freebsd-ports/mail/exmh2/pkg-descr
Peter Wemm e108e11e60 Port for build exmh-1.6.9
NOTE: this does not use the GUI build/install, it does the equivalent
work with some scripts.
1996-10-10 15:00:53 +00:00

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exmh version: 1.6.7
Brent.Welch@eng.sun.com
exmh is a TCL/TK based interface to the MH mail system.
Version 1.6* is compatible with Tk 4.1, Tk4.0, Tk3.6, and Tk3.3
Some features (e.g., color face icons) only work with Tk 4.0 or greater.
exmh is known to work with MH versions 6.7 and 6.8.*
**************************************************
VERY IMPORTANT. PLEASE READ. SOURCE OF MANY PROBLEMS. READ THIS HERE :-)
exmh depends on the TK send facility for its background processing.
With TK 3.3, send now uses xauthority mechanisms by default, unless
you compile TK with -DTK_NO_SECURITY. A manifestation of problems are
that background processing doesn't work: new messages are not scanned
into the current folder, the flag icon doesn't behave, and so on.
Similarly, use of the exmh-async wrapper script also fails.
If you cannot recompile wish, then the trick is to get your X server process
started with the right incantation.
Generally, this means that you must run xdm to start your Xserver.
**************************************************
EXMH lives "high in the food chain". You'll need some additional softare:
**************************************************
REQUIRED PACKAGES
Find TCL and TK on
ftp.sunlabs.com:/pub/tcl
ftp.aud.alcatel.com:/tcl
ftp.cs.berkeley.edu:/ucb/tcl
Find MH on
ftp.ics.uci.edu:/pub/mh
Find Metamail (for MIME support, including 8-bit charsets) on
ftp.bellcore.com:/pub/nsb
****************************************************
OPTIONAL PACKAGES
Find Faces on
cs.indiana.edu:/pub/faces
Expect is available as
pub/expect/expect.tar.Z from ftp.cme.nist.gov
Japanization patch for Tcl and Tk
srawgw.sra.co.jp:/pub/lang/tcl/jp
tcl7.3jp-patch.gz, tcl7.3jp-update1.gz, tcl7.3jp-update2.gz,
tk3.6jp-patch.gz, tk3.6jp-update1.gz, tk3.6jp-update2.gz.
It seems that they will move the archives to ftp.sra.co.jp near future.
Find Glimpse, the full text search engine, at University of Arizona:
http://glimpse.cs.arizona.edu:1994/
****************************************************
FEATURES
As well as providing the usual layer on top of MH commands, exmh
has a number of other features:
MIME support! Displays richtext and enriched directly. Parses
multipart messages. A popup menu under the right button can invoke
external viewers (metamail) for things not directly supported.
Built-in editor allows simple composition of text/enriched format
and multipart messages (via Insert Part).
Color feedback in the scan listing so you can easily identify
unseen messages (blue), the current message (red), deleted
messages (gray background), and moved messages (yellow background).
Xresources control these color choices.
Monochrome displays highlight unseen messages with underline,
current message in reverse video, deleted messages with cross-hatching
background, and moved messages with stippled background.
A folder display with one label per folder. Color highlights
indicate the current folder (red), folders with unseen messages
in them (blue), and the target folder for moves (yellow background).
Nested folders are highlighted by a shadow box. A cache of
recently visted folder buttons is also maintained. Monochrome
highlights are reverse video for the current folder, bold box
for folders with unseen messages, and stippled box for the
target of move operations.
Clever scan caching. MH users know that scan is slow, so
exmh tries hard to cache the current state of the folder to
avoid scanning. Moves and deletes within exmh do not
invalidate the cache, and background incs that add new messages
are handled by merging them into the scan listing. The
scan cache is compatible with xmh.
Facesaver bitmap display. If you have a facesaver database
on your system, exmh displays the bitmap face of the person
that sent the current message (or their organization).
Otherwise, it just displays a boring EXMH logo.
Background inc. You can set exmh to run inc periodically,
or just to periodically count up the messages in your mail spool file.
(Depends on proper TK send functioning. See notes below.)
Various inc styles. Exmh knows about three styles of inc usage:
Inc from your spool file to your inbox folder.
Inc from your spool file or POP host to a set of dropboxes as specified
by your ~/.xmhcheck file.
Inc from your spool file directly into folders. Exmh can run the MH
filtering program (slocal) for you, or you can let an external agent
presort mail into folders for you.
Searching over folder listing and message body.
A dialog-box interface to MH pick.
A simple editor with emacs-like bindings is provided by default.
It has an interface that lets you tweak key bindings.
Editor interface. You can hook up exmh to TCL based-editors
like mxedit quite easily. A script is also provided, exmh-async,
for using terminal based editors like vi. The emacsclient.README
file has hand-wavy instructions for using emacsclient to talk
to an emacs server.
Glimpse interface. You can index all your mail with glimpse
and search for messages by content. The search works across
all folders and runs quite fast. The indexes are only about 10%
of the space of your mail database.
User preferences. You can tune exmh through a dialog box. The settings
are saved in an Xresource-style file named .exmh-defaults. You can
also put font and color resource specifications in this file, plus
there are a few random parameters not exposed via preferences.
User hacking support. A user library of TCL routines is supported.
The main implementation is chopped up into many smallish modules.
So, you can modify a copy of some module to put your favorite mail
reader hack in without affecting others (or convincing me to put
it into the main line). There are also a number of places where
hook procedures are used so you can refine the behavior of things
like composing a reply message. Details in the man page.