NAME

xmh − X interface to the MH message handling system

SYNOPSIS

xmh [-path mailpath] [-initial foldername] [-flag] [-toolkitoption ...]

DESCRIPTION

The xmh program provides a window-oriented user interface to the Rand MH Message Handling System.  To actually do things with your mail, it makes calls to the MH package.  Electronic mail messages may be composed, sent, received, replied to, forwarded, sorted, and stored in folders.  To specify an alternate collection of mail folders in which to process mail, use -path followed by the pathname of the alternate mail directory.  The default mail path is the value of the Path component in $HOME/.mh_profile, or $HOME/Mail if the MH Path is not given.  To specify an alternate folder which may receive new mail and is initially opened by xmh, use the -initial flag.  The default initial folder is ‘inbox’.  The option -flag will cause xmh to attempt to change the appearance of its icon when new mail has arrived.  These three options have corresponding application-specific resources, named MailPath, InitialFolder, and MailWaitingFlag, which can be used in a resource file.  The standard toolkit command line options are given in X11(7).  Please don’t be misled by the size of this document.  It introduces many aspects of the Athena Widget Set, and provides extensive mechanism for customization of the user interface.  xmh really is easy to use. 

INSTALLATION

The current version of xmh requires that the user is already set up to use MH, version 6.  To do so, see if there is a file called .mh_profile in your home directory.  If it exists, check to see if it contains a line that starts with “Current-Folder”.  If it does, you’ve been using version 4 or earlier of MH; to convert to version 6, you must remove that line.  (Failure to do so causes spurious output to stderr, which can hang xmh depending on your setup.)  If you do not already have a .mh_profile, you can create one (and everything else you need) by typing “inc” to the shell.  You should do this before using xmh to incorporate new mail.  For more information, refer to the mh(1) documentation. 

BASIC SCREEN LAYOUT

xmh starts out with a single window, divided into four main areas:

− Six buttons with pull-down command menus. 

− A collection of buttons, one for each top level folder.  New users of mh will have two folders, “drafts” and “inbox”. 

− A listing, or Table of Contents, of the messages in the open folder.  Initially, this will show the messages in “inbox”. 

− A view of one of your messages.  Initially this is blank. 

XMH AND THE ATHENA WIDGET SET

xmh uses the X Toolkit Intrinsics and the Athena Widget Set.  Many of the features described below (scrollbars, buttonboxes, etc.) are actually part of the Athena Widget Set, and are described here only for completeness.  For more information, see the Athena Widget Set documentation. 

SCROLLBARS

Some parts of the main window will have a vertical area on the left containing a grey bar.  This area is a scrollbar.  They are used whenever the data in a window takes up more space than can be displayed.  The grey bar indicates what portion of your data is visible. Thus, if the entire length of the area is grey, then you are looking at all your data.  If only the first half is grey, then you are looking at the top half of your data.  The message viewing area will have a horizontal scrollbar if the text of the message is wider than the viewing area.  You can use the pointer in the scrollbar to change what part of the data is visible.  If you click with the middle button, then the top of the grey area will move to where the pointer is, and the corresponding portion of data will be displayed.  If you hold down the middle button, you can drag around the grey area.  This makes it easy to get to the top of the data: just press with the middle, drag off the top of the scrollbar, and release. If you click with button 1, then the data to the right of the pointer will scroll to the top of the window.  If you click with pointer button 3, then the data at the top of the window will scroll down to where the pointer is.

BUTTONBOXES, BUTTONS, AND MENUS

Any area containing many words or short phrases, each enclosed in a rectangle or rounded boundary, is called a buttonbox.  Each rectangle or rounded area is actually a button that you can press by moving the pointer onto it and pressing pointer button 1.  If a given buttonbox has more buttons in it than can fit, it will be displayed with a scrollbar, so you can always scroll to the button you want.  Some buttons have pull-down menus. Pressing the pointer button while the pointer is over one of these buttons will pull down a menu.  Holding the button down while moving the pointer over the menu, called dragging the pointer, will highlight each selectable item on the menu as the pointer passes over it.  To select an item in the menu, release the pointer button while the item is highlighted.

ADJUSTING THE RELATIVE SIZES OF AREAS

If you’re not satisfied with the sizes of the various areas of the main window, they can easily be changed.  Near the right edge of the border between each region is a black box, called a grip.  Simply point to that grip with the pointer, press a pointer button, drag up or down, and release.  Exactly what happens depends on which pointer button you press.  If you drag with the middle button, then only that border will move.  This mode is simplest to understand, but is the least useful. If you drag with pointer button 1, then you are adjusting the size of the window above.  xmh will attempt to compensate by adjusting some window below it.  If you drag with pointer button 3, then you are adjusting the size of the window below.  xmh will attempt to compensate by adjusting some window above it.  All windows have a minimum and maximum size; you will never be allowed to move a border past the point where it would make a window have an invalid size.

