|
|
MBLAZE(7) Miscellaneous Information Manual MBLAZE(7)
|
|
|
|
|
|
NAME
|
|
|
mblaze – introduction to mblaze
|
|
|
|
|
|
DESCRIPTION
|
|
|
The mblaze message system is a set of Unix utilities to deal with mail
|
|
|
kept in Maildir folders.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Its design is roughly inspired by MH, the RAND Message Handling System,
|
|
|
but its is a complete implementation from scratch.
|
|
|
|
|
|
mblaze consists of a set of Unix tools that each do one job:
|
|
|
maddr(1) to extract addresses from mail
|
|
|
magrep(1) to find mails matching a pattern
|
|
|
mcom(1) to write and send mail
|
|
|
mdeliver(1) to deliver messages or import mailboxes
|
|
|
mdirs(1) to find Maildirs
|
|
|
mflag(1) to change flags (marks) of mail
|
|
|
mgenmid(1) to generate Message-IDs
|
|
|
mhdr(1) to extract mail headers
|
|
|
minc(1) to incorporate new mail
|
|
|
mless(1) to conveniently read mail in less(1)
|
|
|
mlist(1) to list and filter mail messages
|
|
|
mmime(1) to create MIME messages
|
|
|
mpick(1) to filter mail
|
|
|
mrep(1) to reply to mail
|
|
|
mscan(1) to generate single line summaries of mail
|
|
|
msed(1) to manipulate mail headers
|
|
|
mseq(1) to manipulate mail sequences
|
|
|
mshow(1) to render mail and extract attachments
|
|
|
msort(1) to sort mail
|
|
|
mthread(1) to arrange mail into discussions
|
|
|
|
|
|
PRINCIPLES
|
|
|
mblaze is a classic command line MUA with no features related to
|
|
|
receiving and transferring mail. You are expected to fetch your mail
|
|
|
using offlineimap(1), fdm(1), procmail(1), getmail(1) or similar and send
|
|
|
it using sendmail(8), as provided by OpenSMTPD, Postfix, msmtp(1), dma(8)
|
|
|
or similar. mblaze expects your mail to reside in Maildir folders.
|
|
|
|
|
|
mblaze operates directly on Maildir and doesn't use caches or database.
|
|
|
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, and then optimized to use few syscalls. Parsing mail
|
|
|
metadata is optimized to use few I/O requests. Initial operations on big
|
|
|
Maildir may feel slow, but as soon as they are in cache, everything is
|
|
|
blazing fast. The tools are written to be memory efficient (i.e. not
|
|
|
wasteful), but whole messages are assumed to fit into RAM easily (at a
|
|
|
time).
|
|
|
|
|
|
mblaze has been written from scratch and tested on a big pile of personal
|
|
|
mail, but is not actually 100% RFC conforming (which is neither worth it
|
|
|
nor desirable). There may be issues with very old, nonconforming,
|
|
|
messages.
|
|
|
|
|
|
mblaze is written in portable C, using only POSIX functions (apart from a
|
|
|
tiny Linux-only optimization), and has no external dependencies. It
|
|
|
supports MIME and more than 7-bit messages (everything the host iconv(3)
|
|
|
can decode). It assumes you work in a UTF-8 environment. mblaze works
|
|
|
well together with other Unix mail tools such as offlineimap(1),
|
|
|
mairix(1), or mu(1).
|
|
|
|
|
|
EXAMPLES
|
|
|
mblaze tools are designed to be composed together into a pipe. It is
|
|
|
suitable for interactive use and for scripting. It integrates well into
|
|
|
a Unix workflow.
|
|
|
|
|
|
For example, you could decide you want to look at all unseen mail in your
|
|
|
INBOX, oldest first.
|
|
|
mlist -s ~/Maildir/INBOX | msort -d | mscan
|
|
|
To operate on a set of mails in multiple steps, you can save a list of
|
|
|
mail as a sequence. E.g. add a call to ‘mseq -S’ to above command:
|
|
|
mlist -s ~/Maildir/INBOX | msort -d | mseq -S | mscan
|
|
|
Now mscan will show message numbers and you could look at the first five
|
|
|
mails at once, for example:
|
|
|
mshow 1:5
|
|
|
Likewise, you could decide to look at all freshly received mail in all
|
|
|
folders, thread it and look at it interactively:
|
|
|
mdirs ~/Maildir | xargs minc | mthread | mless
|
|
|
Or you could look at the attachments of the 20 largest mails in your
|
|
|
INBOX:
|
|
|
mlist ~/Maildir/INBOX | msort -s | tail -20 | mshow -t
|
|
|
Or apply the patches from the current mail:
|
|
|
mshow -O. '*.diff' | patch
|
|
|
As usual with pipes, the sky is the limit.
|
|
|
|
|
|
CONCEPTS
|
|
|
mblaze deals with messages (which are files), folders (which are Maildir
|
|
|
folders), sequences (which are newline-separated lists of messages,
|
|
|
possibly persisted on disk in ~/.mblaze/seq), and the current message
|
|
|
(kept as a symlink in ~/.mblaze/cur).
|
|
|
|
|
|
Messages in the persisted sequence can be referred to using special
|
|
|
syntax as explained in mmsg(7).
|
|
|
|
|
|
Many utilities have a default behavior when used interactively from a
|
|
|
terminal (e.g. operate on the current message or the current sequence).
|
|
|
For scripting, you must make these arguments explicit.
|
|
|
|
|
|
SEE ALSO
|
|
|
mailx(1), nmh(7)
|
|
|
|
|
|
AUTHORS
|
|
|
Christian Neukirchen <chneukirchen@gmail.com>
|
|
|
|
|
|
LICENSE
|
|
|
mblaze is in the public domain.
|
|
|
|
|
|
To the extent possible under law, the creator of this work has waived all
|
|
|
copyright and related or neighboring rights to this work.
|
|
|
|
|
|
http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/
|
|
|
|
|
|
Void Linux July 22, 2016 Void Linux
|