NAME

SYNOPSIS

DESCRIPTION

SOUP is used for Internet email and Usenet. The other formats are primarily used with dialup (or telnet) BBSes, to save connect time and to provide a better interface to the message base.

USAGE

In the letter window or ANSI viewer, pressing F1 or '?' will bring up a window listing the available commands.

The basic navigation keys, available throughout the program, consist of the standard cursor and keypad keys, with <Enter> to select. For terminals without full support for these keys, aliases are available for some of them:

ESC = Q
PgDn = B
PgUp = F
Right = +
Left = -

(Although shown in capitals, these may be entered unshifted.)

With "Lynx-style navigation", activated by the "UseLynxNav" option, the Left arrow key backs out from any screen, while the Right arrow key selects. The plus and minus keys are no longer aliases for Right and Left, but perform the same functions as in the traditional navigation system.

Of special note is the space bar. In most screens, it functions as an alias for PgDn; but in the letter window, it works as a combination PgDn/Enter key, allowing you to page through an area with one key.

In the area list, the default view (selectable in the .mmailrc) is of Subscribed areas only, or of Active areas (i.e., those with messages) if the Subscribed areas are unknown. By pressing L, you can toggle between Active, All, and Subscribed views. (Some formats, like plain QWK, don't have any way to indicate subscribed areas. In other cases, you may have received an abbreviated area list, so that the Subscribed and All views are the same.) In all modes, areas with replies always appear, flagged with an 'R' in the leftmost column.

In the letter list, only unread messages are displayed, by default; but you can toggle this by pressing L. If there are any marked messages, L first switches to a marked-only mode, then to all messages, then back to unread-only. Also, the default mode -- unread or all -- can be set in the .mmailrc.

Multiple sort modes are available in the packet and letter lists; you can cycle through them by pressing '$'. The default sort modes are set in the .mmailrc.

Options can be specified on the command line as well as in the .mmailrc. Option names are the same as those which appear there, though they must be prefaced by one or two dashes, and should not be followed by a colon. There must be a space between the option name and the value; values which include spaces must be quoted. All options must be specified before any packet names or directories on the line. Finally, options which take a filename or path should always include the full path. (This is not, however, necessary for packet names.)

Packet names may be specified on the command line, bypassing the packet menu. If multiple packets are named, they'll be opened sequentially. If a directory is specified instead of a file, the packet window will by opened on that directory, and no further items will be read from the command line. 'T' in the packet menu may need clarification: it stamps the highlighted file with the current date and time.

You can abort the program immediately from any screen with CTRL-X. You won't be prompted to confirm the exit, but you will still be prompted to save replies and pointers (unless autosaving is set). Note that if you've specified multiple packets on the command line, this is the only way to terminate the sequence prematurely.

You can obtain a temporary command shell anywhere by pressing CTRL-Z. In the DOSish ports (MS-DOS, OS/2, Windows), it spawns a command shell, and you return to MultiMail via the "exit" command. In Unix, it relies on the shell to put MultiMail in the background; you return with "fg". (This has always been available in the Unix versions; however, it won't work if MultiMail wasn't launched from an interactive shell, or if the shell doesn't support it.)

MOUSING

In each list window, button 1 highlights a line, or selects it (the same as pressing Enter) if it's already highlighted. Double-click to select it immediately. Click on the scrollbar to page up or down, or on the line just above or below it to scroll a line at a time. In the packet, area, and letter lists, click on the appropriate part of the window title to change the sort or list type.

In the letter window, page up by clicking in the top half of the message text, or down (and on to the next message) by clicking in the bottom half (equivalent to the space bar). Scroll the message a single line up or down by clicking on the status bars at top and bottom. The status flags "Read" and "Marked" can be toggled by clicking on them; clicking on "Save" saves, clicking on "Repl" starts a reply (followup; i.e., the same as 'R'), and "Pvt" starts a private reply (email or netmail; i.e., same as 'N').

In text-entry windows, button 1 works the same as the Enter key; and the dialog boxes work in the obvious way.