PROCESSING YOUR MAIL

This section will define the concepts of the selected folder, current folder, selected message(s), current message, selected sequence, and current sequence.  Each xmh command is introduced.  For use in customization, action procedures corresponding to each command are given; these action procedures can be used to customize the user interface, particularly the keyboard accelerators and the functionality of the buttons in the optional button box created by the application resource CommandButtonCount. 

SELECTED FOLDER

A folder contains a collection of mail messages, or is empty.  The selected folder is whichever foldername appears in the bar above the folder buttons.  Note that this is not necessarily the same folder that is being viewed. To change the selected folder, just press on the desired folder button; if that folder has subfolders, select a folder from the pull down menu. The Table of Contents, or toc, lists the messages in the viewed folder. The title bar above the Table of Contents displays the name of the viewed folder. The toc title bar also displays the name of the viewed sequence of messages within the viewed folder. Every folder has an “all” sequence, which contains all the messages in the folder, and initially the toc title bar will show “inbox:all”.

FOLDER COMMANDS

The folder command menu contains commands of a global nature:

Open Folder
Display the data in the selected folder.  Thus, the selected folder also becomes the viewed folder. The action procedure corresponding to this command is XmhOpenFolder([foldername]).  It takes an optional argument as the name of a folder to select and open; if no folder is specified, the selected folder is opened.  It may be specified as part of an event translation from a folder menu button or from a folder menu, or as a binding of a keyboard accelerator to any widget other than the folder menu buttons or the folder menus. 

Open Folder in New Window
Displays the selected folder in an additional main window. Note, however, that you may not reliably display the same folder in more than one window at a time, although xmh will not prevent you from trying.  The corresponding action is XmhOpenFolderInNewWindow(). 

Create Folder
Create a new folder. You will be prompted for a name for the new folder; to enter the name, move the pointer to the blank box provided and type. Subfolders are created by specifying the parent folder, a slash, and the subfolder name.  For example, to create a folder named “xmh” which is a subfolder of an existing folder named “clients”, type “clients/xmh”. Click on the Okay button when finished, or just type Return; click on Cancel to cancel this operation. The action corresponding to Create Folder is XmhCreateFolder(). 

Delete Folder
Destroy the selected folder.  You will be asked to confirm this action (see CONFIRMATION WINDOWS).  Destroying a folder will also destroy any subfolders of that folder.  The corresponding action is XmhDeleteFolder(). 

Close Window
Exits xmh, after first confirming that you won’t lose any changes; or, if selected from any additional xmh window, simply closes that window.  The corresponding action is XmhClose(). 

HIGHLIGHTED MESSAGES, SELECTED MESSAGES, CURRENT MESSAGE

It is possible to highlight a set of adjacent messages in the area of the Table of Contents.  To highlight a message, click on it with pointer button 1.  To highlight a range of messages, click on the first one with pointer button 1 and on the last one with pointer button 3; or press pointer button 1, drag, and release.  To extend a range of selected messages, use pointer button 3.  To highlight all messages in the table of contents, click rapidly three times with pointer button 1.  To cancel any selection in the table of contents, click rapidly twice.  The selected messages are the same as the highlighted messages, if any.  If no messages are highlighted, then the selected messages are considered the same as the current message. The current message is indicated by a ’+’ next to the message number.  It usually corresponds to the message currently being viewed. When a message is viewed, the title bar above the view will identify the message.

TABLE OF CONTENTS COMMANDS

The Table of Contents command menu contains commands which operate on the open, or viewed folder. 

Incorporate New Mail
Add any new mail received to your inbox folder, and set the current message to be the first new message.  (This command is selectable only if “inbox” is the folder being viewed.)  The corresponding action is XmhIncorporateNewMail(). 

Commit Changes Execute all deletions, moves, and copies that have been marked in this folder.  The corresponding action is XmhCommitChanges(). 

Pack Folder Renumber the messages in this folder so they start with 1 and increment by 1.  The corresponding action is XmhPackFolder(). 

Sort Folder Sort the messages in this folder in chronological order.  As a side effect, this also packs the folder.  The corresponding action is XmhSortFolder(). 

Rescan Folder Rebuild the list of messages.  This can be used whenever you suspect that xmh’s idea of what messages you have is wrong.  (In particular, this is necessary if you change things using straight MH commands without using xmh.)  The corresponding action is XmhForceRescan(). 

MESSAGE COMMANDS

The Message command menu contains commands which operate on the selected message(s), or if there are no selected messages, the current message. 

Compose Message
Composes a new message.  A new window will be brought up for composition; a description of it is given in the COMPOSITION WINDOWS section below. This command does not affect the current message. The corresponding action is XmhComposeMessage(). 

