Preferences: ------------ This is where you set the program to do "the right thing". You should do this when you run the program for the first time. There are some acronyms in this section you may be unfamiliar with. Don't worry if you don't understand them. If your local "computer people" set everything up correctly, most of these fields should have been automatically set for you to do "the right thing". Your preferences are saved into a file (by default) called "$HOME/.mlprefs", where "$HOME" is your home directory on the system you are logged into when running the program. This file contains all of your preference settings, your address book entries, and your filter rule definitions. When you select "Accept" from this window, your preferences will be updated with any new values you have entered. If you select "Cancel", any changes you made will be discarded, and the orginal values will remain in effect. Please also check the Configure section, and also the Configure section available from the Compose Window, which define other important information for mail access and delivery settings. Preferences Option Descriptions: -------------------- Startup Configuration This is the name of a Network Configuration defined in the Configure menu, and supplies the information neccessary to locate and open your initial mailbox. A basic configuration will be supplied by default, and called "default", which may or may not be suitable for your use. Print Command This is the name of the executable command which is run to print something. On most Unix systems it will usually be something like "lp" or "lpr". If this command isn't in your executable search path, you will have to provide the name explicitly (i.e. /usr/ucb/lpr). If you have a special print requirement which insists that you provide it (the executable program) with a filename, you may specify a "place holder" in the print command which will be replaced with the name of a temporary file this program will create for that purpose (when it comes time to actually print something). The place holder is always specified as "%s". Only one %s is allowed in a command. You may also include any special options such as setting the correct printer to use. Therefore your print command might look something like: /usr/ucb/lpr -Poffice_printer %s My Mail Folder Directory Besides your normal mailbox ("INBOX"), you may save mail to additional folders and mailboxes. Generally, you would access them by providing the complete file path (or complete path relative to your home directory) when you wish to open them, or copy to them, etc. By setting this variable to the pathname of the directory containing your extra mail files, you can use a short-hand method of referring to these mailbox names. An example is in order. Let's say my mail files (everything but my INBOX) are located within "/usr/home/sml/mailboxes" (which is a directory name). Within it, I have mailboxes called: old.mail important.mail junk.mail Instead of using "/usr/home/sml/mailboxes/junk.mail" every time I wanted to access this particular mailbox, I could set my mail folder directory to "/usr/home/sml/mailboxes", and then refer to the mailbox simply as "+junk.mail". The "+" will be expanded into the complete path whenever it is needed. ML Help File Directory This is the directory name where the help files for the program (such as the one you are currently reading) are stored. Generally it is "/usr/local/lib/ml", but may have been relocated at your site. ML Setup directory This specifies a directory which contains ML configuration files for dealing with message attachments. Typically this will be the same location as the ML Help Directory. You may wish to change this if you have unusual needs for dealing with attachments or which conflict with those supplied by the program or your system administrator. You should use any MIME configuration files in the ML Help File Directory as templates should you wish to experiment with this. These include all files matching "mime.*". The most important of these is "mime.handlers". Default Copy Mailbox This specifies the default mailbox selection for copying and moving messages to alternate mailboxes. If the name begins with a plus sign '+', your mail folder path will be prepended to this name before any copies take place. It must be created before you may actually use it. Default Character Set This specifies a character set to be used for outgoing messages. It may be helpful for those in countries where "US-ASCII" isn't the default. Some typical settings might be "ISO-8859-1" or other members of the ISO-8859-n family of character sets. Support for alternate languages is not yet complete, and no font or other changes occur because of this setting. (Most 'X' fonts are ISO-8859-1 based, so this should only have an impact in countries where the other ISO derivatives are used -- and these may be configurable through X resources font settings prior to starting the program.) This setting only defines the program default for what "CHARSET" value is actually sent in the message header of outgoing messages. It is also possible to set the character set or other message parameters from a menu item in the Compose Window. It should be noted that ML is "8-bit" based at the time being, so Asian languages cannot yet be correctly handled. Default Message Headers Most mail messages contain lots of superfluous message headers which you ordinally aren't interested in seeing. This preference should contain a comma separated list of those you normally want to see. Any which aren't actually in the message are silently ignored. The default is "from, to, newsgroups, subject, date". View Window List Line Format Defines the contents of the lines of the view window list. This is considered an advanced option since incorrect setting could make your mailbox header list unintelligible. The fields of a mail message or news posting may be used using a following mnemonics: %n message number %S subject %F flags %T type %L length ( %4L is the only option which makes sense here) %P sender, personal name (if not known, substituted with %U@%H) %U sender, user name %H sender, host %A sender, user@host %p receiver, personal name (if not known, substituted with %u@%h) %u receiver, user name %h receiver, host %a receiver, user@host %M{sss} if sender matches current login name, use %p for %P, %u for %U, %h for %H, %a for %A, and insert sss %N{sss} if sender does not match current login name, insert sss %D{format} define date format (strftime) The mnemonics may contain formatting codes known by the C library printf routine for the %s field. The %D{format} defines the format of the date field (C library strftime routine, of which only a few fields are valid): %b The abbreviated month name. %B The full month name. %d The day of the month as a decimal number (range 0 to 31). %e day of month (1-31; single digits