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MH for MM Users
Mary Hegardt Tim Morgan
April 12, 1990
1 Introduction
This document is another in a continuing series on use of the MH mail system
at UCI. It is intended for those users accustomed to the mm "user agent"
(mail program) under Tops-20 and who are already familiar with network
mail, but who may not be experienced Unix users. For an introduction
to MH, see "MH For Beginners" by Mary Hegardt and Tim Morgan. For
complete, detailed information on the MH system, see The Rand MH Message
Handling System: User's Manual by Marshall T. Rose and John L. Romine.
Both documents are available for Xeroxing in suite CS408.
1.1 UNIX Versus Tops-20
The Unix1 paradigm is that each command, or program, should perform
only one function. An extension of this idea is that the operating system
implements only those functions which are necessary, but it does so in a
very general way so that programs may still accomplish their functions. This
philosophy probably evolved because the original versions of Unix ran on
PDP-11 minicomputers which had only a small memory space for each pro-
cess.
________________________________________________
1 Unix is a trademark of AT&T Bell Laboratories
1
Consequently, all commands in Unix, with a very few exceptions, are in
actuality programs. On Tops-20, in contrast, many of the most frequently
used commands are built into the user's shell, or exec. Both the Exec and
csh, which is typically the user's command interface on Unix, will accept
and parse command lines, attempting to invoke a command as a program if
it is not one of the built-in commands. Unix and Tops-20 are surprisingly
similar internally: the use of the shell, separate processes for each command
or program to execute, standard input and output for each program, and
many other ideas are common to both operating systems. Users should be
familiar with the capabilities of the shell, which is described in the document
"Introduction to the Csh."
1.2 The MH User Interface
The MH mail "user agent" is different from most other mail systems. mm,
for example, is a monolithic system because one program implements all the
mail-related functions. The disadvantages of monolithic systems are that
(a) they are large, so they tend to put more burden on the computer system,
and (b) they allow for much less flexibility. In contrast, MH implements each
mail command as a separate program: there is no single program called mh.
This approach facilitates interspersing mail commands with other, perhaps
unrelated, commands.
Another unique feature of MH is that it takes advantage of the facilities
provided by the operating system. Most mail agents, such as mm, maintain
a file containing the user's mail in a special, usually undocumented, format.
When a message is deleted, mm must take care of compacting the mail file.
It must be able to distinguish the separate messages contained in the file.
mm must also implement a simple text editor to allow the user to enter and
modify a message while it is being composed. These functions are essentially
those provided by the operating system when separate files are stored within
a directory. Therefore, the approach taken by MH is that each message is
kept in a separate file. This file simply contains the message, with no other
special formatting characters or requirements. All the messages are stored
within a normal Unix directory. This approach makes it easy to add new
MH commands, to edit messages using standard text editors, etc.
2
All your MH related files are stored in a directory within your home directory.
Usually this directory is called Mail or mhbox, although you are free to name
it as you choose. Another file in your home directory called .mh_profile is
equivalent to the MM.INIT file under mm. It contains all the options which
you prefer for the various MH commands. It also contains the name of the
MH directory and the name that you want on your outgoing mail in the
From: field (your "signature ").
2 Getting Started
2.1 Incorporating Mail
Another important difference between mm and MH is the concept of the mail-
drop file. Under Tops-20, the mail transport system delivers new messages
directly into the recipient's MAIL.TXT file, where they may then be processed
with mm. In contrast, the Unix mail transport system, called MMDF-II,
makes no assumptions about the user agent used by the recipient. Instead,
it puts all new mail into a special file called the maildrop. This file is in the
/usr/spool/mail directory. When you log in, if there is new mail for you
in your maildrop, you will be so notified by the message
You have new ZOTnet mail -- type inc (or mail)
When you are ready to process this new mail, you may type the command
% inc
("incorporate") which will copy the new mail into separate files, one per mes-
sage, stored in your "inbox" folder. A folder is a subdirectory beneath your
MH directory which is used to store related messages. Additional information
on folders is given in Section 4.5, page 13. The "inbox" is a distinguished
folder because by default inc will always copy new mail into that folder,
removing it from the maildrop.