View Next Message
View the first selected message.  If no messages are highlighted, view the current message.  If current message is already being viewed, view the first unmarked message after the current message. The corresponding action is XmhViewNextMessage(). 

View Previous View the last selected message.  If no messages are highlighted, view the current message.  If current message is already being viewed, view the first unmarked message before the current message.  The corresponding action is XmhViewPrevious(). 

Mark Deleted Mark the selected messages for deletion.  If no messages are highlighted, then this mark the current message for deletion and automatically display the next unmarked message.  The corresponding action is XmhMarkDeleted(). 

Mark Move Mark the selected messages to be moved into the current (selected) folder.  (If the current folder is the same as the viewed folder, this command will just beep.)  If no messages are highlighted, this will mark the current message to be moved and display the next unmarked message.  The corresponding action is XmhMarkMove(). 

Mark Copy Mark the selected messages to be copied into the current folder.  (If the current folder is the same as the viewed folder, this command will just beep.)  If no messages are highlighted, mark the current message to be copied.  The corresponding action is XmhMarkCopy(). 

Unmark Remove any of the above three marks from the selected messages, or the current message, if none are highlighted.  The corresponding action is XmhUnmark(). 

View in New Window
Create a new window containing only a view of the first selected message, or the current message, if none are highlighted. The corresponding action is XmhViewInNewWindow(). 

Reply Create a composition window in reply to the first selected message, or the current message, if none are highlighted.  The corresponding action is XmhReply(). 

Forward Create a composition window whose body is initialized to be the contents of the selected messages, or the current message if none are highlighted.  The corresponding action is XmhForward(). 

Use as Composition
Create a composition window whose body is initialized to be the contents of the first selected message, or the current message if none are selected. Any changes you make in the composition will be saved in a new message in the “drafts” folder, and will not change the original message. However, this command was designed to be used within the “drafts” folder to compose message drafts, and there is an exception to this rule. If the message to be used as composition was selected from the “drafts” folder, the changes will be reflected in the original message (see COMPOSITION WINDOWS).  The action procedure corresponding to this command is XmhUseAsComposition(). 

Print Print the selected messages, or the current message if none are selected.  xmh normally prints by invoking the enscript(1) command, but this can be customized with the application-specific resource PrintCommand.  The action procedure corresponding to this command is XmhPrint(). 

SEQUENCE COMMANDS

The Sequence command menu contains commands pertaining to message sequences (See MESSAGE-SEQUENCES), and a list of the message-sequences defined for the currently viewed folder.  The selected message-sequence is indicated by a check mark in its entry in the margin of the menu.  To change the selected message-sequence, select a new message-sequence from the sequence menu. 

Pick Messages Define a new message-sequence.  The corresponding action is XmhPickMessages(). 

The following menu entries will be sensitive only if the current folder has any message-sequences other than the “all” message-sequence. 

Open Sequence Change the viewed sequence to be the same as the selected sequence.  The corresponding action is XmhOpenSequence(). 

Add to Sequence Add the selected messages to the selected sequence.  The corresponding action is XmhAddToSequence(). 

Remove from Sequence
Remove the selected messages from the selected sequence. The corresponding action is XmhRemoveFromSequence(). 

Delete Sequence Remove the selected sequence entirely.  The messages themselves are not affected; they simply are no longer grouped together to define a message-sequence.  The corresponding action is XmhDeleteSequence(). 

VIEW COMMANDS

Commands in the View menu and in the buttonboxes of view windows (which result from the Message command “View In New”) correspond in functionality to commands of the same name in the Message menu, but they operate on the viewed message rather than the selected messages or current message. 

Close Window When the viewed message is in a separate view window, this command will close the view, after confirming the status of any unsaved edits.  The corresponding action procedure is XmhCloseView(). 

Reply Create a composition window in reply to the viewed message.  The related action procedure is XmhViewReply(). 

Forward Create a composition window whose body is initialized to be the contents of the viewed message.  The corresponding action is XmhViewForward(). 

Use As Composition
Create a composition window whose body is initialized to be the contents of the viewed message.  Any changes made in the composition window will be saved in a new message in the “drafts” folder, and will not change the original message.  An exception: if the viewed message was selected from the “drafts” folder, the original message is edited.  The action procedure corresponding to this command is XmhViewUseAsComposition(). 

Edit Message This command enables the direct editing of the viewed message.  The action procedure is XmhEditView(). 

Save Message This command is insensitive until the message has been edited; when activated, edits will be saved to the original message in the view.  The corresponding action is XmhSaveView(). 

Print Print the viewed message.  xmh prints by invoking the enscript(1) command, but this can be customized with the application-specific resource PrintCommand.  The corresponding action procedure is XmhPrintView(). 

OPTIONS

The Options menu contains one entry. 