Button 3 backs out of any screen, equivalent to ESC.

SEARCHING

New searches (specified with '/') always start at the beginning of the list or message. Repeat searches (with '>' or '.') start with the line below the current one. You can take advantage of this to manually adjust the starting point for the next search.

Searches started in the letter, area or packet lists allow the searches to extend below the current list. "Full text" searches all the way through the text of each message; "Headers" searches only the message headers (the letter list), "Areas" only the area list, and "Pkt list" only the packet list. So, a "Full text" search started from the packet list will search every message in every packet (but only in the current directory).

When scanning "Full text", the automatic setting of the "Read" marker is disabled. However, if you find a search string in the header of a message and then select it manually, the marker will be set. But if you start scanning from the packet list, and exit the packet via a repeat search, the last-read markers won't be saved.

Scans of "Headers" or "Full text" that start from the area list or packet list will automatically expand the letter lists they descend into. Similarly, scans that start at the packet list will expand the area lists. Otherwise, if you're viewing the short list, that's all that will be searched.

I hope the above makes some sense. :-) The searching functions are difficult to explain, but easy to use.

FILTERING

Press '|' to bring up the filter prompt, and specify the text to filter on. To clear a filter, press '|', and then press return at a blank filter prompt. (A string that's not found in the list will have the same effect.) Press ESC to leave the filter as it was.

The list will now be limited to those items that contain the text you entered, and that text will appear at the end of the window's title as a reminder. The filter will be retained through lower levels, but will be cleared by exiting to a higher level. Note that a search in, e.g., the letter list will search only the message headers (and only those which are visible in the list), and not the bodies.

When the filter is active in the letter list, the "All" option in the Save menu will save only the items that match the filter. This can be used as a quick alternative to marking and saving. You can also combine filtering and marking.

Changing modes and sort types will not clear the filter. A search in a filtered list will search only the items that match the filter.

OFFLINE CONFIGURATION

In the area list, press 'U' or 'Del' to unsubscribe from the highlighted area. To subscribe to a new conference, first expand the list ('L'), then highlight the appropriate area and press 'S' or 'Ins'. Dropped areas are marked with a minus sign ('-') in the first column; added areas with a plus ('+'). In the expanded area list, already-subscribed areas are marked with an asterisk ('*'). (This and also applies to the little area list. With plain QWK packets, the asterisk should not be relied upon; other areas may also be subscribed.) Added or dropped areas are highlighted in the "Area_Reply" color. Yeah, I'll have to change that name now. ;-)

Pressing 'S' on an area marked with '-', or 'U' on an area marked '+' turns the flag off again.

In Blue Wave, OPX, OMEN or QWKE mode, the list of added and dropped areas is read back in when the reply packet is reopened. If the reply packet has already been uploaded, and you're reading a packet with the altered area list, this is benign. If it's an older packet, you can alter the list before uploading, as with reply messages. In QWK Add/Drop mode, the changed area flags are converted to reply messages when the reply packet is saved. Note: Adding or dropping areas sets the "unsaved replies" flag, like entering a reply message, but does not invoke automatic reply packet saving until you exit the packet.

Unfortunately, the OMEN mode has not actually been tested; but I believe it conforms to the specs. Reports welcome.

HIDDEN LINES AND ROT13

Pressing 'd' toggles rot13 encoding, the crude "encryption" method used for spoiler warnings and such, primarily on Usenet.

ANSI VIEWER

The ANSI viewer includes support for animation. While within the ANSI viewer, press 'v' again to animate the picture. Press any key to abort the animation.

The ANSI viewer is also used to display the new files list and bulletins, if any are present.

New in version 0.43 is support for the '@' color codes used by PCBoard and Wildcat. This is on by default in the ANSI viewer, but it can be toggled to strip the codes, or pass them through untranslated, by pressing '@'.

As of version 0.46, the ANSI viewer also includes limited support for AVATAR (level 0) and BSAVE (text only) screens. These can be toggled via ^V and ^B, respectively.