If this is the first time you have used inc or any other MH command, the
mh-install program will inform you that it is creating your Mail directory.
It will also create the "inbox" folder directory, and .mh_profile.
3
2.2 Message Numbers
As inc processes each message, it prints a "scan" listing showing the message
number, the date the message was sent, the name of the sender, the subject,
and sometimes the initial part of the text of the message. A "scan" listing
is thus similar to the output of the HEADERS command in mm. Each message
within a folder is given a number, starting with 1, by which it can be ref-
erenced. Inc will display the numbers assigned to each new message in its
"scan" listing.
As in mm, there is a "current message" number which usually identifies the
message most recently manipulated by the user. With most MH commands,
this will be the default message if no messages are explicitly specified in
a command. Inc makes the first new message the current message, which
is indicated by a "+" character in the scan listing, just after the message
number.
Many MH commands take a list of messages to process. A message desig-
nation is either a single message number, two message numbers separated
by a dash. The dash format indicates a range of messages including the
endpoints. A message list consists of one or more message designations sep-
arated by spaces. For example, messages 11 through 15 and message 17 may
be indicated by typing
11-15 17
as the argument to some command. There are also several predefined names
for messages or lists of messages which may be used in place of message
numbers:
cur The current message (the last one that was handled). Equivalent
to "." or "CURRENT" in mm.
next The next message
prev The previous message
first The first message in the current folder.
last The last message in the folder. Equivalent to % or * in mm.
all All messages (first last ). Same as in mm.
It is also possible for you to define your own named sequences of messages.
4
See the pick command description for more details.
3 Processing Messages
This section contains a list of the common mm commands and their equiva-
lents in the in MH mail system. A short textual note describes how the MH
commands differ from their mm counterparts.
3.1 Listing Messages
As mentioned in Section 2.2, the scan command may be used to summarize
the messages in a folder, similar to the HEADERS command in mm. Unlike
most MH commands, however, scan defaults to all the messages in the current
folder unless you specify one or messages on the command line to be scanned.
So simply typing
% scan
is equivalent to typing HEADERS ALL (or H A) in mm.
3.2 Reading Mail
Unlike the READ command in mm, in MH there is no special mail-reading
mode (indicated in mm by the R> prompt). The command to read messages
in MH is show. If no message list is specified, then the current message
is displayed. The message is displayed by your "showproc", as specified in
the .mh_profile, described in Section 4.2. Normally, your "showproc" will
be more or mhless. Both of these programs__will__display_ your messages one
screenful at a time. You press the __space_bar______ __on your terminal to see the
____________
next screenful, or the __return____ _key to see the next line.
The command
% show next
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(which will display the first message following the current message in the
current folder) can be abbreviated as simply
% next
Similarly, the command "show prev" can be abbreviated as simply "prev".
To get a paper copy of a mail message, take the output from the show com-
mand and pipe it into the imprint command.
% show 5 _ imprint
See the manual page for imprint for more information.
3.3 Deleting Messages
The equivalent of the DELETE command in mm is rmm in MH (remove mes-
sages). It acts on the current message unless messages are specified on the
command line. Unlike mm, the deleted messages will no longer show up in
a "scan" listing. But the messages are not completely removed; they are
renamed to have a comma prepended to the name of the file containing the
message within its folder directory. Therefore, if you need to recover a mes-
sage, it is possible to go into the directory and rename the message back.
Be careful in doing this not to overwrite a new message with the same mes-
sage number! It is a Unix convention that files whose names begin with a
comma will be removed from disk (expunged ) early each morning. Therefore,
your deleted messages will be available for the rest of the day, unless you re-
move another message subsequently which has the same message. Then the
previously deleted message is gone.
3.4 Replying to Mail
The equivalent of the REPLY command in mm is repl in MH. Repl may be
given the number of the message to which you wish to reply, or it will default
to the current message. When replying in mm, you are prompted asking
if you wish to reply to all the recipients of the message to which you are
replying, or only to its sender. In MH, normally the reply will be constructed
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to be sent to all the recipients. You may select which recipients receive copies
of your reply by using the -query option on repl, or by putting this option
in your .mh_profile, as described in Section 4.2. If you wish a reply to go
to everyone but yourself, you can use repl -nocc me.
