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MultiMail(1) MultiMail(1)
NAME
mm - offline mail reader for Blue Wave, QWK, OMEN and SOUP
packets
SYNOPSIS
mm [filename1] [filename2] [...]
DESCRIPTION
MultiMail is an offline mail packet reader, supporting the
Blue Wave, QWK, OMEN and SOUP formats. It uses a simple
curses-based interface.
SOUP is used for Internet email and Usenet. The others are
used primarily by dialup (or telnet) BBSes, to save con-
nect time, and to provide a better interface to the mes-
sage base.
Not all packet formats may be available, depending on how
the program was compiled.
This manpage is for version 0.36.
USAGE
On most screens, the available keystroke commands are dis-
played in the lower part of the screen. In the mail-
reading window, pressing F1 or '?' will show the commands
available there.
The navigation keys, most of which work throughout the
program, are briefly summarized only on the packet screen,
for lack of space. :-) Basically, they consist of the
standard cursor and keypad keys, with <Enter> to select.
For terminals without full support for these keys, aliases
are available for some of them:
ESC = Q
PgDn = B
PgUp = F
Right = +
Left = -
(Although shown in capitals, these may be entered
unshifted.)
With "Lynx-style navigation", activated by the "UseLynx-
Nav" option, the Left arrow key backs out from any screen,
while the Right arrow key selects. It also makes Left
equivalent to selecting ".." in the packet list, except at
the top level (where it's equivalent to Quit). The plus
and minus keys are no longer aliases for Right and Left,
but perform the same functions as in the traditional navi-
gation system.
Of special note is the space bar. In most areas of the
April 28, 2000 1
MultiMail(1) MultiMail(1)
program, it functions as an alias for PgDn; but in the
mail-reading window, it works as a combination PgDn/Enter
key, allowing you to page through an area with one key.
In the area list, the default view (selectable in the
.mmailrc) is of Subscribed areas only. By pressing L, you
can toggle first to a view of Active areas (i.e., those
with messages), and then to All areas. (Some formats, like
plain QWK, don't have any way to indicate subscribed
areas, so the Active and Subscribed views will be the
same. In other cases, you may have received an abbreviated
area list, so that the Subscribed and All views are the
same.) In all modes, areas with replies always appear,
flagged with an 'R' in the leftmost column.
In the letter list, only unread messages are displayed, by
default; but you can toggle this by pressing L. If there
are any marked messages, L first switches to a marked-only
mode, then to all messages, then back to unread-only. The
marked-only view is new in 0.36. Also, the default mode --
unread or all -- can now be set in the .mmailrc.
Multiple sort modes are available in the packet and letter
lists; you can cycle through them by pressing '$'. The
default sort modes are set in the .mmailrc.
Packet names may be specified on the command line, bypass-
ing the packet menu. If multiple packets are named,
they'll be opened sequentially. If a directory is speci-
fied instead of a file, the packet window will by opened
on that directory, and no further items will be read from
the command line. (This is new in 0.36.)
You can abort the program immediately from any screen with
CTRL-X. You won't be prompted to confirm the exit, but you
will still be prompted to save replies and pointers
(unless autosaving is set). Note that if you've specified
multiple packets on the command line, this is the only way
to terminate the sequence prematurely.
You can obtain a temporary command shell anywhere by
pressing CTRL-Z. In the DOSish ports (MS-DOS, OS/2,
Win32), it spawns a command shell, and you return to Mul-
tiMail via the "exit" command. In Unix, it relies on the
shell to put MultiMail in the background; you return with
"fg". (This has always been available in the Unix ver-
sions; however, it won't work if MultiMail wasn't launched
from an interactive shell, or if the shell doesn't support
it.)
SEARCHING
A case-insensitive search function is available on all
screens. Press '/' to specify the text to look for, or '>'
or '.' to repeat the last search.