CHARACTER SETS

The Unix versions of MultiMail assume that the console uses Latin-1, while the DOSish versions (DOS, OS/2, and Windows) assume the IBM PC set. You can override this via the .mmailrc option "Charset", or on a temporary basis by pressing 'c'.

You can also use a different character set by disabling the conversion in MultiMail, and letting your terminal handle it. For SOUP packets, and for Internet or Usenet areas in other packets, everything will be passed through unchanged if you set MultiMail to "Latin-1". For most other packet types, setting MultiMail to "CP437" will have the same effect.

Beginning with version 0.33, a new character set variable is available: "outCharset". This is a string which MultiMail puts into the MIME identifier lines in SOUP replies if the text includes 8-bit characters. It's also used for the pseudo-QP headers which are generated under the same conditions; and when displaying such headers, MultiMail only converts text back to 8-bit if the character set matches. The default is "iso-8859-1".

By default, if a header line in a SOUP reply contains 8-bit characters, MultiMail now writes it out with RFC 2047 (pseudo-QP) encoding. You can disable this for mail and/or news replies via the "UseQPMailHead" and "UseQPNewsHead" options, though I don't recommend it. The bodies can also be encoded in quoted-printable; this is now on by default for mail, and off for news. The options "UseQPMail" and "UseQPNews" toggle QP encoding. (The headers and bodies of received messages will still be converted to 8-bit.)

QP decoding is temporarily disabled when you toggle the display of hidden lines ('X') in the letter window, so that you can see the raw text of the message.

ADDRESS BOOK

You can pull up the address book from most screens by pressing 'A', which allows you to browse or edit the list. While reading in the letter window, you can grab the current "From:" address by invoking the address book and pressing 'L'.

TAGLINE WINDOW

REPLY SPLITTING

ENVIRONMENT

The use of EDITOR can be overridden in .mmailrc; however, environment variables can't be used within .mmailrc.

You should also make sure that your time zone is set correctly. On many systems, that means setting the TZ environment variable. A typical value for this variable is of the form "EST5EDT" (that one's for the east coast of the U.S.A.).

FILES

By default, the other files are placed in the MultiMail home directory ($HOME/mmail or $MMAIL). Directories specified in the .mmailrc are created automatically; the default Unix values are shown here:

~/mmail

To store the tagline file, netmail addressbook, etc.

taglines

A plain text file, one tagline per line.

addressbook (address.bk in DOS, OS/2 or Windows)

A list of names and corresponding Fido netmail or Internet email addresses. Note that Internet addresses are prefaced with an 'I'.

colors

Specifies the colors to use. (See COLORS.md.)

~/mmail/down

To store the packets as they came from the bbs.

~/mmail/up

To store the reply packet(s) which you have to upload to the bbs.

~/mmail/save

The default directory for saving messages.

CONFIG FILE

As of version 0.41, any of these keywords except "Version" may also be specified on the command line. Command-line options take precedence over those in the config file, but their effect is not guaranteed -- some internal pathnames are initialized before the command line is read, for example.

Here are the keywords and their functions:

Version

Specifies the version of MultiMail which last updated the file. This is used to check whether the file should be updated and the "new version" prompt displayed. Note that old values are preserved when the file is updated; the update merely adds any keywords that are new. This keyword is also used in the colors file.

UserName

Your name in plain text, e.g., "UserName: William McBrine". This is used together with InetAddr to create a default "From:" line for SOUP replies; and by itself in OMEN for display purposes (the actual From name is set on upload), and for matching personal messages.

InetAddr

Your Internet email address, e.g., "InetAddr: wmcbrine@gmail.com". This is combined with the UserName in the form "UserName <InetAddr>" ("William McBrine <wmcbrine@gmail.com>") to create a default "From:" line for SOUP replies. Note that if neither value is specified, and nothing is typed manually into the From: field when creating a message, no From: line will be generated -- which is perfectly acceptable to at least some SOUP programs, like UQWK.

