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Using elm Commands

At the bottom of the screen is a command summary that tells you what commands you have available for the current screen. As you can see in the preceding example, you can delete or undelete mail, mail a message, reply to a message, forward mail, or quit. Pressing the <j> key moves the message selection to the previous message; the <k> key moves it to the next message. Help is available by pressing the <?> key. The Command: prompt at the bottom of the screen tells you to press a command key for elm to do something.

As you can see, elm is very easy to use due to the large number of prompts and on-screen help that’s available. Table 33.3 lists all the commands that can be executed from within elm.

Table 33.3 Command Summary for elm

Command/Keystroke Description

<Return>, Spacebar Displays current message
| Pipes current message or tagged messages to a system command
! Shell escape
$ Resynchronizes folder
? Displays online help
+, <~ae> Displays next index page
-, <~ac> Displays previous index page
= Sets current message to first message
* Sets current message to last message
<number><Return> Sets current message to number
/ Searches subject lines for pattern
// Searches entire message texts for pattern
> Saves current message or tagged messages to a folder
< Scans current message for calendar entries
a Changes to “alias” mode
b Bounces (remails) current message
C Copies current message or tagged messages to a folder
c Changes to another folder
d Deletes current message
<Ctrl-d> Deletes messages with a specified pattern
e Edits current folder
f Forwards current message
g Send group (all recipients) reply to current message
h Displays header with message
J Increments current message by one
j, <~af> Advances to next undeleted message
K Decrements current message by one
k, <~ad> Advances to previous undeleted message
l Limits messages by specified criteria
<Ctrl-l> Redraws screen
m Mails a message
n Moves to next message, displaying current and then incrementing
o Changes elm options
p Prints current message or tagged messages
q Quits, maybe prompting for deleting, storing, and keeping messages
Q Quick quit—no prompting
r Replies to current message
s Saves current message or tagged messages to a folder
t Tags current message for further operations
T Tags current message and goes to next message
<Ctrl-t> Tags messages with a specified pattern
u Undeletes current message
<Ctrl-u> Undeletes messages with a specified pattern
x, <Ctrl-q> Exits leaving folder untouched; asks if you want to exit if you have changed the folder
X Exits leaving folder untouched, unconditionally

Using the Mutt E-Mail Client

Mutt is a freeware mail client that is rapidly gaining in popularity. While perfectly useable by comparative novices (by default, Mutt looks and works much like the elm client), Mutt is especially popular among more knowledgeable users because of its extreme configurability.

Some of the primary features of Mutt include:

  Color support
  Support for message threading
  MIME support—including RFC2047 support for encoded headers and PGP/MIME (RFC2015)
  POP3 support
  Support for multiple mailbox formats including mbox, MMDF, MH, and maildir
  Key bindings (by default, identical to elm)
  Ability to search using regular expression
  Support for Delivery Status Notification (DSN)
  Ability to include attachments from the command line when composing
  Ability to reply to or forward multiple messages at once
  .mailrc style configuration files
  Installation process uses GNU autoconf

Where to Get Mutt

Mutt is distributed under the GNU public license terms on the Red Hat 5.1 installation CD-ROM, in the Mail directory of the Applications section. An international version of Mutt that contains support for PGP™ is available from several FTP servers, including ftp://ftp.gbnet.net/pub/mutt-international/ among others.

For More Information on Mutt

The Mutt home page is at http://www.cs.hmc.edu/~me/mutt/index.html. It contains links to the online Mutt manual by Michael Elkins (at http://www.cs.hmc.edu/~me/mutt/manual.html) and the Mutt FAQ by Felix von Leitner (at http://www.math.fu-berlin.de/~leitner/mutt/faq.html). The Mutt home page also contains information on several mailing lists devoted to the mail client.

From Here…

You can find more information about exchanging information over the Internet in the following chapters:

  Chapter 31, “Surfing the Internet with the World Wide Web,” describes the various types of information available on the Internet.
  Chapter 34, “Surviving Usenet News,” describes the Usenet news system that’s used to exchange public messages.


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