April 28, 2000 2
MultiMail(1) MultiMail(1)
New searches (specified with '/') always start at the
beginning of the list or message. Repeat searches (with
'>' or '.') start with the line below the current one. You
can take advantage of this to manually adjust the starting
point for the next search.
Searches started in the letter, area or packet lists allow
the searches to extend below the current list. "Full text"
searches all the way through the text of each message;
"Headers" searches only the message headers (the letter
list), "Areas" only the area list, and "Pkt list" only the
packet list. So, a "Full text" search started from the
packet list will search every message in every packet (but
only in the current directory).
When scanning "Full text", the automatic setting of the
"Read" marker is disabled. However, if you find a search
string in the header of a message and then select it manu-
ally, the marker will be set. But if you start scanning
from the packet list, and exit the packet via a repeat
search, the last-read markers won't be saved.
Scans of "Headers" or "Full text" that start from the area
list or packet list will automatically expand the letter
lists they descend into. Similarly, scans that start at
the packet list will expand the area lists. Otherwise, if
you're viewing the short list, that's all that will be
searched.
I hope the above makes some sense. :-) The searching func-
tions are difficult to explain, but easy to use.
OFFLINE CONFIGURATION
At present, offline config is limited to subscribe (add)
and unsubscribe (drop) functions. The Blue Wave, OMEN,
QWKE, and QWK Add/Drop (with DOOR.ID) methods are sup-
ported. (The QMAIL "CONFIG" method is not supported yet.)
Offline config is not yet available in SOUP mode.
In the area list, press 'U' or 'Del' to unsubscribe from
the highlighted area. To subscribe to a new conference,
first expand the list ('L'), then highlight the appropri-
ate area and press 'S' or 'Ins'. Dropped areas are marked
with a minus sign ('-') in the first column; added areas
with a plus ('+'). In the expanded area list, already-
subscribed areas are marked with an asterisk ('*'). (This
and also applies to the little area list. With plain QWK
packets, the asterisk should not be relied upon; other
areas may also be subscribed.) Added or dropped areas are
highlighted in the "Area_Reply" color. Yeah, I'll have to
change that name now. ;-)
Pressing 'S' on an area marked with '-', or 'U' on an area
marked '+' turns the flag off again.
April 28, 2000 3
MultiMail(1) MultiMail(1)
In Blue Wave, OMEN or QWKE mode, the list of added and
dropped areas is read back in when the reply packet is
reopened. If the reply packet has already been uploaded,
and you're reading a packet with the altered area list,
this is benign. If it's an older packet, you can alter the
list before uploading, as with reply messages. In QWK
Add/Drop mode, the changed area flags are converted to
reply messages when the reply packet is saved. Note:
Adding or dropping areas sets the "unsaved replies" flag,
like entering a reply message, but does not invoke auto-
matic reply packet saving until you exit the packet.
Unfortunately, the OMEN mode has not actually been tested;
but I believe it conforms to the specs. Reports welcome.
HIDDEN LINES AND ROT13
In the letter window, you can toggle viewing of Fidonet
"hidden" lines (marked with a ^A in the first position) by
pressing 'x'. The lines are shown as part of the text, but
in a different color. In Internet email and Usenet areas,
the full headers of the messages are available in the same
way (if provided in the packet -- generally, full headers
are available in SOUP, and partial extra headers in Blue
Wave).
Pressing 'd' toggles rot13 encoding, the crude "encryp-
tion" method used for spoiler warnings and such, primarily
on Usenet.
ANSI VIEWER
If a message contains ANSI color codes, you may be able to
view it as originally intended by activating the ANSI
viewer. Press 'v' to start it. Press 'q' to leave the
ANSI viewer; the navigation keys are the same as in the
mail-reading window.
The ANSI viewer includes support for animation. While
within the ANSI viewer, press 'v' again to animate the
picture. Press any key to abort the animation.
The ANSI viewer is also used to display the new files list
and bulletins, if any are present.