QuoteHead, InetQuote

These strings are placed at the beginning of the quoted text when replying in normal or Internet/Usenet areas, respectively. (The distinction is made because the quoting conventions for BBSes and the Internet are different.) Replaceable parameters are indicated with a '%' character, as follows:

%f = "From" in original message
%t = To
%d = Date (of original message)
%s = Subject
%a = Area
%n = newline (for multi-line headers)
%% = insert an actual percent character

Note that you can't put white space at the start of one of these strings (it will be eaten by the config parser), but you can get around that by putting a newline first.

mmHomeDir

MultiMail's home directory.

TempDir

This is the directory where MultiMail puts its temporary files -- by default, as of 0.45, the same as mmHomeDir. The files are actually created within a subdirectory of this directory; the subdirectory is named "workNNNN", where NNNN is a random number (checked against any existing files or directories before being created).

signature

Path to optional signature file, which should be a simple text file. If specified, it will be appended to every message you write. You should give the full path, not just the name.

editor

The editor MultiMail uses for replies, along with any command-line options. This may also be a good place to insert spell-checkers, etc., by specifying a batch file here. Note that the default value is just the editor that's (almost) guaranteed to be available, for a given OS (although the Unix "EDITOR" environment variable is checked first), and is in no way a preferred editor; you can and should change it.

PacketDir

Default packet directory.

ReplyDir

Default reply packet directory.

SaveDir

Default directory for saved messages.

AddressBook

Path and filename of the address book. (You might change this to share it with another installation, but basically this keyword isn't too useful.)

TaglineFile

Path and filename of the tagline file. This could be altered from a batch file to swap between different sets of taglines. (But note that this value is only read at startup.) You could also share taglines with another program, but be careful with that; MultiMail truncates the lines at 76 characters.

ColorFile

Path and filename of the colors file. See COLORS.md.

UseColors

Yes/No. This governs whether color is used, or monochrome. When colors are disabled, the terminal's default foreground and background colors are used. It's also a crude way to implement transparency (the only way, if you're not using ncurses or PDCurses/SDL) -- the entire background will be transparent when using an appropriate terminal.

Transparency

Yes/No. Only available in ncurses or PDCurses for SDL. (The option will appear, but not work, in non-ncurses, non-PDCurses platforms.) When this is set to Yes, all areas where the background color is the same as the background color set in the "Main_Back" line, in the colors file, are instead set to the default background color, and thus become transparent areas in those terminal programs, like Eterm and Gnome Terminal, that support this.

BackFill

Yes/No. Normally the background area is filled with a checkerboard pattern (ACS_BOARD characters, in curses terms). You can disable that here, leaving those areas as flat background color. This option is intended mostly to make transparency more effective, but it might help with any color scheme.

*UncompressCommand, *CompressCommand

Command lines (program name, options, and optionally the path) for the archivers to compress and uncompress packets and reply packets. ZIP, ARJ, RAR, LHA and tar/gzip are recognized. The "unknown" values are a catch- all, attempted for anything that's not recognized as one of the other four types; if you have to deal with ARC or ZOO files, you might define the archiver for them here.

PacketSort

The packet list can be sorted either in inverse order of packet date and time (the newest at the top), or in alphabetical order by filename. "Time" specifies the former, and "Name" the latter. (Actually only the first letter is checked, and case is not signifigant. This applies to the other keywords of this type (the kind that have a fixed set of values to choose from) as well.) The sort type specified here is only the default, and can be toggled from the packet window by pressing '$'.

AreaMode

The default mode for the area list: "All", "Subscribed", or "Active". This is the mode that will be used on first opening a packet, but it can be changed by pressing L while in the area list or little area list. For a description of the modes, see USAGE.

LetterSort

The sort used by default in the letter list. Can be "Subject" (subjects sorted alphabetically, with a case-insensitive compare), "Number" (sorted by message number), "From" or "To". (This can be overridden, as in the packet list.)

LetterMode

The default mode for the letter list: "All" or "Unread". This is the mode used on first opening an area; it can be toggled by pressing L. (The Marked view is also available in the letter list, but cannot be set as the default here.)

