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Go to the previous, next chapter. Reading Mail with RmailRmail is an Emacs subsystem for reading and disposing of mail that you receive. Rmail stores mail messages in files called Rmail files. Reading the message in an Rmail file is done in a special major mode, Rmail mode, which redefines most letters to run commands for managing mail.
Basic Concepts of RmailUsing Rmail in the simplest fashion, you have one Rmail file ~/RMAIL in which all of your mail is saved. It is called your primary Rmail file. The command M-x rmail reads your primary Rmail file, merges new mail in from your inboxes, displays the first message you haven't read yet, and lets you begin reading. Rmail uses narrowing to hide all but one message in the Rmail file. The message that is shown is called the current message. Rmail mode's special commands can do such things as delete the current message, copy it into another file, send a reply, or move to another message. You can also create multiple Rmail files and use Rmail to move messages between them. Within the Rmail file, messages are normally arranged sequentially in order of receipt; you can specify other ways to sort them. Messages are assigned consecutive integers as their message numbers. The number of the current message is displayed in Rmail's mode line, followed by the total number of messages in the file. You can move to a message by specifying its message number with the j key (see section Moving Among Messages). Following the usual conventions of Emacs, changes in an Rmail file become permanent
only when the file is saved. You can save it with s ( You can exit Rmail with q ( Scrolling Within a MessageWhen Rmail displays a message that does not fit on the screen, you must scroll through it to read the rest. You could do this with C-v, M-v and M-, but in Rmail scrolling is so frequent that it deserves to be easier to type.
Since the most common thing to do while reading a message
is to scroll through it by screenfuls, Rmail makes SPC and DEL
synonyms of C-v ( The command . ( Moving Among MessagesThe most basic thing to do with a message is to read it. The way to do this in Rmail is to make the message current. The usual practice is to move sequentially through the file, since this is the order of receipt of messages. When you enter Rmail, you are positioned at the first message that you have not yet made current (that is, the first one that has the unseen attribute; see section Labels). Move forward to see the other new messages; move backward to reexamine old messages.
n and p are the usual way of moving among messages in Rmail. They
move through the messages sequentially, but skip over deleted messages, which is usually
what you want to do. Their command definitions are
named In Rmail, you can specify a numeric argument by typing just the digits. You don't need to type C-u first. The M-s ( To search backward in the file for another message, give M-s a negative argument. In Rmail you can do this with - M-s. It is also possible to search for a message based on labels. See section Labels. To move to a message specified by absolute message number, use j ( Deleting MessagesWhen you no longer need to keep a message, you can delete it. This flags it as ignorable, and some Rmail commands pretend it is no longer present; but it still has its place in the Rmail file, and still has its message number. Expunging the Rmail file actually removes the deleted messages. The remaining messages are renumbered consecutively. Expunging is the only action that changes the message number of any message, except for undigestifying (see section Digest Messages).
There are two Rmail commands for deleting messages. Both delete the current message and select another message.
d ( To make all the deleted messages finally vanish from the Rmail file, type x
( You can usually undo a d with a u because the u moves back to and undeletes the message that the d deleted. But this does not work when the d skips a few already-deleted messages that follow the message being deleted; then the u command undeletes the last of the messages that were skipped. There is no clean way to avoid this problem. However, by repeating the u command, you can eventually get back to the message that you intend to undelete. You can also select a particular deleted message with the M-p command, then type u to undelete it. A deleted message has the deleted attribute, and as a result deleted appears in the mode line when the current message is deleted. In fact, deleting or undeleting a message is nothing more than adding or removing this attribute. See section Labels. Rmail Files and InboxesThe operating system places incoming mail for you in
a file that we call your inbox. When you
start up Rmail, it runs a C program called The variable Some sites use a method called POP for accessing users' inbox
data instead of storing the data in inbox files. Assuming you have compiled and installed There are three reason for having separate Rmail files and inboxes.
When getting new mail, Rmail first copies the new mail from the inbox file to the Rmail file; then it saves the Rmail file; then it truncates the inbox file. This way, a system crash may cause duplication of mail between the inbox and the Rmail file, but cannot lose mail. When Multiple Rmail FilesRmail operates by default on your primary Rmail file, which is named ~/RMAIL and receives your incoming mail from your system inbox file. But you can also have other Rmail files and edit them with Rmail. These files can receive mail through their own inboxes, or you can move messages into them with explicit Rmail commands (see section Copying Messages Out to Files).