CHARACTER SETS
MultiMail supports automatic translation between two char-
acter sets: the IBM PC set (Code Page 437), and Latin-1
(ISO 8859-1). Messages can be in either character set; the
set is determined by the area attributes -- Internet and
Usenet areas default to Latin-1, while all others default
to IBM -- and by a CHRS or CHARSET kludge, if one is pre-
sent. OMEN packets indicate their character set in the
INFOxy.BBS file. MultiMail translates when displaying mes-
sages and creating replies.
April 28, 2000 4
MultiMail(1) MultiMail(1)
The Unix versions of MultiMail assume that the console
uses Latin-1, while the DOSish versions (DOS, OS/2, and
Win32) assume the IBM PC set. You can override this via
the .mmailrc option "Charset", or on a temporary basis by
pressing 'c'.
You can also use a different character set by disabling
the conversion in MultiMail, and letting your terminal
handle it. For SOUP packets, and for Internet or Usenet
areas in other packets, everything will be passed through
unchanged if you set MultiMail to "Latin-1". For most
other packet types, setting MultiMail to "CP437" will have
the same effect.
Beginning with version 0.33, a new character set variable
is available: "outCharset". This is a string which Multi-
Mail puts into the MIME identifier lines in SOUP replies
if the text includes 8-bit characters. It's also used for
the pseudo-QP headers which are generated under the same
conditions; and when displaying such headers, MultiMail
only converts text back to 8-bit if the character set
matches. The default is "iso-8859-1".
By default, if a header line in a SOUP reply contains
8-bit characters, MultiMail now writes it out with RFC
2047 (pseudo-QP) encoding. You can disable this for mail
and/or news replies via the "UseQPMailHead" and "UseQPNew-
sHead" options, though I don't recommend it. The bodies
can also be encoded in quoted-printable; this is now on by
default for mail, and off for news. The options "UseQP-
Mail" and "UseQPNews" toggle QP encoding. (The headers and
bodies of received messages will still be converted to
8-bit.)
QP decoding is temporarily disabled when you toggle the
display of hidden lines ('x') in the letter window, so
that you can see the raw text of the message.
REPLY SPLITTING
Replies may be split, either automatically, or manually
via CTRL-B in the reply area. For automatic splitting, the
default maximum number of lines per part is set in the
.mmailrc. The split occurs whenever the reply packet is
saved. This allows you to defer the split and still re-
edit the whole reply as one. However, with autosave on,
the split will occur immediately after entering a reply
(because the save does, too). Setting MaxLines in the
.mmailrc to 0 disables automatic splitting; manual split-
ting is still allowed. Attempts to split at less than 20
lines are assumed to be mistakes and are ignored.
ENVIRONMENT
MultiMail uses the HOME or MMAIL environment variable to
find its configuration file, .mmailrc; and EDITOR for the
April 28, 2000 5
MultiMail(1) MultiMail(1)
default editor. MMAIL takes precedence over HOME if it's
defined. If neither is defined, the startup directory is
used.
Depending on the implementation, TMP and/or TEMP may also
be used to specify the directory for temporary files. The
use of EDITOR can be overridden in .mmailrc; however,
environment variables can't be used within .mmailrc.
You should also make sure that your time zone is set cor-
rectly. On many systems, that means setting the TZ envi-
ronment variable. A typical value for this variable is of
the form "EST5EDT" (that one's for the east coast of the
U.S.A.).
FILES
The only hardwired file is the configuration file:
.mmailrc (mmail.rc in DOS, OS/2 or Win32). It's used to
specify the pathnames to MultiMail's other files, and the
command lines for external programs (the editor and the
archivers).
By default, the other permanent files are placed in the
MultiMail home directory ($HOME/mmail or $MMAIL/mmail).
For temporary directories and files, MultiMail uses the
tmpnam() function (the location is system-dependent).
