comparison man/rmail.texi @ 36173:808e169709e6

New node Rmail Coding for the discussion of coding systems. Clarify goto-address and fix errors. Minor cleanups.

36172:ee0309e95c9b

* Attrs: Rmail Attributes.   Certain standard labels, called attributes.
* Reply: Rmail Reply.        Sending replies to messages you are viewing.
* Summary: Rmail Summary.    Summaries show brief info on many messages.
* Sort: Rmail Sorting.       Sorting messages in Rmail.
* Display: Rmail Display.    How Rmail displays a message; customization.
* Editing: Rmail Editing.    Editing message text and headers in Rmail.
* Digest: Rmail Digest.      Extracting the messages from a digest message.
* Out of Rmail::	     Converting an Rmail file to mailbox format.
* Rot13: Rmail Rot13.	     Reading messages encoded in the rot13 code.
* Movemail: Movemail.        More details of fetching new mail.

  When the @kbd{t} command has a prefix argument, a positive argument
means to show the reformatted header, and a zero or negative argument
means to show the full header.

@vindex rmail-highlighted-headers
  When used with a terminal that supports multiple fonts or colors, Rmail
highlights certain header fields that are especially interesting---by
default, the @samp{From} and @samp{Subject} fields.  The variable
@code{rmail-highlighted-headers} holds a regular expression that
specifies the header fields to highlight; if it matches the beginning of
a header field, that whole field is highlighted.

  If you specify unusual colors for your text foreground and background,
the colors used for highlighting may not go well with them.  If so,
specify different colors for the @code{highlight} face.  That is worth
doing because the @code{highlight} face is used for other kinds of
highlighting as well.  @xref{Faces}, for how to do this.

  To turn off highlighting entirely in Rmail, set
@code{rmail-highlighted-headers} to @code{nil}.

@findex goto-addr
  URLs in messages may be highlighted and activated for following with the
mouse or keyboard by customizing the hook @code{rmail-show-message-hook}
to add @code{goto-addr}.

@cindex decoding mail messages (Rmail)
  Rmail automatically decodes messages which contain non-@sc{ascii}
characters, like it does with visited files and output from
subprocesses.  Rmail uses the standard ``charset=@var{encoding}''
header in the message to find out how was the message encoded by the
sender.  It then maps @var{encoding} into the corresponding coding
system (@pxref{Coding Systems}), and uses that coding system to decode
message text.  If the message header doesn't have the charset
specification, or if the @var{encoding} it specifies is not recognized
by Emacs, Rmail attempts to detect the encoding by applying the usual
heuristics and defaults (@pxref{Recognize Coding}).

@findex rmail-redecode-body
@cindex fixing incorrectly decoded mail messages
  Occasionally, a message might be decoded incorrectly, either because
Emacs failed to guess the encoding in the absence of the ``charset''
specification, or because the ``charset'' specification was wrong.
For example, a misconfigured mailer could send a message with a
``charset=iso-8859-1'' header whereas the mssage is encoded in koi8-r.
Whenever you see a message text garbled or some of its characters
displayed as empty boxes, you can try to fix that by decoding the
message again using a specific coding system.  (This requires that you
guess the correct encoding, or talk to the sender and ask them.)  To
that end, invoke the @code{rmail-redecode-body} command.  It prompts
for a name of a coding system and then redecodes the message body
using that coding system.

  Redecoding the message body is a lossless operation with most
encodings, in particular with 8-bit encodings such as iso-8859 or
koi8.  So, if the initial attempt to redecode the message didn't
result in a legible text, you could try other possible encodings,
until you succeed.

  With some encodings, notably those from the iso-2022 family,
@code{rmail-redecode-body} might fail to recover the original form of
the message.  However, such encodings rarely cause the kind of trouble
for which @code{rmail-redecode-body} is intended to be used.

