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$Id: README,v 1.43 1996/12/19 14:39:30 gena Exp $
XFMail - XForms based mail reader for the
X-Windows system
Release 1.0 Patchlevel 0
Copyright (c) 1995, 1996
Gennady B. Sorokopud (gena@NetVision.net.il)
Copyright (c) 1995
Ugen J. S. Antsilevich (ugen@latte.worldbank.org)
Please read the Copyright file included in the distribution.
Special thanks to:
Dr. T.C. Zhao and Mark Overmars
For their excellent XForms toolkit
Iain Lea <root@mail.bricbrac.de>
For his suggestions/bug reports
Gregg Jensen <gwj@stl.nexen.com>
For helping me make XFMail more bug-free
Thomas Pundt <pundtt@escher.uni-muenster.de>
For threading and PGP support and other useful stuff
Graham Biswell <graham@tarka.demon.co.uk> and
Simon Shapiro <Shimon@i-Connect.Net>
For sound support and many useful suggestions
Sam Trenholme <set@netcom.com>
For spending his time on eliminating many malicious bugs in
XFMail
Marc van Kempen <marc@bowtie.nl>
For writing the scrollable editor widget. This great piece of code
is the final step in making XFMail a fully functional e-mail client!
Erik Berry <berry@colossus.mathcs.rhodes.edu>
For his great work on xfmail documentation. Now we can actually
read it!
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)
- SunOS 4.1.3_U1 and 4.1.4 running OpenWindows.
- Solaris-2.4 & 2.5 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
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
- Full MIME support
- Configuration via internal dialog windows, instead of dotfiles
- Retrieves mail from both POP 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
- Multiple address books with mailing list support
- Flexible message filtering rules
- Support for faces and picons
- Multiple signatures with attachment rules
- Multi-lingual support
- PGP support
- Many other little nice features; just take a look!
WHERE TO GET IT
You can FTP XFMail as:
ftp://ftp.x.org/contrib/applications/xfmail-1.0.tar.gz
ftp://Burka.NetVision.net.il/pub/xfmail/xfmail-1.0.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 XForms0.81 library and include files. XForms for different platforms
could be obtained from: ftp://laue.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/libXpm-*.tar.gz
Also you will need the GNU C compiler (gcc or compatible) to be installed on
your system.
INSTALLATION
You can ftp pre-compiled binaries for the above systems from:
ftp://Burka.NetVision.net.il/pub/xfmail/<platform>
If you want to compile the package by yourself:
- First install the XForms toolkit library:
gzip -d bxforms-<platform>.tgz
tar -xf xforms.tar
- If you have root access on the system then
su
cd xforms
make install
- If you don't have root access, go ahead and compile XForms, but you will
have to change the location that XFMail looks for the libforms.a and
forms.h files in a few steps (this is done in the Makefile).
(on FreeBSD you can just get the ready package - xforms-0.81.tgz
and then run pkg_add xforms-0.81.tgz)
- Unpack the xfmail.tar.gz archive with:
gzip -d xfmail.tar.gz
tar -xf xfmail.tar
- Go to the xfmail/ui directory.
cp Makefile.<your platform> Makefile
- On Solaris, uncomment this line in compface/Makefile:
#SYSV = -DSYSV32
Also if you're using Solaris 2.5 or later comment/uncomment
regex specific lines in the Makefile (see Makefile comments for
more details).
- You also need to uncomment the stated line in regex/Makefile and
compface/Makefile
Change any system-dependent settings in Makefile to match your system
configuration (read the Makefile itself for more information). If XForms
is in an unusual place you need to point Makefile to it.
- Type:
make
- If all goes well, you will soon have an xfmail binary in the ui/ directory.
To install the XFMail binary and man page (xfmail.1) system-wide, type:
make install
- To run XFMail, type:
xfmail
You don't need any additional files besides XFMail's binary (xfmail)
to run the program.
UPGRADE NOTES
Warning! If you're upgrading from older versions of XFMail you need
to remove all folder cache directories. If you don't do that XFMail
can crash and even corrupt your folders. 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's recommended to backup your address book(~/.xfbook) and filtering
rules file (~/.xfmrules) before upgrading.
During the upgrade you will be asked if you want to keep your old
configuration file. The recommended answer is "No", it's better
to reconfigure XFMail since old parameters (especially placement and
such) can become invalid.
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 points might be:
- mmap system call in mail/fmail.c (mmap is for faster access to messages)
(most of the mmap calls can be disabled by undefining MMAP_MSG
in mail/fmail.h)
To port it:
- Create your own Makefile in the ui/ directory (like Makefile.mysystem).
- Make all the 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 then
32 characters (MAX_FIELD_NAME_LEN).
- No more then 64 fields in header (MAX_FIELDS_IN_HDR).
- Non-folded field can not be longer then 512 bytes (MAX_FIELD_LEN).
- Folded field can not be longer then 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 then 2047 messages in one folder (MAX_MSG_IN_FOLDER).
- XFMail can not have more then 127 folders (MAX_FOLDERS).
- XFMail can not handle messages bigger then 3Mb (MAX_MSG_LEN).
- XFMail's internal message viewer will not show more then 4096 lines of message text (MAX_VIEWABLE_LINES) or 128Kb (MAX_VIEWABLE_SIZE).
- XFMail's internal editor can not edit more then 4096 lines (MAX_EDITABLE_LINES) or 64Kb (MAX_EDITABLE_SIZE).
- You can have no more then 10 different address books (MAX_BOOKS).
- Each address book can hold no more then 1023 addresses (MAX_ADDR_IN_BOOK).
- Each alias can hold no more then 100 recipients (MAX_ADDR_IN_ALIAS).
- No more then 64 filtering rules (MAX_RULES) are allowed.
CONTACTS
Please send all your suggestions/opinions/patches to:
Gennady B. Sorokopud <gena@NetVision.net.il>
There is also a mailing list for XFMail. To subscribe, send mail to
Majordomo@Burka.NetVision.net.il 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:
xfmail-bugs@Burka.NetVision.net.il
or use the "Bug-report" option in the XFMail help menu.