To run Rmail on a file other than your primary Rmail file, you may use the i
( The file you read with i should normally be a valid Rmail file. If it is not, Rmail tries to decompose it into a stream of messages in various known formats. If it succeeds, it converts the whole file to an Rmail file. If you specify a file name that doesn't exist, i initializes a new buffer for creating a new Rmail file. You can also select an Rmail file from a menu. Choose first the menu bar Classify item,
then from the Classify menu choose the Input Rmail File item; then choose the Rmail file
you want. The variables Each Rmail file can contain a list of inbox file names; you can specify this list with M-x set-rmail-inbox-list RET files RET. The argument can contain any number of file names, separated by commas. It can also be empty, which specifies that this file should have no inboxes. Once a list of inboxes is specified, the Rmail file remembers it permanently until you specify a different list. As a special exception, if your primary Rmail file does not specify any inbox files, it uses your standard system inbox. The g command ( To merge mail from a file that is not the usual inbox, give the g key a numeric argument, as in C-u g. Then it reads a file name and merges mail from that file. The inbox file is not deleted or changed in any way when g with an argument is used. This is, therefore, a general way of merging one file of messages into another. Copying Messages Out to FilesThese commands copy messages from an Rmail file into another file.
The commands o and C-o copy the current message into a specified file. This file may be an Rmail file or it may be in system inbox format; the output commands ascertain the file's format and write the copied message in that format. The o and C-o commands differ in two ways: each has its own separate default file name, and each specifies a choice of format to use when the file does not already exist. The o command uses Rmail format when it creates a new file, while C-o uses system inbox format for a new file. The default file name for o is the file name used last with o, and the default file name for C-o is the file name used last with C-o. If the output file is an Rmail file currently visited in an Emacs buffer, the output commands copy the message into that buffer. It is up to you to save the buffer eventually in its file. You can also output a message to an Rmail file
chosen with a menu. Choose first the menu bar Classify item, then from the Classify menu
choose the Output Rmail Menu item; then choose the Rmail file you want. This outputs the
current message to that file, like the o command. The variables Copying a message gives the original copy of the message the filed attribute, so that filed
appears in the mode line when such a message is
current. If you like to keep just a single copy of every mail
message, set the variable
Copying messages into files in system inbox format uses the header fields that are displayed in Rmail at the time. Thus, if you use the t command to view the entire header and then copy the message, the entire header is copied. See section Display of Messages. The variable (regexp . name-exp) If there's a match for regexp in the
current message, then the default file name for output
is name-exp. If multiple elements match the message,
the first matching element decides the default file name. The subexpression name-exp
may be a string constant giving the file name to use,
or more generally it may be any Lisp expression that returns a file name as a string. LabelsEach message can have various labels assigned to it as a means of classification. Each label has a name; different names are different labels. Any given label is either present or absent on a particular message. A few label names have standard meanings and are given to messages automatically by Rmail when appropriate; these special labels are called attributes. All other labels are assigned only by users.
The a ( Once you have given messages labels to classify them as you wish, there are two ways to use the labels: in moving and in summaries. The command C-M-n labels RET
( The command C-M-l labels RET
( If the labels argument to C-M-n, C-M-p or C-M-l is empty, it means to use the last set of labels specified for any of these commands. Some labels such as deleted and filed have built-in meanings and are assigned to or removed from messages automatically at appropriate times; these labels are called attributes. Here is a list of Rmail attributes:
All other labels are assigned or removed only by the user, and have no standard meaning. Sending RepliesRmail has several commands that use Mail mode to send outgoing mail. See section Sending Mail, for information on using Mail mode. What are documented here are the special commands of Rmail for entering Mail mode. Note that the usual keys for sending mail---C-x m, C-x 4 m, and C-x 5 m---are available in Rmail mode and work just as they usually do.
The most common reason to send a message while in
Rmail is to reply to the message you are reading. To do
this, type r ( You can exclude certain recipients from being placed automatically in the CC,
using the variable To omit the CC field completely for a particular reply, enter the reply command with a numeric argument: C-u r or 1 r. Once the *mail* buffer has been initialized, editing and sending the mail goes as usual (see section Sending Mail). You can edit the presupplied header fields if they are not right for you. You can also use the commands of Mail mode, including C-c C-y to yank in the message that you are replying to, and C-c C-q to fill what was thus yanked. You can also switch to the Rmail buffer, select a different message, switch back, and yank the new current message. Sometimes a message does not reach its destination.
Mailers usually send the failed message back to you,
enclosed in a failure message. The Rmail command M-m ( Another frequent reason to send mail in Rmail is to forward
the current message to other users. f ( Resending is an alternative similar to forwarding; the difference is that
resending sends a message that is ``from'' the original
sender, just as it reached you---with a few added header fields Resent-from
and Resent-to to indicate that it came via you. To resend a message in Rmail, use C-u f. (f runs
The m ( The c ( If you set the variable SummariesA summary is a buffer containing one line per message to give you an overview of the mail in an Rmail file. Each line shows the message number, the sender, the labels, and the subject. Almost all Rmail commands are valid in the summary buffer also; these apply to the message described by the current line of the summary. Moving point in the summary buffer selects messages as you move to their summary lines. A summary buffer applies to a single Rmail file only; if you are editing multiple Rmail files, each one can have its own summary buffer. The summary buffer name is made by appending -summary to the Rmail buffer's name. Normally only one summary buffer is displayed at a time.
