Dream 57/Amiga_Dream_57.iso/Linux/Net/xfmail.txt

Text File | 1998-05-07 | 17KB | 424 lines

$Id: README,v 2.15 1998/04/21 13:50:46 gena Exp $

                  XFMail - XForms based mail reader for the
                             X-Windows system

                         Release 1.3 Patchlevel 0

Copyright (c) 1995-1998
  Gennady B. Sorokopud ([e-mail])

Copyright (c) 1995
  Ugen J. S. Antsilevich ([e-mail])

 Please read the Copyright file included in the distribution.

Special thanks to:

Dr. T.C. Zhao and Mark Overmars
    For their excellent XForms toolkit

Also I would like to thank all of the people who helped me debug XFMail
by submitting bug reports, and also those who help make it more powerful
by sending me many useful suggestions.

Well done guys!


        OVERVIEW

XFMail is an X-Windows application for sending and receiving electronic mail.
It uses the XForms GUI library toolkit by T.C. Zhao and Mark Overmars.

It is partially compatible with mh style mailboxes but does not require any
mh tools to be installed on the system.  You can browse your mh folders and
messages using XFMail.

It has a user-friendly interface and online help to make it easy to use.
It implements most of the mail functionality in one program and it does not
require any additional tools.

The package was tested on:

 - FreeBSD-2.x running XFree86-3.1
 - Linux-1.2.2 and Linux-2.0 running XFree86-3.1.1 and XFree86-3.2
   (and also on Linux/Alpha, Linux/Sparc and Linux/PPC)
 - SunOS 4.1.3_U1 and 4.1.4 running OpenWindows.
 - Solaris-2.x running OpenWindows.
 - HPUX-10.01 running X11R5
 - IRIX-5.x
 - DEC OSF1 v. 3.2
 - Pyramid DC/OS
 - AT&T SVR4.0.4
 - AIX-3.2.5
 - UnixWare-2.1
 - NetBSD
 - BSDI-2.1
 - DGUX

Also i've got a number of reports about XFMail running on other systems
(like Ultrix, SCO, ...)
The development environment is FreeBSD.

For the list of changes since 0.1-beta see the Changelog file included in the
distribution. (Also check out the KNOWNBUGS file included in the distribution)

XFMail's main features:

 - A user friendly interface
 - Three pane view
 - Full MIME support
 - Configuration via internal dialog windows, instead of dotfiles
 - Retrieves mail from POP/IMAP servers and the local mail spool
 - Smart POP features
 - Mail can be sent using sendmail, an SMTP gateway, or a POP server
 - Support for IMAP4 remote folders
 - Supports MH and elm-style local mailboxes
 - Multiple address books with mailing list support
 - Flexible message filtering rules (incoming and outgoing)
 - Support for faces and picons
 - Multiple signatures with attachment rules
 - Multilingual support
 - PGP support (2.6.x & 5.0, including PGP/MIME and PGP keyserver support)
 - Configurable internal editor
 - Nested folders
 - Internal spell-checker
 - Drag-and-Drop
 - On-line help.
 - Many other little nice features - just take a look!


        WHERE TO GET IT

You can FTP XFMail as:
   ftp://Burka.NetVision.net.il/pub/xfmail/xfmail-1.3.tar.gz
   ftp://ftp.uni-muenster.de/pub/xfmail/xfmail-1.3.tar.gz
   ftp://ftp.jbarchuk.com/pub/mirror/xfmail/xfmail-1.3.tar.gz

Take a look at XFMail's homepage:
http://Burka.NetVision.net.il/xfmail/xfmail.html


        REQUIREMENTS

In order to successfully compile XFMail on your system you need:

 - The XForms-0.88.1 library and include files.  XForms for different platforms
could be obtained from: ftp://bragg.phys.uwm.edu/pub/xforms/
As an alternative, you can get the pre-compiled libforms.a/so library for
different platforms and the forms.h file from:
ftp://Burka.NetVision.net.il/pub/xfmail

 - The Xpm library.  This is included with most recent operating systems with
X-Windows, but it can be obtained from:
ftp://ftp.x.org/contrib/libraries/xpm-3.4j.tar.gz,
ftp://avahi.inria.fr/pub/xpm/xpm-3.4j.tar.gz,
ftp://ftp.wustl.edu/packages/X11R6/contrib-pub/libraries/xpm-3.4j.tar.gz

 - You will need the GNU C compiler (gcc) to be installed on your system.
Compiling XFMail with various OS-specific compilers might work as well
(if the compiler is ANSI-compliant).

