur )
all new mail in all folders,
.Pa cur
.Pc
all new messages in all folders,
thread it and look at it interactively:
.Dl mdirs ~/Maildir | xargs minc | mthread | mless
.Dl mdirs ~/maildir | xargs minc | mthread | mless
.Pp
Or you could list the attachments of the 20 largest mails in your INBOX:
.Dl mlist ~/Maildir/INBOX | msort -S | tail -20 | mshow -t
Or you could list the attachments of the 20 largest messages in your INBOX:
.Dl mlist ~/maildir/INBOX | msort -S | tail -20 | mshow -t
.Pp
Or apply the patches from the current mail:
Or apply the patches from the current message:
.Dl mshow -O . '*.diff' | patch
.Pp
As usual with pipes, the sky is the limit.
.Sh CONCEPTS
.Nm
deals with messages (which are files),
folders (which are Maildir folders),
sequences (which are newline-separated lists of messages, possibly saved on disk in
.Pa ${MBLAZE:-$HOME/.mblaze}/seq ) ,
and the current message (kept as a symlink in
.Pa ${MBLAZE:-$HOME/.mblaze}/cur ) .
deals with messages
.Po
which are files
.Pc ,
folders
.Po
which are maildir folders
.Pc ,
sequences
.Po
which are newline-separated lists of messages, possibly saved on disk in
.Pa ${MBLAZE:-$HOME/.mblaze}/seq
.Pc ,
and the current message
.Po
kept as a symlink in
.Pa ${MBLAZE:-$HOME/.mblaze}/cur
.Pc .
.Pp
Messages in the saved sequence can be referred to using special
syntax as explained in
.Xr mmsg 7 .
.Pp
Many utilities have a default behavior when used interactively from a terminal
(e.g. operate on the current message or the current sequence).
.Po
e.g. operate on the current message or the current sequence
.Pc .
For scripting, you must make these arguments explicit.
.Pp
For configuration, see
@ -186,12 +216,14 @@ For configuration, see
.Pp
There is a mailing list available at
.Mt mblaze@googlegroups.com
(to subscribe, send a mail to
.Mt mblaze+subscribe@googlegroups.com .
Please report security-related bugs directly to the author),
as well as an IRC channel
.Po
to subscribe, send a message to
.Mt mblaze+subscribe@googlegroups.com
.Pc
and an IRC channel
.Li #vuxu
on irc.freenode.net.
Please report security-related bugs directly to the author.
.Sh LICENSE
.Nm
is in the public domain.

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