Directories specified in the .mmailrc are created automat-
ically; the default values are shown here:
~/mmail
To store the tagline file, netmail addressbook,
etc.
taglines
A plain text file, one tagline per line.
addressbook (address.bk in DOS, OS/2 or Win32)
A list of names and corresponding Fido netmail or
Internet email addresses. Note that Internet
addresses are prefaced with an 'I'.
colors Specifies the colors to use. (See README.col.)
~/mmail/down
To store the packets as they came from the bbs.
~/mmail/up
To store the reply packet(s) which you have to
upload to the bbs.
~/mmail/save
The default directory for saving messages.
April 28, 2000 6
MultiMail(1) MultiMail(1)
CONFIG FILE
The config file (see above) is a plain text file with a
series of values, one per line, in the form "KeyWord:
Value". The case of the keywords is not signifigant. Addi-
tional, comment lines may be present, starting with
replaced by the defaults when you upgrade to a new ver-
sion.) If any of the keywords are missing, default values
will be used. Here are the keywords and their functions:
Version
Specifies the version of MultiMail which last
updated the file. This is used to check whether the
file should be updated and the "new version" prompt
displayed. Note that old values are preserved when
the file is updated; the update merely adds any
keywords that are new. This keyword is also used in
the colors file.
UserName
Your name in plain text, e.g., "UserName: William
McBrine". This is used together with InetAddr to
create a default "From:" line for SOUP replies; and
by itself in OMEN for display purposes (the actual
From name is set on upload), and for matching per-
sonal messages.
InetAddr
Your Internet email address, e.g., "InetAddr:
wmcbrine@clark.net". This is combined with the
UserName in the form "UserName <InetAddr>"
("William McBrine <wmcbrine@clark.net>") to create
a default "From:" line for SOUP replies. Note that
if neither value is specified, and nothing is typed
manually into the From: field when creating a mes-
sage, no From: line will be generated -- which is
perfectly acceptable to at least some SOUP pro-
grams, like UQWK.
QuoteHead, InetQuote
These strings are placed at the beginning of the
quoted text when replying in normal or Inter-
net/Usenet areas, respectively. (The distinction is
made because the quoting conventions for BBSes and
the Internet are different.) Replaceable parame-
ters are indicated with a '%' character, as fol-
lows:
%f = "From" in original message
%t = To
%d = Date (of original message)
%s = Subject
%a = Area
%n = newline (for multi-line headers)
April 28, 2000 7
MultiMail(1) MultiMail(1)
%% = insert an actual percent character
Note that you can't put white space at the start of
one of these strings (it will be eaten by the con-
fig parser), but you can get around that by putting
a newline first.
homeDir
User's home directory.
mmHomeDir
MultiMail's home directory.
signature
Path to optional signature file, which should be a
simple text file. If specified, it will be appended
to every message you write. You should give the
full path, not just the name.
editor The editor MultiMail uses for replies, along with
any command-line options. This may also be a good
place to insert spell-checkers, etc., by specifying
a batch file here. Note that the default value is
just the editor that's (almost) guaranteed to be
available, for a given OS (although the Unix "EDI-
TOR" environment variable is checked first), and is
in no way a preferred editor; you can and should
change it.
PacketDir
Default packet directory.
ReplyDir
Default reply packet directory.
SaveDir
Default directory for saved messages.
AddressBook
Path and filename of the address book. (You might
change this to share it with another installation,
but basically this keyword isn't too useful.)
TaglineFile
Path and filename of the tagline file. This could
be altered from a batch file to swap between dif-
ferent sets of taglines. (But note that this value
is only read at startup.) You could also share
taglines with another program, but be careful with
that; MultiMail truncates the lines at 76 charac-
ters.
ColorFile
Path and filename of the colors file. See
April 28, 2000 8
MultiMail(1) MultiMail(1)
README.col.