 - As of version 1.2 XFMail makes use of a database library (ndbm). It is
strongly recommended to install and use libgdbm, as some ndbm libraries seem
to be very buggy. You can obtain libgdbm from:
ftp://prep.ai.mit.edu/gnu/gdbm-1.7.3.tar.gz


        INSTALLATION

NOTE: If you already have an older XFMail version installed please
read the upgrade notes below!

You can ftp pre-compiled binaries of the latest version of XFMail
for some platforms from:
ftp://Burka.NetVision.net.il/pub/xfmail/bin/xfmail.<platform>

Also you can find XFMail packages for some OSes (in OS specific format).
Look at OS distribution sites (like sunsite.unc.edu for Linux and
freebsd.cdrom.com for FreeBSD) for more details.

If you want to compile the package by yourself:

1) Unpack the XForms toolkit library:
gzip -d bxforms-<platform>.tgz
tar -xf xforms.tar

2) If you have root access on the system then
su
cd xforms
make install

 Now go to step 4.

3) If you don't have root access, go ahead and compile XFMail, but you will
have to tell XFMail where to look for the libforms.a and forms.h files.
You can do this by using the "--with-extra-includes=<dir>" and
"--with-extra-libraries=<dir>" options for configure, where <dir>
is the location of the library/include in the unpacked xforms archive
(i.e. if you unpacked xforms in /tmp then the dir should be /tmp/xforms/FORMS)

4) Unpack the xfmail.tar.gz archive with:
gzip -d xfmail.tar.gz
tar -xf xfmail.tar

5) Go to the xfmail directory.
./configure

(add the option from step 3 if necessary).

As of XFMail-1.2 configuration of XFMail is set up by a configure script.
You can set a few options specific to XFMail when running configure
(check out "configure --help" for all options):

  --with-extra-includes=dir
  --with-extra-libraries=dir
configure will look at the specified directories for needed libraries and
include files; this is especially useful, if for example you have installed
libforms at some point under your home directory.

  --without-faces
if you don't want faces support to be compiled into XFMail, set this option.
This disables support only for mailheader faces. Support for faces (picons)
database is builtin and can be turned on or off using the Faces
configuration dialog.

  --with-regex
some systems (such as Solaris-2.4) don't have the regular expression
functions used by XFMail. If you want regular expression support for these
systems, you need to set this option. A system not supporting the regular
expression functions will say "checking for regcomp... no" while configure
is running.
It's also recommended to use this option if you expirience problems
with filtering rules in XFMail (i.e. rules does not work), or XFMail
crashes when URL highlighting is turned on.
IRIX seems to have this problem.

  --with-dbm-lib=lib
if your system DBM library is causing problems, this option allows
you to link agains different library. (use --with-dbm-lib=gdbm to
link with GNU DBM). If you're expiriencing problems with cached folders
(crashes, incorrect message information) it's strongly recommended
to switch to different DBM (from GNU or Berkeley).

  --without-sound
sound support is auto detected. If your system has /dev/audio, sound
support is enabled by default. If you don't want sound support to be
compiled into XFMail, set this option for configure.

  --with-nas-sound
if you want to use the net audio library, you have to set this option.

  --with-maildir=dir
if for some reason autodection of your mail spool directory doesn't work,
you can enter the correct path to your spool directory with this option.

  --with-dead-keys
add routine to emulate dead keys. if your keyboard has dead keys
you will be able to enter accented characters with them if this
option is turned on.