Read in Reverse
When selected, a check mark appears in the margin of this menu entry. Read in Reverse will switch the meaning of the next and previous messages, and will increment in the opposite direction.  This is useful if you want to read your messages in the order of most recent first. The option acts as a toggle; select it from the menu a second time to undo the effect.  The check mark appears when the option is selected.

COMPOSITION WINDOWS

Aside from the normal text editing functions, there are six command buttons associated with composition windows:

Close Window Close this composition window.  If changes have been made since the most recent Save or Send, you will be asked to confirm losing them.  The corresponding action is XmhCloseView(). 

Send Send this composition.  The corresponding action is XmhSend(). 

New Headers Replace the current composition with an empty message.  If changes have been made since the most recent Send or Save, you will be asked to confirm losing them.  The corresponding action is XmhResetCompose(). 

Compose Message
Bring up another new composition window.  The corresponding action is XmhComposeMessage(). 

Save Message Save this composition in your drafts folder.  Then you can safely close the composition.  At some future date, you can continue working on the composition by opening the drafts folder, selecting the message, and using the “Use as Composition” command.  The corresponding action is XmhSave(). 

Insert Insert a related message into the composition.  If the composition window was created with a “Reply” command, the related message is the message being replied to, otherwise no related message is defined and this button is insensitive.  The message may be filtered before being inserted; see ReplyInsertFilter under APPLICATION RESOURCES for more information.  The corresponding action is XmhInsert(). 

ACCELERATORS

Accelerators are shortcuts.  They allow you to invoke commands without using the menus, either from the keyboard or by using the pointer. 

xmh defines pointer accelerators for common actions: To select and view a message with a single click, use pointer button 2 on the message’s entry in the table of contents.  To select and open a folder or a sequence in a single action, make the folder or sequence selection with pointer button 2.  To mark the highlighted messages to be moved in a single action, or current message if none have been highlighted, use pointer button 3 to select the target folder. Similarly, selecting a sequence with pointer button 3 will add the highlighted or current message(s) to that sequence. In both of these operations, the selected folder or sequence and the viewed folder or sequence are not changed. xmh defines the following keyboard accelerators over the surface of the main window, except in the view area while editing a message:

Meta-IIncorporate New Mail
Meta-CCommit Changes
Meta-RRescan Folder
Meta-PPack Folder
Meta-SSort Folder
Meta-spaceView Next Message
Meta-cMark Copy
Meta-dMark Deleted
Meta-fForward the selected or current message
Meta-mMark Move
Meta-nView Next Message
Meta-pView Previous Message
Meta-rReply to the selected or current message
Meta-uUnmark
Ctrl-VScroll the table of contents forward
Meta-VScroll the table of contents backward
Ctrl-vScroll the view forward
Meta-vScroll the view backward

TEXT EDITING COMMANDS

All of the text editing commands are actually defined by the Text widget in the Athena Widget Set.  The commands may be bound to different keys than the defaults described below through the X Toolkit Intrinsics key re-binding mechanisms.  See the X Toolkit Intrinsics and the Athena Widget Set documentation for more details.  Whenever you are asked to enter any text, you will be using a standard text editing interface.  Various control and meta keystroke combinations are bound to a somewhat Emacs-like set of commands.  In addition, the pointer buttons may be used to select a portion of text or to move the insertion point in the text. Pressing pointer button 1 causes the insertion point to move to the pointer.  Double-clicking button 1 selects a word, triple-clicking selects a line, quadruple-clicking selects a paragraph, and clicking rapidly five times selects everything.  Any selection may be extended in either direction by using pointer button 3. In the following, a line refers to one displayed row of characters in the window.  A paragraph refers to the text between carriage returns.  Text within a paragraph is broken into lines for display based on the current width of the window.  When a message is sent, text is broken into lines based upon the values of the SendBreakWidth and SendWidth application-specific resources.  The following keystroke combinations are defined:

Ctrl-aBeginning Of LineMeta-bBackward Word
Ctrl-bBackward CharacterMeta-fForward Word
Ctrl-dDelete Next CharacterMeta-iInsert File
Ctrl-eEnd Of LineMeta-kKill To End Of Paragraph
Ctrl-fForward CharacterMeta-qForm Paragraph
Ctrl-gMultiply ResetMeta-vPrevious Page
Ctrl-hDelete Previous CharacterMeta-yInsert Current Selection
Ctrl-jNewline And IndentMeta-zScroll One Line Down
Ctrl-kKill To End Of LineMeta-dDelete Next Word
Ctrl-lRedraw DisplayMeta-DKill Word
Ctrl-mNewlineMeta-hDelete Previous Word
Ctrl-nNext LineMeta-HBackward Kill Word
Ctrl-oNewline And BackupMeta-<Beginning Of File
Ctrl-pPrevious LineMeta->End Of File
Ctrl-rSearch/Replace BackwardMeta-]Forward Paragraph
Ctrl-sSearch/Replace ForwardMeta-[Backward Paragraph
Ctrl-tTranspose Characters
Ctrl-uMultiply by 4Meta-DeleteDelete Previous Word
Ctrl-vNext PageMeta-Shift DeleteKill Previous Word
Ctrl-wKill SelectionMeta-BackspaceDelete Previous Word
Ctrl-yUnkillMeta-Shift Backspace Kill Previous Word
Ctrl-zScroll One Line Up
In addition, the pointer may be used to cut and paste text:
Button 1 DownStart Selection
Button 1 MotionAdjust Selection
Button 1 UpEnd Selection (cut)
Button 2 DownInsert Current Selection (paste)
Button 3 DownExtend Current Selection
Button 3 MotionAdjust Selection
Button 3 UpEnd Selection (cut)