3.5 Sending Mail
The equivalent of the SEND mm command is comp ("compose") in MH. These
two commands are fairly similar, except that the recipient of the message
cannot be specified on the comp command line. The comp program invokes
a simple editor called prompter which will prompt you for the To:, Cc:, and
Subject: fields of the message. Then a line of dashes is typed, and you
may enter the__body__of your message (its text,__in__mm_ terms). When you are
finished, type __ctrl__-__D (equivalent to typing __ESC_______or control-Z in mm). Then
you'll receive the prompt
What now?
which is similar to mm's S> prompt. You may receive a list__of__the_ options
that you have at this point by typing "?" followed by __return____._ Here is a
short list of the options and their meanings. Notice that, unlike mm, there
are very few commands to modify the message (such as the TEXT, TO, CC, etc.,
commands which may be typed at the S> prompt in mm). In place of these
commands, you use the edit command to invoke your favorite text editor
on the message, and you use it to make the equivalent changes. You also use
your editor to include other files into the body of the message, rather than
using control-B, as in mm. One additional use of the edit command is for
spelling checking. In mm, you may use the command SPELL for this purpose.
In MH, you type "edit spell"2 instead. This will cause the spelling checker
to be run, giving you a list of the possibly misspelled words in your message.
edit editor Edit the message using the specified editor. When you
exit, you will be back at What now?.
________________________________________________
2 Actually, any program named after the "edit" command will be invoked with what-
ever arguments you have given and a path to the file containing the message you are
editing.
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list Shows the message you just typed
whom -check Verifies that the addresses you have used are valid as far
as our system can tell
send Sends the message to the recipients
push Sends the message in the background
quit Quits without sending the message. Saves the text of
the message as a "draft". Type comp -use to get back
to that draft later.
quit -delete Quit, throwing away the draft
3.6 Forwarding Mail
The forw command is used in MH to forward messages. It will take a list
of messages on the command line to be forwarded, or it will default to the
current message if none are specified. It will prompt you like comp does
for the To:, Cc:, and Subject: fields. Note that, unlike mm's FORWARD
command, forw will not construct a subject line automatically. Also as with
comp, you will have the opportunity to add additional text to the message(s)
which you are forwarding, ended with a control-D.
3.7 Resending Mail
The equivalent of the RESEND command in mm is the dist ("distribute")
command in MH. Dist works very much like the forw command, except
that the prompts will be Resend-To:, Resend-Cc:, etc. After filling in the
headers, a line of dashes is typed giving the impression that additional text
can be entered. Nothing could be further from the truth; if you add any text
at this point the dist will fail. Your only opportunity to add text is in the
Resend-Note: field.
8
4 Advanced Topics
4.1 Selecting Messages
In mm, you may use several reserved command words to select messages
in place of an explicit list of message numbers. For example, you can
type "DELETE FROM SMITH" to remove all the messages from a user named
"Smith". Rather than building such a capability into each MH program
which can process message lists, a special program called pick is used in-
stead. Just as there are predefined sequences of messages, such as "all",
"cur", etc., you may use pick to define your own sequences. Pick is capable
of selecting messages from a folder based on the To:, From:, Subject:, Cc:,
or Date: fields, or by searching the body of the message. The patterns to
be searched for may include full regular expressions (see the "man" page for
ed(1) for more information) or simple strings.
Pick may be used in one of two ways. First, it may output the sequence of
message numbers which match the search parameters. Using the backquot-
ing mechanism of the shell, these message numbers may then become the
arguments to other MH programs. The second way to use pick is to have it
define a new sequence name which will be the messages which were selected.
Only this second method of using pick will be described here; see pick(l) if
you wish to use the first method.
In your .mh_profile, add the line
pick: -seq sel
Then each time you use the pick command, it will define the resulting se-
quence of messages to be called "sel". Then to "pick" all the messages in the
current folder which are from "Smith", just type
% pick -from smith
To see a summary of those messages, type
% scan sel
Then to the remove the messages, type the command
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% rmm sel
You can pick messages according to any of the headers (-to -from -subj
-cc or -date) or just search all the messages for a given word (-search).
