Sending Mail
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This section explains xmh features you'll use to compose and send mail.
The drafts can be composed in a main window or a composition window.
You can work on more than one draft at the same time, store them, and come
back some time later or make a "form letter" draft that you use over and over.
xmh automatically makes a folder named drafts.
Like the draft folder in MH, the draft messages you compose are stored here.
For more about folders, see the Section
Organizing Messages with Folders.
Making a New Draft with Compose Message
If you're using the master xmh window or other main windows like
it, you can select Compose Message on the Message
menu -- a composition window will open for your new draft message.
Or, if you're already working in a composition window and you click the
Compose Message button at the bottom, it will make
another composition window.
You can work on several different drafts at once.
For instance, in the Figure below
I have two composition windows open.
I'm clicking the Compose Message button
on the drafts:1 window to open a third composition window.
Figure: Working on several drafts at once
Each time you use Compose Message, xmh
automatically creates an empty draft file in the drafts folder.
If your draft folder is empty, the first draft you create will be
message number 1 in the folder.
A message-composition window will open onto that draft; the
titlebar will say drafts:1.
You can click the Send button to send that draft message
right away or you can click Save Message and then
Close Window.
If you save without sending, the draft file stays in the
drafts folder for you to finish later.
If you start a second draft before you've sent the first, that draft will
be number 2 (unless there's already a message 2 in the draft folder).
An editor window will open onto that draft; the titlebar will say
drafts:2.
From here, as you did before, you can send or save the message.
A composition window's titlebar will be marked [Temporary]
unless the message has been saved at least once.
See the Figure above.
Re-editing an Existing Draft
There are at least two ways you can work on a draft that you saved a while ago:
-
Open a new main window onto the drafts folder.
To do that, select the drafts folder button,
then select Open Folder in New Window on the Folder menu.
A new xmh main window will open.
The new window will be on top of the first one unless you've set the
compGeometry resource to open the window in a particular place.
(See the Section Changing How Commands Work.)
Then, select a draft message from the list of messages: either click on it
in the Table of Contents or make it the current message by displaying it.
Finally, select Use as Composition on the
Message menu -- and be sure to use the Message menu on
the window that's showing the drafts folder.
After you move this composition window (if you want to), your screen will
look something like the Figure below.
Figure: Recomposing a draft from a second main window
-
If you don't want to open a new main window on your drafts
folder, just view the drafts folder in any main window.
You can select a message, and then open a composition window with
Use as Composition on the Message menu.
If you are viewing the draft message in a view window
(Section View Window), you can also
click Use as Composition in the buttonbox at
the bottom of the window.
If you're typing a long message, remember to click the
Save Message button every so often.
This saves your work (so that you won't lose it if the system goes down)
then lets you keep editing.
After you save a draft once, it will stay in the drafts
folder even after you send it.
This is a nice way to make "form letters" that you send every so
often -- you can change a few details of the draft, send it... then come
back later, change some parts, send it again...
If you've saved the draft at least once, remember to delete it
when you're done.
You can edit the header (To:, etc.) of your messages while
you're in the composition window.
You can add other header fields then, too -- like Fcc: project,
which puts a copy of the message you send directly into your folder
named project.
(If this is the first time you've used a particular folder, such as the
project folder shown here, the folder will be silently created
when you send the message.
But a button for the new folder won't appear in the master window
until you restart xmh.
Also note that if you Fcc: a message to a folder, xmh
will have to rescan the folder the next time you look at it.)
For more information, see the Section
Template Draft Files Set Headers.
The Section
Forwarding Messages has an introduction to forwarding copies of messages.
There are two ways to forward messages in xmh.
The Forward button on the view window forwards the
message you're viewing there.
The Forward command on the Message menu
of the main window forwards all of the selected messages.
To forward messages that aren't next to each other in the table of
contents, add them to a
sequence, open
the sequence, and select all the messages in the sequence.
Parts of the Section
Formatting Forwarded Messages
explain changes you can make to the ways that
messages are forwarded.
You can set an entry in your resource file that will let you include
a copy of the original message in your reply when you press the
Insert button at the bottom of the composition window.
See the Section ReplyInsertFilter.
Because xmh runs the MH repl command to build the draft
message before it opens the composition window, some repl:
switches in your MH profile will affect the draft you get.
For example, an entry such as the following:
repl: -filter replfilt
includes the original message in your reply, formatted through the
replfilt filter file.
See the Section
Including the Original Message with -filter.
Some switches can cause trouble.
For example, using the repl -query switch in your MH profile
will "freeze" xmh.
The best answer is probably to use a separate MH profile for xmh.
The Section
Conflicts Between xmh and MH Customization
explains how.
MH profile switches that aren't used to build the draft message
won't affect xmh replies, though.
For example, the -annotate switch, which asks the MH
repl command to annotate the original message with a
Replied: field in the header, won't work under xmh.
When you're viewing a message, you can copy it into your drafts
folder and start editing the copy.
This is handy for resending a "bounced" mail message that was returned
to you with some problems.
(Usually, the problem is in the message's header.)
To do this, use the Use as Composition command
on the Message or View menus.
(Or click the Use as Composition button at the
bottom of a view window.)
It copies the message into the drafts folder and opens a
composition window.
(Note that Messages already in the drafts folder aren't copied to it.)
For example, in the Figure below
the bad parts of a bounced
mail message are being deleted by selecting the region (shown in inverse
video) and pressing
CTRL-W
to kill the region.
The To: address field has been fixed (the hostname was wrong).
Don't forget to delete any End of Unsent Draft line at the end.
Clicking the Send button will send the fixed-up draft.
Figure: Resending a returned message with Use As Composition
Because xmh uses the MH
send(1)
command, you can use MH mail aliases.
These let you replace long lists of mail addresses with one short alias name.
For example, instead of typing all of the addresses below:
To: alissa@ketneg.com, uunet!abo!pxu341i, abd@mvus.bitnet
you could type the name of your alias that stands for those addresses:
To: project
You have to maintain the aliases from
a shell window or editor window instead of an xmh window.
But once you're set up, you can use aliases from an xmh
composition window just as you'd use any other address.
For details, see the Section MH Aliases.
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