CONFIRMATION DIALOG BOXES

Whenever you press a button that may cause you to lose some work or is otherwise dangerous, a popup dialog box will appear asking you to confirm the action.  This window will contain an “Abort” or “No” button and a “Confirm” or “Yes” button.  Pressing the “No” button cancels the operation, and pressing the “Yes” will proceed with the operation.  Some dialog boxes contain messages from MH.  Clicking on the message field will cause the dialog box to resize so that you can read the entire message. 

MESSAGE-SEQUENCES

An MH message sequence is just a set of messages associated with some name.  They are local to a particular folder; two different folders can have sequences with the same name.  In all folders, the sequence “all” is predefined; it consists of the set of all messages in that folder.  As many as nine sequences may be defined for each folder, including the predefined “all” sequence.  (The sequence “cur” is also usually defined for every folder; it consists of only the current message.  xmh hides “cur” from the user, instead placing a “+” by the current message.  Also, xmh does not support the “unseen” sequence, so that one is also hidden from the user.)  The message sequences for a folder (including one for “all”) are displayed in the “Sequence” menu, below the sequence commands. The table of contents (also known as the “toc”) is at any one time displaying one message sequence.  This is called the “viewed sequence”, and its name will be displayed in the toc title bar just after the folder name.  Also, at any time one of the sequences in the menu will have a check mark next to it.  This is called the “selected sequence”. Note that the viewed sequence and the selected sequence are not necessarily the same.  (This all pretty much corresponds to the way the folders work.) The Open Sequence, Add to Sequence, Remove from Sequence, and Delete Sequence commands are active only if the viewed folder contains message-sequences. 

Note that none of the above actually affect whether a message is in the folder.  Remember that a sequence is a set of messages within the folder; the above operations just affect what messages are in that set.  To create a new sequence, select the “Pick” menu entry.  A new window will appear, with lots of places to enter text. Basically, you can describe the sequence’s initial set of messages based on characteristics of the message.  Thus, you can define a sequence to be all the messages that were from a particular person, or with a particular subject, and so on.  You can also connect things up with boolean operators, so you can select all things from “weissman” with the subject “xmh”. Hopefully, the layout is fairly obvious.  The simplest cases are the easiest: just point to the proper field and type.  If you enter in more than one field, it will only select messages which match all non-empty fields. The more complicated cases arise when you want things that match one field or another one, but not necessarily both.  That’s what all the “or” buttons are for.  If you want all things with the subject “xmh” or “xterm”, just press the “or” button next to the “Subject:” field. Another box will appear where you can enter another subject. If you want all things either from “weissman” or with subject “xmh”, but not necessarily both, select the “-Or-” button.  This will essentially double the size of the form.  You can then enter “weissman” in a from: box on the top half, and “xmh” in a subject: box on the lower part. If you select the “Skip” button, then only those messages that don’t match the fields on that row are included.  Finally, in the bottom part of the window will appear several more boxes. One is the name of the sequence you’re defining.  (It defaults to the name of the selected sequence when “Pick” was pressed, or to “temp” if “all” was the selected sequence.)  Another box defines which sequence to look through for potential members of this sequence; it defaults to the viewed sequence when “Pick” was pressed. Two more boxes define a date range; only messages within that date range will be considered.  These dates must be entered in 822-style format: each date is of the form “dd mmm yy hh:mm:ss zzz”, where dd is a one or two digit day of the month, mmm is the three-letter abbreviation for a month, and yy is a year.  The remaining fields are optional: hh, mm, and ss specify a time of day, and zzz selects a time zone.  Note that if the time is left out, it defaults to midnight; thus if you select a range of “7 nov 86” - “8 nov 86”, you will only get messages from the 7th, as all messages on the 8th will have arrived after midnight. “Date field” specifies which date field in the header to look at for this date range; it probably won’t be useful to anyone.  If the sequence you’re defining already exists, you can optionally merge the old set with the new; that’s what the “Yes” and “No” buttons are all about. Finally, you can “OK” the whole thing, or “Cancel” it. In general, most people will rarely use these features.  However, it’s nice to occasionally use “Pick” to find some messages, look through them, and then hit “Delete Sequence” to put things back in their original state.