4.2 Customizing Your Mail Environment
In mm, you use the PROFILE command to tailor your mail environment.
This command writes a file called MM.INIT in your home directory which
is then read by subsequent executions of mm. In the MH system, the file
.mh_profile serves the same purpose. It is edited with any normal text
editor, rather than using a special-purpose command to modify it. The
format of the file is line oriented, one line per MH program or MH option to
be set. The only required line in the profile is the name of the primary MH
mail directory, which is by default Mail. This information is specified by the
line
Path: Mail
The textual name you would like to have on your outgoing mail is specified
by the Signature: line. For example,
Signature: Mary Hegardt
The BBoards which you like to read should also be listed in the .mh_profile
(see Section 4.6, page 14, for additional information). For example, if you
read the "system" BBoard (where all important announcements are posted),
as well as "whimsey" and "imagen-users" BBoards, your .mh_profile should
contain the line
bboards: system whimsey imagen-users
Other options may be specified on a per-program basis. The format for these
lines is the same. First, the program name is given followed by a colon. Then
any flags which are to be the default options for that program are given. Here
is a short list of the most common options which you may want to set in your
.mh_profile:
showproc: mhless
10
The showproc is the program used to show messages to you. By default, it
is the more command. Mhless is the same as more except that it omits the
headers of the messages which you indicate that you wish not to see. Type
% man mhless
for more information about this program.
msh: -scan
Selecting this option causes an automatic scan of new messages on BBoards to
be made when reading BBoards with bbc, similar to the scan listing produced
by inc.
repl: -query
causes repl to ask for each address in the message being replied to if it should
be included in the To: or Cc: fields of the reply being composed.
pick: -seq sel
This line will cause messages "picked" by the pick command to be put into
a sequence named "sel". This sequence name may then be used just as the
built-in sequences ("last", "first", etc.).
4.3 Aliases
Using MH, you may specify your own private mail aliases. This feature allows
you to store lists of addresses or long internet addresses of people with whom
you frequently correspond in one file, and then to address them using short
mnemonic names. Typically, you will call your alias file "aliases"; it must
be stored in your MH directory. The format of this file is simple. The alias
is given, followed by a colon, followed by one or more legal mail addresses
separated by commas. For example, you might for some reason have an alias
for all the users named "Rose" in the ICS department:
roses: prose, srose, mrose, drose
In addition to your "aliases" file, you will need to modify your .mh_profile
in order to use aliases. You should add the flag "-alias aliases" to the
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entries for the commands ali, whom, send, and push, creating entries for
these programs if they aren't already in your .mh_profile. Now, messages
addressed to "roses" will be distributed to all the people listed in the alias.
The ali command is used to show you what an alias expands to. You just
type
% ali alias
and ali will respond with the expansion of the alias. Ali searches the system
aliases file in addition to your private ones.
4.4 Blind Lists
There are two different types of so-called "blind addressing" of messages.
Users of mm may already be familiar with the "Blind Carbon Copy", or
BCC: field. It allows you to add recipients to your message just like those
who are CC'd, but the normal recipients will not see that the BCC recipients
were copied on the message, their replies will not go to the blind recipients,
and the blind recipients cannot (easily) reply to the message.
The second type of blind mailing is actually called a "group address list",
although it is commonly referred to as a "blind list". The format of this type
of address is
phrase : address__list ;
where the "phrase " is any English phrase of one or more words, and the
address__list consists of one or more addresses separated by commas. The
recipients of a message addressed in this fashion will see simply
phrase : ;
so when they reply to the message, their reply will come only to the sender
(or the Reply-To: field, if one was specified), rather than going to all the
recipients of the original list. For example, to use a group address list for the
"roses" alias you would type:
To: People Named Rose: roses;
12
This type of group address is very useful for making up lists of related people,
such as all the people working on a particular research project.
4.5 Folders
As mentioned previously, folders are directories within your MH directory
used to store related messages. There is no equivalent of the folder concept
in the mm system. Usually, you will use only the folder "inbox", so you won't
have to worry about folders. However, if you process a large volume of mail,
then folders become invaluable in managing the messages which you wish to
keep for future reference.