  --with-xkb-dead-keys
compile with XKB Extension for dead keys

After running configure you may want to check the generated Makefile in
directory xfmail/ui. If configure ends up saying

  *** configure has detected some severe problems. Before running
  *** "make" you should check the following messages:

then this _really_ means, that something isn't installed properly and
running "make" now will abort at some point! You really should correct the
reported problems and run configure again. Examining the created config.log
should help you in finding the problem.

If configure complaints about wrong version of xforms, make sure you
downloaded xforms-0.88.1 from bragg.phys.uwm.edu and installed it correctly
(see above). Also make sure that you don't have any leftovers from the
previous xforms versions left on your system (forms.h, libforms.a).

Sometimes configure reports "must have working mmap". If you're absolutely
sure that your system does have mmap() system call, this means that
some shared libraries are installed with incorrect permissions.
In this case the error can be ignored.

If no errors were reported, proceede with step 6.

6) Type: make

If all goes well, you will soon have an xfmail binary in the ui/ directory.

7) If you have root access on your system and want to install XFMail and
the man page (xfmail.1) system-wide, type:
make install

8) To run XFMail, type:
xfmail

You don't need any additional files besides XFMail's binary (xfmail)
to run the program.

                UPGRADE NOTES

If you are upgrading from older versions (1.1 or older) of XFMail you need
remove all folder cache directories (XFMail now uses a different caching
mechanism). In order to remove the cache directories, look for
.cache/ directory in each directory located under ~/Mail. If such
directory exists - remove it with rm -rf .

It is recommended to backup your address book (~/.xfbook or ~/.xfmail/.xfbook)
and filtering rules file (~/.xfmrules or ~/.xfmail/.xfmrules) before
upgrading.

During the upgrade you will be asked if you want to keep your old
configuration file. The (STRONGLY) recommended answer is "No", it's better
to reconfigure XFMail since old parameters (especially placement and
such) can become invalid.

NOTE: If you're starting to expirience frequent crashes or other
weird problems with XFMail immediatly after upgrade, delete your
~/.xfmail/.xfmailrc and reconfigure XFMail from scratch.

        PORTING TO ANOTHER SYSTEM

XFMail can be easily ported to any Unix platform with the X-Windows
system, XForms, and the Xpm libraries. It contains little system
dependent code.  As far as I know, the only problematic point might be
mmap system call in mail/fmail.c (mmap is for faster access to messages).

To port it:

 - Tweak config/configure.in (if needed at all)
 - Make all appropriate #ifdef <mysystem> changes
 - Send me the patches :-)


                LIMITATIONS

As any other program XFMail has it's limitations (see mail/fmail.h
 for more details). Here are the most important ones:

- Name of field in the message header can not be longer than
   32 characters (MAX_FIELD_NAME_LEN).

- No more than 64 fields in header (MAX_FIELDS_IN_HDR).

- Non-folded field can not be longer than 512 bytes (MAX_FIELD_LEN).

- Folded field can not be longer than 32768 bytes (MAX_SPLIT_FIELD_LEN).

- Limit on number of recipients in To , Cc or Bcc lists is 1024
   (MAX_ADDR_IN_FIELD).

- XFMail can not have more than 10240 messages in one folder (MAX_MSG_IN_FOLDER)

- XFMail can not have more than 1024 folders (MAX_FOLDERS).

- Each folder can not have more than 64 subfolders (MAX_SUBFOLDERS).
  (This includes the number of subfolders in all the folder subtree,
   and not just folder's "children")

- XFMail can not handle messages bigger than 3Mb (MAX_MSG_LEN).
  Note: if XFMail encounters message larger than MAX_MSG_LEN it will
  ignore it and/or display warning or error message. Under no circumstances
  XFMail will not try to truncate or modify such message unless you're trying
  to copy/move it manually to another XFMail folder.

- XFMail's internal message viewer will not show more than 4096 lines of message   text (MAX_VIEWABLE_LINES) or 128Kb (MAX_VIEWABLE_SIZE).
  Use external viewer if you want to view larger message.