*UncompressCommand, *CompressCommand
Command lines (program name, options, and option-
ally the path) for the archivers to compress and
uncompress packets and reply packets. ZIP, ARJ, RAR
and LHA are recognized. The "unknown" values are a
catch-all, attempted for anything that's not recog-
nized as one of the other four types; if you have
to deal with ARC or ZOO files, you might define the
archiver for them here.
PacketSort
The packet list can be sorted either in inverse
order of packet date and time (the newest at the
top), or in alphabetical order by filename. "Time"
specifies the former, and "Name" the latter. (Actu-
ally only the first letter is checked, and case is
not signifigant. This applies to the other keywords
of this type (the kind that have a fixed set of
values to choose from) as well.) The sort type
specified here is only the default, and can be tog-
gled from the packet window by pressing '$'.
AreaMode
The default mode for the area list: "All", "Sub-
scribed", or "Active". This is the mode that will
be used on first opening a packet, but it can be
changed by pressing L while in the area list or
little area list. For a description of the modes,
see USAGE.
LetterSort
The sort used by default in the letter list. Can be
"Subject" (subjects sorted alphabetically, with a
case-insensitive compare), "Number" (sorted by mes-
sage number), "From" or "To". (This can be overrid-
den, as in the packet list.)
LetterMode
The default mode for the letter list: "All" or
"Unread". This is the mode used on first opening an
area; it can be toggled by pressing L. (The Marked
view is also available in the letter list, but can-
not be set as the default here.)
Charset
The character set that the console is assumed to
use. Either "CP437" (code page 437, the U.S. stan-
dard for the IBM PC and clones) or "Latin-1" (aka
ISO-8859-1, the standard for most other systems).
Note that the character set of messages is deter-
mined separately (q.v.).
April 28, 2000 9
MultiMail(1) MultiMail(1)
UseTaglines
Yes/No. If no, the tagline window is not displayed
at all when composing a message.
AutoSaveReplies
Yes/No. If yes, the reply packet is saved automati-
cally -- the equivalent of pressing F2, but without
a confirmation prompt -- whenver the contents of
the reply area are changed. This can be convenient,
and even a safety feature if your power supply is
irregular, but it provides less opportunity to take
back a change (like deleting a message). If no,
you're prompted whether to save the changes on
exiting the packet. Note that if you say no to that
prompt, nothing that you wrote during that session
will be saved (unless you saved it manually with
F2).
AutoSaveRead
Yes/No. If yes, the read/marked/etc. indicators are
saved automatically when exiting a packet. If no,
you'll be prompted whether to save them; if you say
no, the indicators will remain as they were before
you opened the packet.
StripSoftCR
Yes/No. Some messages on Fido-type networks contain
spurious instances of character 141, which appears
as an accented 'i' in code page 437. These are
really so-called "soft returns", where the message
was wrapped when composing it, but not indicating a
paragraph break. Unfortunately, the character can
also appear legitimately as that accented 'i', so
this option defaults to no. It can be toggled tem-
porarily via the 'I' key in the letter window, and
it doesn't apply to messages in the Latin-1 charac-
ter set. This is now applied only in Blue Wave
mode.
BeepOnPers
Yes/No. If yes, MultiMail beeps when you open a
message addressed to or from yourself in the letter
window. (These are the same messages which are
highlighted in the letter list.)
UseLynxNav
Yes/No. See the description under USAGE.
UseScrollBars
Yes/No. In list windows, when the number of items
in the list exceeds the number of lines in the win-
dow, MultiMail puts a "scroll bar" on the right
border of the window, showing the highlight bar's
position relative to the entire list. Older
April 28, 2000 10
MultiMail(1) MultiMail(1)
versions of MultiMail (pre-0.29) didn't do this,
and I figure some people may not like it, so you
can disable it here.
BuildPersArea
Yes/No. By default, MultiMail now builds a "per-
sonal" area automatically, consisting of messages
addressed to you, for every packet format except
SOUP. But there's some overhead associated with
this, so if you have a very slow computer -- or if
you just don't want to see this area -- you can
disable it here. Note that this option doesn't
apply to QWK packets with .NDX files in them;
there, the area only appears if "personal.ndx"
exists in the packet.