Making SummariesHere are the commands to create a summary for the current Rmail file. Once the Rmail file has a summary buffer, changes in the Rmail file (such as deleting or expunging messages, and getting new mail) automatically update the summary.
The h or C-M-h ( C-M-l labels RET ( C-M-r rcpts RET ( C-M-t topic RET ( Note that there is only one summary buffer for any Rmail file; making one kind of summary discards any previously made summary. The variable Editing in SummariesYou can use the Rmail summary buffer to do almost anything you can do in the Rmail buffer itself. In fact, once you have a summary buffer, there's no need to switch back to the Rmail buffer. You can select and display various messages in the Rmail buffer, from the summary buffer, just by moving point in the summary buffer to different lines. It doesn't matter what Emacs command you use to move point; whichever line point is on at the end of the command, that message is selected in the Rmail buffer. Almost all Rmail commands work in the summary buffer as well as in the Rmail buffer. Thus, d in the summary buffer deletes the current message, u undeletes, and x expunges. o and C-o output the current message to a file; r starts a reply to it. You can scroll the current message while remaining in the summary buffer using SPC and DEL. The Rmail commands to move between messages also work in the summary buffer, but with a twist: they move through the set of messages included in the summary. They also ensure the Rmail buffer appears on the screen (unlike cursor motion commands, which update the contents of the Rmail buffer but don't display it in a window unless it already appears). Here is a list of these commands:
Deletion, undeletion, and getting new mail, and even selection
of a different message all update the summary buffer when you do them in the Rmail buffer. If the variable
When you are finished using the summary, type w ( Sorting the Rmail File
The Rmail sort commands perform a stable sort: if there is no reason to prefer
either one of two messages, their order remains unchanged. You can use this to sort by
more than one criterion. For example, if you use With a numeric argument, all these commands reverse the order of comparison. This means they sort messages from newest to oldest, from biggest to smallest, or in reverse alphabetical order. Display of MessagesRmail reformats the header of each message before displaying it for the first time. Reformatting hides uninteresting header fields to reduce clutter. You can use the t command to show the entire header or to repeat the header reformatting operation.
Reformatting the header involves deleting most header fields, on the grounds that they
are not interesting. The variable Rmail saves the complete original header before reformatting; to see it, use the t
command ( One consequence of this is that if you edit the reformatted header (using e; see section Editing Within a Message), subsequent use of t will discard your edits. On the other hand, if you use e after t, to edit the original (unreformatted) header, those changes are permanent. When used with a window system that supports
multiple fonts, Rmail highlights certain header fields that are especially
interesting---by default, the From and Subject fields. The variable If you specify unusual colors for your text
foreground and background, the colors used for highlighting
may not go well with them. If so, specify different colors for the To turn off highlighting entirely in Rmail, set Editing Within a MessageMost of the usual Emacs commands are available in Rmail mode, though a few, such as C-M-n and C-M-h, are redefined by Rmail for other purposes. However, the Rmail buffer is normally read only, and most of the letters are redefined as Rmail commands. If you want to edit the text of a message, you must use the Rmail command e. The e command ( In Rmail Edit mode, letters insert themselves as usual and the Rmail commands are not available. When you are finished editing the message and are ready to go back to Rmail, type C-c C-c, which switches back to Rmail mode. Alternatively, you can return to Rmail mode but cancel all the editing that you have done, by typing C-c C-]. Entering Rmail Edit mode runs the hook Digest MessagesA digest message is a message which exists to contain and carry several other messages. Digests are used on some moderated mailing lists; all the messages that arrive for the list during a period of time such as one day are put inside a single digest which is then sent to the subscribers. Transmitting the single digest uses much less computer time than transmitting the individual messages even though the total size is the same, because the per-message overhead in network mail transmission is considerable. When you receive a digest message, the most convenient way to read it is to undigestify it: to turn it back into many individual messages. Then you can read and delete the individual messages as it suits you. To do this, select the digest message and type the command M-x undigestify-rmail-message. This extracts the submessages as separate Rmail messages, and inserts them following the digest. The digest message itself is flagged as deleted. Converting an Rmail File to Inbox FormatThe command M-x unrmail converts a file in Rmail format to inbox format (also known as the system mailbox format), so that you can use it with other mail-editing tools. You must specify two arguments, the name of the Rmail file and the name to use for the converted file. M-x unrmail does not alter the Rmail file itself. Reading Rot13 MessagesMailing list messages that might offend some readers are sometimes encoded in a simple code called rot13---so named because it rotates the alphabet by 13 letters. This code is not for secrecy, as it provides none; rather, it enables those who might be offended to avoid ever seeing the real text of the message. To view a buffer using the rot13 code, use the command M-x rot13-other-window. This displays the current buffer in another window which applies the code when displaying the text.
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