elm 2.4

MIME support (RFC 1521)

RFC 1521 describes a mechanism for denoting textual body parts that are coded in various character sets, as well as methods for encoding such body parts as sequences of printable ASCII characters.

elm 2.4 allows you to send and view MIME-encoded messages. This enables you to send messages other than 7-bit ASCII texts. elm 2.4 supports a variety of non-text messages like audio, video, image, PostScript, and so on.

If a mailer does not support a particular Content-TYPE or CHARACTER-SET, elm 2.4 calls the metamail program which selects the appropriate interpreter to display the contents of the message. The metamail program is extensive in terms of the variety of CONTENT-TYPES and SUBTYPES it can display via the MAILCAP file mechanism.

elm 2.4 also supports MIME encoding for the mail headers (RFC 1522). This allows character sets other than ASCII in RFC 822 message headers.

Attachment Support

Elm 2.4 provides a new "Attachments" menu in which you can include an attachment to a current mail message. This feature also allows you to edit, save, or print individual portions of a received multipart message.

JIS Support for Japanese email Messages

This facility supports the industry standard JIS encoding scheme for sending and receiving Japanese mail. Regardless of the internal code of the sender (Japanese EUC or Shift JIS), elm 2.4 correctly displays the mail using the locale of the receiver.

Backward compatibility is provided for interacting with the non-JIS mailers. You have the option of suppressing the JIS encoding for outgoing mail, and, if desired, using the elmrc variable jisconversion. Using the elmrc variable savecharset, you can specify the codeset to be used (EUC, SJIS, or JIS) to save mail into a folder.

JIS support is also provided for the stand-alone utilities, such as answer, readmail, newmail, mailfrom, and fastmail.

New Stand-Alone Utilities

elm 2.4 continues to support all the stand-alone utilities provided by previous versions of elm. In addition, there are these new utilities:

Changes to Command Line Options

For 10.30, elm 2.4 supports the following command line options:

Changes in alias Options

elm 2.4 provides enhanced alias options including on-line editing of alias entries.

Changes to the User Interface

There are some changes to messages and menus. Some typical examples are shown below.

Example

When you press q to quit elm, the previous version of elm asked:

Keep mail in incoming mailbox? (y/n)

Whereas, elm 2.4 asks the question

Move read message to "received" folder? (y/n)

A response of n to this question will move all the messages in the incoming mailbox (/var/mail/$USER) into the received folder (~/mbox).

A response of y will move all the messages that are read to the received folder. Then, elm asks:

Keep unread messages in incoming mailbox? (y/n)

A response of n will move all the messages to the received folder.

Example

There are slight changes to error messages. Entering / when the mailbox is empty gives the following error messages:

No messages to scan! in elm 2.4

No messages to read! in previous versions of elm

Trying to set the current message number when the mailbox is empty gives the following error messages:

Not that many messages in elm 2.4

No messages to read! in previous versions of elm

Example

For elm 2.4, there is a change in sequence of operations. When you enter c to change to a particular folder in elm 2.4, the following messages appear:

Command: Change mailbox Delete message(s)?(y/n) Name of new mailbox:

But, after entering c for change of folder, elm 2.4 first asks the following question:

Command: Change folder (Use '?' for help) Change to which folder:

After giving the folder name, elm 2.4 asks:

Delete message? (y/n) Move read messages to "received folder?" (y/n)

In addition to the sequence change of operations, there is a change in the messages. In the previous versions of elm when you enter c, the messages are

Command: Change mailbox (Use '?' to list folder) Name of new mailbox:

Whereas in elm 2.4, the messages are

Command: Change folder (Use '?' for help) Change to which folder:

elm 2.4 also supports regular expressions for searching a particular folder name. At the prompt

Change to which folder:

you can type =* or any pattern and elm 2.4 will search for that pattern and display all folders matching that pattern.

New C Option

elm 2.4 provides a new C option that allows you to save a copy of a message without deleting that message. This differs from the save option where the message that gets copied is tagged for deletion.

Compatibility

elm 2.4 is compatible with previous versions of elm, but, in some instances, elm 2.4 might issue warning messages.

Unsupported Variables

Functionality that the previous versions of elm supported by using the elmrc configuration continues to be supported in elm 2.4. However, the original variables, described below, are not supported:

Configuration File Variables

This section describes new, renamed, and obsoleted variables to the elmrc configuration file.

New Variables

There are elmrc variables newly introduced by public domain elm 2.4. These variables, supported in elm 2.4, are:

aliassortby confirmfiles precedences alteditor confirmfolders promptafter alwayskeep displaycharset readmsginc alwaysstore easyeditor remotesignature attribution hdrencoding savecharset bounceback jisconversion sigdashes builtinlines keepempty sleepinterval charset localsignature sleepmsg compatcharsets metoo textencoding configoptions mimeforward tmpdir confirmappend noencoding usetite confirmcreate pagemultipart visualeditor