WIDGET HIERARCHY

In order to specify resources, it is useful to know the hierarchy of widgets which compose xmh.  In the notation below, indentation indicates hierarchical structure.  The widget class name is given first, followed by the widget instance name.  The application class name is Xmh. 

The hierarchy of the main toc and view window is identical for additional toc and view windows, except that a topLevelShell widget is inserted in the hierarchy between the application shell and the Paned widget. 

Xmh xmh
Paned xmh
SimpleMenu  folderMenu
SmeBSB  open
SmeBSB  openInNew
SmeBSB  create
SmeBSB  delete
SmeLine  line
SmeBSB  close
SimpleMenu  tocMenu
SmeBSB  inc
SmeBSB  commit
SmeBSB  pack
SmeBSB  sort
SmeBSB  rescan
SimpleMenu  messageMenu
SmeBSB  compose
SmeBSB  next
SmeBSB  prev
SmeBSB  delete
SmeBSB  move
SmeBSB  copy
SmeBSB  unmark
SmeBSB  viewNew
SmeBSB  reply
SmeBSB  forward
SmeBSB  useAsComp
SmeBSB  print
SimpleMenu  sequenceMenu
SmeBSB  pick
SmeBSB  openSeq
SmeBSB  addToSeq
SmeBSB  removeFromSeq
SmeBSB  deleteSeq
SmeLine  line
SmeBSB  all
SimpleMenu  viewMenu
SmeBSB  reply
SmeBSB  forward
SmeBSB  useAsComp
SmeBSB  edit
SmeBSB  save
SmeBSB  print
SimpleMenu  optionMenu
SmeBSB  reverse
Viewport.Core  menuBox.clip
Box  menuBox
MenuButton  folderButton
MenuButton  tocButton
MenuButton  messageButton
MenuButton  sequenceButton
MenuButton  viewButton
MenuButton  optionButton
Grip  grip
Label folderTitlebar
Grip  grip
Viewport.Core  folders.clip
Box  folders
MenuButton  inbox
MenuButton  drafts
SimpleMenu  menu
SmeBSB <folder_name>
.
.
.
Grip  grip
Label  tocTitlebar
Grip  grip
Text toc
Scrollbar  vScrollbar
Grip  grip
Label  viewTitlebar
Grip  grip
Text  view
Scrollbar  vScrollbar
Scrollbar  hScrollbar
The hierarchy of the Create Folder popup dialog box:
transientShell  prompt
Dialog  dialog
Label  label
Text  value
Command  okay
Command  cancel
The hierarchy of the Notice dialog box, which reports messages from MH:
transientShell  notice
Dialog  dialog
Label  label
Text  value
Command  confirm
The hierarchy of the Confirmation dialog box:
transientShell  confirm
Dialog  dialog
Label  label
Command  yes
Command  no
The hierarchy of the dialog box which reports errors:
transientShell  error
Dialog  dialog
Label  label
Command  OK
The hierarchy of the composition window:
topLevelShell  xmh
Paned  xmh
Label  composeTitlebar
Text  comp
Viewport.Core  compButtons.clip
Box  compButtons
Command  close
Command  send
Command  reset
Command  compose
Command  save
Command  insert
The hierarchy of the view window:
topLevelShell  xmh
Paned  xmh
Label  viewTitlebar
Text  view
Viewport.Core  viewButtons.clip
Box  viewButtons
Command  close
Command  reply
Command  forward
Command  useAsComp
Command  edit
Command  save
Command  print
The hierarchy of the pick window:
(Unnamed widgets have no name.)
topLevelShell  xmh
Paned  xmh
Label  pickTitlebar
Viewport.core  pick.clip
Form  form
Form
The first 6 rows of the pick window have identical structure:
Form
Toggle
Toggle
Label
Text
Command
Form
Toggle
Toggle
Text
Text
Command
Form
Command
Viewport.core  pick.clip
Form  form
From
Form
Label
Text
Label
Text
Form
Label
Text
Label
Text
Label
Text
Form
Label
Toggle
Toggle
Form
Command
Command

APPLICATION-SPECIFIC RESOURCES

Resource instance names begin with a lower case letter but are otherwise identical to the class name.

If TocGeometry, ViewGeometry, CompGeometry, or PickGeometry are not specified, then the value of Geometry is used instead.  If the resulting height is not specified (e.g., "", "=500", "+0-0"), then the default height of windows is calculated from fonts and line counts. If the width is not specified (e.g., "", "=x300", "-0+0), then half of the display width is used.  If unspecified, the height of a pick window defaults to half the height of the display.  Any of these options may also be specified on the command line by using the X Toolkit Intrinsics resource specification mechanism. Thus, to run xmh showing all message headers, % xmh -xrm ’∗HideBoringHeaders:off’ The following resources are defined:

Banner A short string that is the default label of the folder, Table of Contents, and view.  The default is "xmh    MIT X Consortium    R4". 