preceded by space). %H The hour as a decimal number using a 24-hour clock (range 00 to 23). %I The hour as a decimal number using a 12-hour clock (range 01 to 12). %k hour (0-23; single digit preceded by space). %l hour (1-12; singled digit preceded by space). %m The month as a decimal number (range 01 to 12). %M The minute as a decimal number. %p Either `am' or `pm' according to the given time value. %y The year as a decimal number without a century (range 00 to 99). %Y The year as a decimal number including the century. %% A literal `%' character. For example, to show date as 10 Jan 95 13:00, use %D{%m %b %y %H:%M}. Default format is "%F%T %D{%e-%b-%y %H:%M} %N{ }%M{»}%-20.20P %4L %S" Attribution Line Format Defines the contents of the attribution line inserted at the beginning of the included text in a reply message. An incorrect setting of this option could make your attribution unintelligible. The fields of the original mail message or news posting may be used using the same mnemonics as the View Window List Line Format given above. The default format is "%D{On %e-%b-%y at %H:%M}, %P (%A) wrote:" If the attribution line format is set to empty, then automatic inclusion of the text of the original message in replies will be turned off. Default Action Command This specifies the default "Action script" to apply to mailboxes and views. Please see the help page for "On Actions" from either the main mailbox (View Window) or from the Filter Edit window before attempting to set this field. URL View Program This is the command with which to view a Uniform Resource Locator from the message Read Window. These are typically strings like: http://somehost/somedir/somefile ...although there are many variations. The command used to view them should be a command on your local system containing a "%s", which is replaced on invocation with the specific URL to be viewed. A typical example would be "netscape %s". This program was distributed with a shell script called "remotescape" which runs the Netscape Navigator (A web browser available from Netscape Communications) in "remote control" mode. The script allows you to "link" to an existing running program, rather than starting a separate viewer for each URL you wish to visit. New Mail Notify Program You have the choice of several actions when new messages arrive. In the Options menu, you may set whether or not you wish an audible beep for new messages, and also whether or not to popup the System Messages window at an alert level (or just to report it as a normal event, which could go unnoticed if that window is obscured). The New Mail Notify Program is an external program which will be executed whenever a new message arrives. If this field is blank, no program will be run. The program will have in its environment two variables which could allow you to perform different actions based on the source of the message. $MLSENDER will be set to the sender of the message, using the sender's full name if it is supplied, or the sender's e-mail address if it isn't. $MLMAILBOX will be set to the mailbox name which received the new message in "host:mailbox" notation (just "mailbox" for local files). Spaces and double quotes will have been converted to underscores. You may run these programs in the background with '&' on the command line since ML will otherwise wait for the external program to complete, and the new mail checks typically occur automatically at predetermined time intervals. A typical use for this would be to play a sound file which could be altered depending on who sent the message. Security Considerations: The program you run should not invoke a second program using the supplied variables on its command line. This might allow a dishonest and clever sender to possibly execute an arbitrary program on your system. Using Multiple Preference Files: -------------------------------- In some cases, it may be necessary for you to have a different set of preferences on one machine than another, and both machines might use the same networked home directory. To allow for this, the program will always look for "$HOME/.mlprefs.$HOSTNAME" and if it exists, use it for storing and loading your preferences for this session. If it can't be found, it will then look for "$HOME/.mlprefs". We don't have an easy way within the program to generate this machine specific file. You can use your operating system to create it by copying your existing "$HOME/.mlprefs" file. The $HOSTNAME part needs to match exactly what the network utilities on your system know the hostname to be, but adjusted to lower-case. If you have trouble matching this correctly, tell a Unix wizard in your organization (if you know one) that you need "the lower-cased name returned by gethostbyname() when fed an input of gethostname()". Hopefully they can arrange this. If such a person doesn't exist, you'll probably have try a few things experimentally. Let's say your machine name is "Barney.PODUNK.EDU". As a first cut, use a filename of $HOME/.mlprefs.barney.podunk.edu If that fails, try just $HOME/.mlprefs.barney If it still fails, you're on your own. Sorry. We're trying to automate this, but it hasn't been completed yet. Advanced -------- For reference, here is a list of the X resources which ML has defined for its own internal use. A few of these indicate obscure option settings which aren't otherwise documented here, and aren't settable in the Preferences and Option settings windows. Some documentation may be found in the program release notes, and alternatively in the program source code files. char *defaultConfig; char *smtp_server; char *nntp_server; char *default_domain; char *default_mailbox; char *default_savebox; char *default_mailbox_pattern; char *default_file_pattern; char *default_cc; char *default_bcc; char *default_action; char *help_directory; char *header_set; char *viewline_format; char *attribution_format; char *sendlog; char *mime_directory; char *reply_address; char *reply_prefix; char *print_command; char *signature_file; char *folder_path; char *url_command; char *newMailProg; char *mail_sort; char *news_sort; char *charset; char *language; char *ispellCommand; char *smart_reply; char *popInbox; char *netCheckCommand; char *netStartCommand; char *netStopCommand; int netCheckDelay; int check_interval; int mail_prefetch; int news_prefetch; int mail_background; int news_background; int mail_fetch; int news_fetch; int note_save; Boolean confirmDestroy; Boolean useIspell; Boolean imap_debug; Boolean smtp_debug; Boolean auto_open; Boolean word_wrap; Boolean mime_ask; Boolean logit; Boolean log_full; Boolean tear_off; Boolean decode_all; Boolean hide_empty; Boolean new_news; Boolean send_eight; Boolean developer_debug; Boolean alert_new; Boolean keep_open; Boolean newMailBeep; Boolean keepOnServer; /* Don't mess with these. */ Boolean local_defs; Boolean defaults_installed; char *defaults_version;