- XFMail's internal editor can not edit more than 4096 lines (MAX_EDITABLE_LINES) or 64Kb (MAX_EDITABLE_SIZE).
  Use external editor if you want to edit larger message.

- You can have no more than 10 different address books (MAX_BOOKS).

- Each address book can hold no more than 1023 addresses (MAX_ADDR_IN_BOOK).

- Each alias can hold no more than 100 recipients (MAX_ADDR_IN_ALIAS).
  Note: you can create nested aliases , i.e. alias member can be a name
  of another alias. Aliases will be fully expanded when you add them as
  recipient name.

- No more than 255 filtering rules (MAX_RULES) are allowed.
  Note: creating too many filtering rules can significantly slow
  down message retrieving.

- Up to 16 mail accounts (MAX_RETR_SOURCES) can be defined.

                XFMail and other e-mail clients.

Starting from version 1.0 XFMail supports IMAP (Internet Message
Access Protocol) remote folders. Only IMAP4 and IMAP4rev1 protocols
are supported. IMAP is useful if you want to share your folders and
messages with e-mail clients other then XFMail. There is a way to access
native XFMail mailboxes through IMAP. You will need to install
IMAP-4.1 from ftp://ftp.cac.washington.edu/imap/ on system running
XFMail . After the installation is complete create file called .mh_profile
in your home directory on that system. The file should contain only one line:
Path: Mail
Second step is to configure IMAP access in XFMail running on other system,
from which you want to access your folders. Go to Config->IMAP dialog,
fill information about your "master" host and put '#mh/' (without the
quotes) in List input field. Connect to IMAP server (use 'IMAP connect'
option from Misc menu). You should see your XFMail folders displayed
in folder pane. The folders will have names like #mh/<name> .
Now you can read your XFMail messages, however all status changes
(i.e. read/unread , mark, etc..) done to the messages through IMAP
will not be recognized by XFMail.

XFMail folders also can be accessed by any MH-compliant e-mail client,
like exmh (ftp://ftp.sunlabs.com/pub/tcl/exmh/) or mutt
(ftp://ftp.cs.hmc.edu/pub/me/mutt/). mutt is especially useful if you
want to be able to read your e-mail using telnet and use XFMail at the
same time.

Starting from version 1.2 XFMail has native support for elm-style
mailboxes, which means that you can share your messages with
almost any e-mail client. However elm-style mailboxes are handled
less efftiently by XFMail and they can not have any subfolders.

The limitations on status update mentioned above apply to any other
e-mail client.

Note: mutt will not recognize XFMail folders unless they have file
.xmhcache in them (contents of the file is not important,
you can simply do: touch ~/Mail/<folder>/.xmhcache).

                LOCKING

XFMail uses both dotlock and kernel lock mechanisms in order to lock
mailbox. Kernel lock is always expected to succeed, however XFMail will
not attempt to install dotlock if user does not have write permissions
in (folder) spool directory.
IMPORTANT!!! If this is the case on your system , make sure that your
mail delivery program (usualy mail.local or procmail) is compiled with
kernel lock support. If it's not compiled you're risking to loose or
corrupt your mailbox!

        CONTACTS

Please send all your suggestions/opinions/patches to:
Gennady B. Sorokopud <[e-mail]>

There is also a mailing list for XFMail.  To subscribe, send mail to
[e-mail] with the line "subscribe xfmail" in the
message body (You can also subscribe/unsubscribe to/from mailing list
using the XFMail help menu).

If you find any bugs please report them to:
[e-mail]
or use the "Bug-report" option in the XFMail help menu.

               XFMAIL DEVELOPMENT

If you want to be actively involved in XFMail's development process
you can do the following:

 - download the latest XFMail alpha/beta from
   ftp://burka.netvision.net.il/pub/xfmail/work/xfmail-MMDDYY.tar.gz

 - subscribe to xfmail-dev mailing list. To subscribe send mail
   to [e-mail] with the line "subscribe xfmail-dev"
   in the message body.