MakeOldFlags
Yes/No. With Blue Wave packets, this makes Multi-
Mail store its last-read flags in the ".xti" file
format rather than in its native ".red". This
allows interoperation with some other readers and
utilities, but it takes slightly longer to read
back in. Also note that the old-style flags can
take precedence over a .RED file in the same
packet, if the packet is future-dated (as, e.g., if
you're in the U.S., and DL'ing from a BBS in the
U.K.), resulting in lost markers. You can fix this
by extracting the packet and setting the files to
the current time. But if you always use "MakeOld-
Flags: Yes", this won't be a problem.
ReOnReplies
Yes/No. By popular demand. :-) Setting this to "No"
will disable the automatic prefixing of "Re: " to
the Subject when replying -- except in areas
flagged as Internet email or Usenet, where this is
the standard, and is still upheld.
QuoteWrapCols
Numeric. The right margin for quoted material in
replies (including the quote indicator).
MaxLines
Numeric. See the description under REPLY SPLITTING.
outCharset
String. See the description under CHARACTER SETS.
UseQPMailHead
Yes/No. Controls the use of RFC 2047 encoding in
outgoing mail headers.
UseQPNewsHead
Yes/No. Controls the use of RFC 2047 encoding in
April 28, 2000 11
MultiMail(1) MultiMail(1)
outgoing news headers.
UseQPMail
Yes/No. Controls the use of quoted-printable encod-
ing in outgoing mail.
UseQPNews
Yes/No. Controls the use of quoted-printable encod-
ing in outgoing news.
UPGRADING
When you run a new version of MultiMail (0.19 or later)
for the first time, it automatically updates your .mmailrc
and ColorFile with any new keywords. (Old keywords, and
the values you've set for them, are preserved. However,
comments are lost.) Some notes on specific upgrades:
Version 0.36 adds the .mmailrc options "LetterMode" and
"AreaMode".
Version 0.33 adds the options "ReOnReplies", "outCharset",
"UseQPMailHead", "UseQPNewsHead", "UseQPMail" and "UseQP-
News", and changes some default values.
Version 0.32 adds "BuildPersArea" and "MakeOldFlags".
Version 0.30 adds "UserName", "InetAddr", "QuoteHead",
"InetQuote", and "QuoteWrapCols".
Version 0.29 adds "UseScrollBars" and "UseLynxNav".
Version 0.28 adds "MaxLines", "StripSoftCR", and "BeepOn-
Pers".
Version 0.26 adds "AutoSaveReplies", "AutoSaveRead", and
"UseTaglines".
Version 0.25 adds "Charset", "PacketSort", and "Letter-
Sort". The default packet sort is now by time instead of
name.
If you're upgrading from 0.19 to 0.20 or later, and you
have a customized ColorFile, be sure to note the new
options.
The ColorFile is new in 0.19. Check it out
(~/mmail/colors, by default).
As of 0.16, the HOME environment variable can be overrid-
den with MMAIL, or omitted altogether.
If you're upgrading from a version before 0.9, and you
have existing reply packets (.rep or .new) whose names are
partly or wholly in uppercase, you must rename them to
April 28, 2000 12
MultiMail(1) MultiMail(1)
lowercase before version 0.9 or higher will recognize
them. (Downloaded packets are not at issue.)
If you're upgrading from a version below 0.8, you may want
to manually delete the /tmp/$LOGNAME directory created by
previous versions. (0.8 and higher clean out their own
temp directories, and use different names for each ses-
sion.)
If you're upgrading from a version prior to 0.7, please
note the changes in the default directories; previously
they were "~/mmail/bwdown", etc.