ClockMode

The display mode for the clock in the upper right corner of the letter window: "Time" (of day), "Elapsed" (since MultiMail started running), or "Off".

Charset

The character set that the console is assumed to use. Either "CP437" (code page 437, the U.S. standard for the IBM PC and clones) or "Latin-1" (aka ISO-8859-1, the standard for most other systems). Note that the character set of messages is determined separately (q.v.).

UseTaglines

Yes/No. If no, the tagline window is not displayed at all when composing a message.

AutoSaveReplies

Yes/No. If yes, the reply packet is saved automatically -- the equivalent of pressing F2, but without a confirmation prompt -- whenever the contents of the reply area are changed. This can be convenient, and even a safety feature if your power supply is irregular, but it provides less opportunity to take back a change (like deleting a message). If no, you're prompted whether to save the changes on exiting the packet. Note that if you say no to that prompt, nothing that you wrote during that session will be saved (unless you saved it manually with F2).

StripSoftCR

Yes/No. Some messages on Fido-type networks contain spurious instances of character 141, which appears as an accented 'i' in code page 437. These are really so-called "soft returns", where the message was wrapped when composing it, but not indicating a paragraph break. Unfortunately, the character can also appear legitimately as that accented 'i', so this option defaults to no. It can be toggled temporarily via the 'I' key in the letter window, and it doesn't apply to messages in the Latin-1 character set. This is now applied only in Blue Wave mode.

BeepOnPers

Yes/No. If yes, MultiMail beeps when you open a message addressed to or from yourself in the letter window. (These are the same messages which are highlighted in the letter list.)

UseLynxNav

Yes/No. See the description under USAGE.

ReOnReplies

Yes/No. By popular demand. :-) Setting this to "No" will disable the automatic prefixing of "Re: " to the Subject when replying -- except in areas flagged as Internet email or Usenet, where this is the standard, and is still upheld.

QuoteWrapCols

Numeric. The right margin for quoted material in replies (including the quote indicator).

MaxLines

Numeric. See the description under REPLY SPLITTING.

outCharset

String. See the description under CHARACTER SETS.

UseQPMailHead

Yes/No. Controls the use of RFC 2047 encoding in outgoing mail headers.

UseQPNewsHead

Yes/No. Controls the use of RFC 2047 encoding in outgoing news headers.

UseQPMail

Yes/No. Controls the use of quoted-printable encoding in outgoing mail.

UseQPNews

Yes/No. Controls the use of quoted-printable encoding in outgoing news.

ExpertMode

Yes/No. If set to No, the onscreen help menus are not shown; instead, the space is used to extend the size of info windows by a few lines.

IgnoreNDX

Yes/No. This option applies only to QWK packets. If set to yes, the *.NDX files are always ignored, in favor of the "new" indexing method that depends only on MESSAGES.DAT. This method is slightly slower than the *.NDX-based indexing method (though the delay is dwarfed by packet decompression time), but the most common problem with QWK packets is corrupt *.NDX files. MultiMail now recognizes some cases where the *.NDX files are corrupt and switches automatically, but it doesn't catch them all.

UPGRADING

Version 0.48 adds the .mmailrc option "Mouse", which allows you to enable or disable mouse input (for instance, if you don't want to see the mouse cursor).

Version 0.45 adds "TempDir". Note that temporary files are handled differently in this version, and the TEMP and TMP environment variables are ignored. "homeDir" has been removed.

Version 0.43 adds "ClockMode", and makes "UseColors" available in all ports. Also note that CPU usage while idle may be higher in some configurations.

Version 0.41 adds the option "IgnoreNDX".

Version 0.39 changes the function of the "Transparency" option slightly. It now operates on the color set in "Main_Back", rather than Black. Also, if you're accustomed to using the mouse to cut and paste under X or gpm, note that you now have to hold down the shift key while doing this.

Version 0.38 adds "ExpertMode", "Transparency", "UseColors", and "BackFill", while removing the options "BuildPersArea", "UseScrollBars", "MakeOldFlags", and "AutoSaveRead".

Version 0.37 adds "tarUncompressCommand" and "tarCompressCommand".