Just as there is a "current message," MH maintains a "current folder," which
will normally be "inbox". You can change folders either by specifying the
folder on the command line of MH programs which take a list of messages as
an argument, or by using the folder command:
% folder +folder__name
In general, the folder name is indicated by a "+" sign followed immediately
by the folder name, all preceeding any list of messages. For example, you
may read the most recent message in a folder called "job__offers" using the
command
% show +job__offers last
This command will have the side-effect of setting the current folder to be
"job__offers". You may move messages from the current folder into the
"job__offers" folder using the command
% refile +job__offers messages
where, as usual, the messages list will default to the current message in the
current folder if none are specified. Note that, in contrast with the show
command and most other MH commands, the messages are not considered
to be in the folder "job__offers". You may obtain a summary of all your folders
by typing the command
% folders
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When you remove messages from a folder using the rmm command, the
deleted messages will show up as a "hole" in the message numbering. The
command
% folder -pack
will cause all the messages within one folder to be renumbered starting with 1.
Similarly, the command
% folders -pack
will do the same thing for all your folders.
To remove an empty folder, use the command
% rmf +folder
4.6 Reading BBoards
Two special-purpose programs are utilized in reading BBoards. The first is
bbc, which is used to check a list of BBoards for new messages. The list of
messages may be given on the command line, or if not, it will be taken from
the BBoards: list in your .mh_profile. You may obtain a list of all the
available BBoards by typing the command
% bbc -topics
For each BBoard with unseen messages, bbc will invoke the MH shell, msh,
whose prompt is
(msh)
The msh program allows you to read BBoard mail as if it were normal mes-
sages in one of your folders. Almost all the MH commands will work just
as the normally do. Typing the command "quit" to msh causes it to stop
reading the current BBoard and go on to the next one containing unseen
messages, or to exit if there are no more such BBoards. Typing control-D
causes msh to exit unconditionally. The command mark followed by a mes-
sage number causes msh to act as if you have seen that message and all
previous ones.
14
4.7 Checking for Mail
Under Unix, there are about a dozen different ways to check for new mail.
The easiest way to do it is to set the csh variable named "mail" to tell csh
to check for new mail for you periodically. To do this, add the line
set mail=(60 /usr/spool/mail/$USER)
to your .login file in your home directory. This command says to check
for mail if csh is about to prompt you with a % sign, and if it has been at
least 60 seconds since it last checked for mail. The advantage of this method
of mail notification, besides simplicity, is that you will never be interrupted
by a mail notification. You will only be notified of new mail when you are
between commands, when the shell is about to prompt you.
If you desire asynchronous mail notification, which will print to your terminal
regardless of what you are currently doing, you may make use of a "Receive
Mail Hook" called "rcvtty". To do this, create a file in your home directory
called ".maildelivery". In this file, put the line
* - pipe R /usr/uci/lib/mh/rcvtty
Then each time new mail arrives, you will receive a one-line "scan" listing
of the mail if your terminal is world-writable. For more information on
"maildelivery" files, type:
% man 5 maildelivery
4.8 Saving Drafts
Normally when you use comp, it creates the message being composed in a
file called "draft" in your MH directory. If you use the "quit" option at
the "What now?" prompt, this file will remain there. You may later use the
command
% comp -use
to resume composing the message.
15
If you begin composing a new message and there is already a "draft" file,_you___
will be asked for the disposition of this file. Typing ? __return____ _will give you
a list of the options at this point. Normally you will either replace (delete)
the old draft and begin a new one or use the old one.
The -file switch to comp may be used to specify the name of a draft other
than "draft". For example, one might type
% comp -file mary
to begin composing a message maintained in the draft file "mary". Typing
% comp -file mary -use
would cause comp to resume composing this same draft after a "quit" com-
mand to the "What now?" prompt.
Very advanced users of MH maintain multiple draft files in a draft folder.
This is a normal folder which holds all your drafts, rather than having just
one draft in your MH directory named "draft". If you feel that you need to
use draft folders, you should consult the MH User's Manual for additional
information.
16