BlockEventsOnBusy
Whether to disallow user input and show a busy cursor while xmh is busy processing a command.  Default is true. 

BusyCursor
The name of the symbol used to represent the position of the pointer, displayed if BlockEventsOnBusy is true, when xmh is processing a time-consuming command.  The default is "watch". 

BusyPointerColor
The foreground color of the busy cursor.  Default is XtDefaultForeground.

CheckFrequency
How often to check for new mail, make checkpoints, and rescan the Table of Contents, in minutes.  If CheckNewMail is true, xmh checks to see if you have new mail each interval.  If MakeCheckpoints is true, checkpoints are made every fifth interval.  Also every fifth interval, the Table of Contents is checked for inconsistencies with the file system, and rescanned.  To prevent all of these checks from occurring, set CheckFrequency to 0.  The default is 1. 

CheckNewMail
If true, xmh will check at regular intervals to see if new mail has arrived for any of the folders.  A visual indication will be given if new mail is waiting to be retrieved.  Default is True. (See BUGS).  The interval can be adjusted with the CheckFrequency. 

CommandButtonCount
The number of command buttons to create in a button box in between the toc and the view areas of the main window.  xmh will create these buttons with the names button1, button2 and so on, in a box with the name commandBox.  The user can specify labels and actions for the buttons in a private resource file; see the section on Actions.  The default is 0. 

CompGeometry
Initial geometry for windows containing compositions.

Cursor The name of the symbol used to represent the pointer.  Default is “left_ptr”. 

DraftsFolder
The folder used for message drafts.  Default is “drafts”.

Geometry
Default geometry to use.  Default is none.

HideBoringHeaders
If “on”, then xmh will attempt to skip uninteresting header lines within messages by scrolling them off.  Default is “on”. 

InitialFolder
Which folder to display on startup.  May also be set with the command-line option -initial.  Default is “inbox”. 

InitialIncFile
The file name of your incoming mail drop.  xmh tries to construct a filename for the “inc -file” command, but in some installations (e.g. those using the Post Office Protocol) no file is appropriate.  In this case, InitialIncFile should be specified as the empty string, and inc will be invoked without a -file argument.  The default is to use the value of the environment variable MAIL, or if that is not set, to append the value of the environment variable USER to /usr/spool/mail/. 

MailPath
The full path prefix for locating your mail folders.  May also be set with the command-line option, -path.  The default is the Path component in $HOME/.mh_profile, or “$HOME/Mail” if none. 

MailWaitingFlag
If true, xmh will attempt to set an indication in its icon when new mail is waiting to be retrieved.  If this option is true, then CheckNewMail is assumed to be true as well.  The -flag command line option is a quick way to turn MailWaitingFlag on. 

MakeCheckpoints
If true, xmh will attempt to save checkpoints of volatile information.  The frequency of checkpointing is controlled by the resource CheckFrequency. 

MhPath
What directory in which to find the MH commands.  If a command isn’t found here, then the directories in the user’s path are searched.  Default is “/usr/local/mh6”. 

PickGeometry
Initial geometry for pick windows.

PointerColor
The foreground color of the pointer.  Default is XtDefaultForeground.

PrefixWmAndIconName
Whether to prefix the window and icon name with "xmh: ".  Default is true.

PrintCommand
What sh command to execute to print a message.  Note that stdout and stderr must be specifically redirected!  If a message or range of messages is selected for printing, the full file paths of each message file is appended to the specified print command.  The default is “enscript >/dev/null 2>/dev/null”.

ReplyInsertFilter
A shell command to be executed when the Insert button is activated in a composition window.  The full path and filename of the source message is added to the end of the command before being passed to sh(1).  The default filter is cat; i.e. it inserts the entire message into the composition.  Interesting filters are: awk -e ’{print "    " $0}’ or <mh directory>/lib/mhl -form mhl.body. 

ReverseReadOrder
When true, the next message will be the message prior to the current message in the table of contents, and the previous message will be the message after the current message in the table of contents.  The default is false.

SendBreakWidth
When a message is sent from xmh, lines longer than this value will be split into multiple lines, each of which is no longer than SendWidth.  This value may be overridden for a single message by inserting an additional line in the message header of the form SendBreakWidth: value.  This line will be removed from the header before the message is sent.  The default is 85. 

SendWidth
When a message is sent from xmh, lines longer than SendBreakWidth characters will be split into multiple lines, each of which is no longer than this value.  This value may be overridden for a single message by inserting an additional line in the message header of the form SendWidth: value.  This line will be removed from the header before the message is sent.  The default is 72. 