Version 0.36 adds "LetterMode" and "AreaMode".

Version 0.33 adds "ReOnReplies", "outCharset", "UseQPMailHead", "UseQPNewsHead", "UseQPMail" and "UseQPNews"; changes some default values.

Version 0.32 adds "BuildPersArea" and "MakeOldFlags".

Version 0.30 adds "UserName", "InetAddr", "QuoteHead", "InetQuote", and "QuoteWrapCols".

Version 0.29 adds "UseScrollBars" and "UseLynxNav".

Version 0.28 adds "MaxLines", "StripSoftCR", and "BeepOnPers".

Version 0.26 adds "AutoSaveReplies", "AutoSaveRead", and "UseTaglines".

Version 0.25 adds "Charset", "PacketSort", and "LetterSort". The default packet sort is now by time instead of name.

If you're upgrading from 0.19 to 0.20 or later, and you have a customized ColorFile, be sure to note the new options.

The ColorFile is new in 0.19. Check it out (~/mmail/colors, by default).

As of 0.16, the HOME environment variable can be overridden with MMAIL, or omitted altogether.

If you're upgrading from a version before 0.9, and you have existing reply packets (.rep or .new) whose names are partly or wholly in uppercase, you must rename them to lowercase before version 0.9 or higher will recognize them. (Downloaded packets are not at issue.)

If you're upgrading from a version below 0.8, you may want to manually delete the /tmp/$LOGNAME directory created by previous versions. (0.8 and higher clean out their own temp directories, and use different names for each session.)

If you're upgrading from a version prior to 0.7, please note the changes in the default directories; previously they were "~/mmail/bwdown", etc.

NOTES

OPX reply packets are always created with a .rep extension, which differs from the behavior of some other readers. If you switch from QWK packets to OPX packets on the same board, MultiMail will _not_ open an old QWK .rep in OPX mode, nor vice versa. (It will try, and will terminate with "Error opening reply packet".)

SOUP reply packets are created with the name "basename.rep", where basename is the part of the original packet name before the first period. (Unlike other formats, there's no actual standard for this in SOUP, but this seems to be the most common form among the SOUP readers I surveyed.) Also, not that I expect anyone to try this, but currently MultiMail is only able to read reply packets generated by other SOUP readers if the replies are in 'b' or 'B' mode, and are one to a file within the packet. Most readers meet the first criterion, but some of them batch all mail and news replies into a single file for each type.

When re-editing a reply, it gets pushed to end of the list of replies.

The R)ename function in the packet window can also be used to move files between directories; however, the destination filename must still be specified along with the path.

If you're using the XCurses (PDCurses) version, and your editor isn't an X app, it will work better if you set MultiMail's "editor" keyword to "xterm -e filename" (instead of just "filename"). I decided not to do this automatically because someone might actually use it with an X editor.

Editing and deletion of old replies are available through the REPLY area, which always appears at the top of the area list. This differs from Blue Wave and some other readers.

The Escape key works to back out from most screens, but after you press it, you'll have to wait a bit for it to be sensed (with ncurses; not true with PDCurses).

Only Blue Wave style taglines (beginning with "...") are recognized by the tagline stealer. The tagline must be visible on the screen to be taken.

Netmail only works in Blue Wave, OMEN and OPX modes, and is still slightly limited. Netmail from points includes the point address. Internet email is available in Blue Wave and OPX modes, for those doors that support it, and in SOUP mode, using the same interface as Fido netmail.

AUTHORS

Additional code has been contributed by Peter Krefting, Mark D. Rejhon, Ingo Brueckl, Robert Vukovic and Mark Crispin.

BUGS AND KNOWN PROBLEMS

SOUP area type 'M' is not recognized. I have yet to find a program that can generate one. :-)

The ANSI viewer eats a lot less memory than it used to, but it can still be a problem. (Each character/attribute pair takes up four bytes in memory. But lines which have the same attribute throughout are stored as plain text.)

The new file list and bulletin viewer is a hack.

If you find any bugs, please write to me.