@node Rmail Editing
@section Editing Within a Message

  Most of the usual Emacs commands are available in Rmail mode, though a

36173:808e169709e6

* Attrs: Rmail Attributes.   Certain standard labels, called attributes.
* Reply: Rmail Reply.        Sending replies to messages you are viewing.
* Summary: Rmail Summary.    Summaries show brief info on many messages.
* Sort: Rmail Sorting.       Sorting messages in Rmail.
* Display: Rmail Display.    How Rmail displays a message; customization.
* Coding: Rmail Coding.      How Rmail handles decoding character sets.
* Editing: Rmail Editing.    Editing message text and headers in Rmail.
* Digest: Rmail Digest.      Extracting the messages from a digest message.
* Out of Rmail::	     Converting an Rmail file to mailbox format.
* Rot13: Rmail Rot13.	     Reading messages encoded in the rot13 code.
* Movemail: Movemail.        More details of fetching new mail.

  When the @kbd{t} command has a prefix argument, a positive argument
means to show the reformatted header, and a zero or negative argument
means to show the full header.

@vindex rmail-highlighted-headers
  When the terminal supports multiple fonts or colors, Rmail
highlights certain header fields that are especially interesting---by
default, the @samp{From} and @samp{Subject} fields.  The variable
@code{rmail-highlighted-headers} holds a regular expression that
specifies the header fields to highlight; if it matches the beginning
of a header field, that whole field is highlighted.

  If you specify unusual colors for your text foreground and background,
the colors used for highlighting may not go well with them.  If so,
specify different colors for the @code{highlight} face.  That is worth
doing because the @code{highlight} face is used for other kinds of
highlighting as well.  @xref{Faces}, for how to do this.

  To turn off highlighting entirely in Rmail, set
@code{rmail-highlighted-headers} to @code{nil}.

  You can highlight and activate URLs in incoming messages by adding
the function @code{goto-address} to the hook
@code{rmail-show-message-hook}.  Then you can browse these URLs by
clicking on them with @kbd{Mouse-2} or by moving to one and typing
@kbd{C-c @key{RET}}.  @xref{Goto-address}.

@node Rmail Coding
@section Rmail and Coding Systems

@cindex decoding mail messages (Rmail)
  Rmail automatically decodes messages which contain non-@sc{ascii}
characters, just as it does with files you visit and with and
subprocess output.  Rmail uses the standard
@samp{charset=@var{charset}} header in the message to determine how
the was message encoded by the sender.  It maps @var{charset} into the
corresponding Emacs coding system (@pxref{Coding Systems}), and uses
that coding system to decode message text.  If the message header
doesn't have the charset specification, or if the @var{charset} it
specifies is not recognized, Rmail chooses the coding system with the
usual Emacs heuristics and defaults (@pxref{Recognize Coding}).

@cindex fixing incorrectly decoded mail messages
  Occasionally, a message is decoded incorrectly, either because Emacs
guessed the wrong coding system in the absence of the @samp{charset}
specification, or because the specification was inaccurate.  For
example, a misconfigured mailer could send a message with a
@samp{charset=iso-8859-1} header when the message is actually encoded
in @code{koi8-r}.  When you see the message text garbled, or some of
its characters displayed as empty boxes, this may have happened.

@findex rmail-redecode-body
  You can correct the problem by decoding the message again using the
right coding system, if you can figure out or guess which one is
right.  To do this, invoke the @kbd{M-x rmail-redecode-body} command.
It reads the name of a coding system, encodes the message body using
whichever coding system was used to decode it before, then redecodes
it using the coding system you specified.  If you specified the right
coding system, the result should be readable.

  Decoding and encoding using the wrong coding system is lossless for
most encodings, in particular with 8-bit encodings such as iso-8859 or
koi8.  So, if the initial attempt to redecode the message didn't
result in a legible text, you can try other coding systems until you
succeed.

  With some coding systems, notably those from the iso-2022 family,
information can be lost in decoding, so that encoding the message
again won't bring back the original incoming text.  In such a case,
@code{rmail-redecode-body} cannot work.  However, the problems that
call for use of @code{rmail-redecode-body} rarely occur with those
coding systems.  So in practice the command works when you need it.

@node Rmail Editing
@section Editing Within a Message

  Most of the usual Emacs commands are available in Rmail mode, though a