SkipCopied
Whether to skip over messages marked for copying when using “View Next Message” and “View Previous Message”.  Default is true.

SkipDeleted
Whether to skip over messages marked for deletion when using “View Next Message” and “View Previous Message”.  Default is true.

SkipMoved
Whether to skip over messages marked for moving to other folders when using “View Next Message” and “View Previous Message”.  Default is true.

StickyMenu
If true, when popup command menus are used, the most recently selected entry will be under the cursor when the menu pops up.  Default is false. See the file clients/xmh/Xmh.sample for an example of how to specify resources for pop up command menus. 

TempDir
Directory for xmh to store temporary directories.  For privacy, a user might want to change this to a private directory.  Default is “/tmp”. 

TocGeometry
Initial geometry for master xmh windows. 

TocPercentage
The percentage of the main window that is used to display the Table of Contents.  Default is 33.

TocWidth
How many characters to generate for each message in a folder’s table of contents.  Default is 100.  Use 80 if you plan to use mhl a lot, because it will be faster, and the extra 20 characters may not be useful. 

ViewGeometry
Initial geometry for windows showing only a view of a message.

ACTIONS

Because xmh provides action procedures which correspond to command functionality and installs accelerators, users can customize accelerators in a private resource file.  xmh provides action procedures which correspond to entries in the command menus; these are given in the sections describing menu commmands.  For examples of specifying customized resources, see the file clients/xmh/Xmh.sample.  Unpredictable results can occur if actions are bound to events or widgets for which they were not designed. 

In addition to the actions corresponding to commands, these action routines are defined:

XmhPushFolder([foldername, ...])
This action pushes each of its argument(s) onto a stack of foldernames. If no arguments are given, the selected folder is pushed onto the stack.

XmhPopFolder() This action pops one foldername from the stack and sets the selected folder. 

XmhPopupFolderMenu()
This action should always be taken when the user selects a folder button. A folder button represents a folder and zero or more subfolders.  The menu of subfolders is built upon the first reference, by this routine.  If there are no subfolders, this routine will mark the folder as having no subfolders, and no menu will be built.  In that case the menu button emulates a toggle button.  When subfolders exist, the menu will popup, using the menu button action PopupMenu().

XmhSetCurrentFolder()
This action allows menu buttons to emulate toggle buttons in the function of selecting a folder.  This action is for menu button widgets only, and sets the selected folder.

XmhLeaveFolderButton()
This action insures that the menu button behaves properly when the user moves the pointer out of the menu button window.

XmhPushSequence([sequencename, ...])
This action pushes each of its arguments onto the stack of sequence names. If no arguments are given, the selected sequence is pushed onto the stack.

XmhPopSequence()
This action pops one sequence name from the stack of sequence names, which then becomes the selected sequence.

XmhPromptOkayAction()
This action is equivalent to pressing the okay button in the Create Folder popup.

XmhCancelPick() This action is equivalent to pressing the cancel button in the pick window. 

CUSTOMIZATION USING MH

The initial text displayed in a composition window is generated by executing the corresponding MH command; i.e. comp, repl, or forw, and therefore message components may be customized as specified for those commands.  Comp is executed only once per invocation of xmh and the message template is re-used for each successive new composition. 

FILES

~/Mail
~/.mh_profile - MH profile
/usr/local/mh6 - MH commands
~/Mail/<folder>/.xmhcache - scan folder
~/Mail/<folder>/.mh_sequences - sequence definitions
/tmp - temporary files

SEE ALSO

xrdb(1), X Toolkit Intrinsics, Athena Widget Set, mh(1), enscript(1)

BUGS

- Printing support is minimal. 
- Should handle the “unseen” message-sequence.
- Should determine by itself if the user hasn’t used MH before, and offer to create the .mh_profile, instead of hanging on inc. 
- Still a few commands missing (rename folder, remail message).
- A bug in MH limits the the number of characters in .mh_sequences to BUFSIZ.  When the limit is reached, the .mh_sequences file often becomes corrupted, and sequence definitions may be lost. 
- Except for the icon, there isn’t an indication that you have new mail.
- There should be a resource, ShowOnInc, which when true, would show the current message in the view after incorporating new mail.
- The CheckFrequency resource should be split into two separate resources.
- WM_SAVE_YOURSELF protocol is ignored.
- WM_DELETE_WINDOW protocol doesn’t work right when requesting deletion of the first toc and view, while trying to keep other xmh windows around. 
- Doesn’t support annotations when replying to messages.
- If the MH commannds aren’t in your PATH, you get “Execvp Failed” messages instead of something useful like “Can’t find program.”

COPYRIGHT

Copyright 1988, 1989, Digital Equipment Corporation. 
Copyright 1989, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

AUTHOR

Terry Weissman, Digital Western Research Laboratory
modified by Donna Converse, MIT X Consortium

X Version 11  —  Last change: 8 November 1990