NOTES
SOUP reply packets are created with the name "base-
name.rep", where basename is the part of the original
packet name before the first period. (Unlike other for-
mats, there's no actual standard for this in SOUP, but
this seems to be the most common form among the SOUP read-
ers I surveyed.) Also, not that I expect anyone to try
this, but currently MultiMail is only able to read reply
packets generated by other SOUP readers if the replies are
in 'b' or 'B' mode, and are one to a file within the
packet. Most readers meet the first criterion, but some
of them batch all mail and news replies into a single file
for each type. A future version of MultiMail will be able
to read these, too.
When re-editing a reply, it gets pushed to end of the list
of replies.
The R)ename function in the packet window can also be used
to move files between directories; however, the destina-
tion filename must still be specified along with the path.
If you're using the XCurses (PDCurses) version, and your
editor isn't an X app, it will work better if you set Mul-
tiMail's "editor" keyword to "xterm -e filename" (instead
of just "filename"). I decided not to do this automati-
cally because someone might actually use it with an X edi-
tor.
Editing and deletion of old replies are available through
the REPLY area, which always appears at the top of the
area list. This differs from Blue Wave and some other
readers.
The Escape key works to back out from most screens, but
after you press it, you'll have to wait a bit for it to be
sensed (with ncurses; not true with PDCurses).
Only Blue Wave style taglines (beginning with "...") are
recognized by the tagline stealer. The tagline must be
visible on the screen to be taken.
April 28, 2000 13
MultiMail(1) MultiMail(1)
Netmail only works in Blue Wave and OMEN modes, and is
still slightly limited. Netmail from points now includes
the point address. Internet email is available in Blue
Wave mode, for those doors that support it, and in SOUP
mode, using the same interface as Fido netmail.
AUTHORS
MultiMail was originally developed under Linux by Koloss-
vary Tamas and Toth Istvan. John Zero was the maintainer
for versions 0.2 through 0.6; since version 0.7, the main-
tainer is William McBrine <wmcbrine@clark.net>.
Additional code has been contribued by Peter Karlsson,
Mark D. Rejhon, Ingo Brueckl, and Robert Vukovic.
BUGS AND KNOWN PROBLEMS
If your editor produces automatic backup files, you should
disable this feature, if possible, or wrap it with a batch
file to delete them when done. MultiMail will erase the
temporary files it creates itself, but it doesn't know to
erase the backup files from an editor.
The RSX/NT version is reported to be incompatible with
4DOS: shelling to external programs (archivers or editors)
fails. Thanks to Tony Summerfelt for figuring this one
out. You can set the MultiMail session to use COMMAND.COM
while retaining 4DOS elsewhere.
On some platforms, specifying a packet on the command line
fails if the filename is exactly 10 characters. (Both
shorter and longer names are OK.) This appears to be due
to strange bugs in the standard library, and I haven't
found a satisfactory solution. I noticed it now because
all OMEN packets fit this description. :-( Packets chosen
from the packet menu are unaffected.
Red Hat Linux 6.0 (and possibly 6.x) comes with a defec-
tive installation of ncurses. When linked to this, Multi-
Mail mostly works, but odd effects appear when scrolling.
(Users describe it as double-spaced.) The problem can be
fixed by reinstalling ncurses from the source -- not the
source RPM that comes with Red Hat, but the original
source from the ncurses site (see INSTALL).
SOUP area type 'M' is not recognized yet. First I have to
find a program that can generate one. :-)
The ANSI viewer eats a lot less memory than it used to,
though it can still be a problem. (Each charac-
ter/attribute pair takes up four bytes in memory. But
lines which have the same attribute throughout are stored
as plain text.)
The new file list and bulletin viewer is, as yet, a hack.
April 28, 2000 14
MultiMail(1) MultiMail(1)
A better means of selecting which ones to view will be
forthcoming, if I can ever decide just how it should look.
(Your opinion is welcome.)
If you find any bugs, or have ideas for improvement,
please write to me.
April 28, 2000 15