bmailrc(5) User Manual bmailrc(5)
NAME
.bmailrc - user configuration file for blueMail
DESCRIPTION
The blueMail configuration file allows to change blueMail's look or be-
haviour and is divided into different sections. Each section starts
with a [Section] name which only exist for the benefit of a structured
configuration file, actually they are treated as comments. A line
beginning with # is a comment, too.
Each section contains options; one option per line. An option consists
of an option name and an option value separated by a colon.
[Directories]
The directory section contains the options concerning the directories
blueMail uses; using directory options require full path names to be
specified.
home The home directory to be used after startup (default: given by -
in this order - environment variable BMAIL or HOME or the cur-
rent directory).
bmail The blueMail main directory to store the addressbook, the
tagline and statistics file etc. (default: home/bmail).
packet The directory where the bbs packet(s) for the offline mail
packet service can be found (default: bmail/down).
reply The directory where the reply packet(s) will be created which
you have to upload to the bbs or process by other means
(default: bmail/up).
save The directory where messages will be saved (default:
bmail/save). If during the save dialog a file name is given
with an absolute path (i.e. with a leading slash, or backslash
or drive letter in DOS, Windows or OS/2), the file will be saved
in the given path instead.
inf The directory where system related information files will be
stored, like the system information for the reply manager and
the information about marked areas (default: bmail/inf). (The
timestamp and name of a system information file are important
parts of the information and should not be modified.)
work The directory where a temporary working directory (removed when
blueMail quits) for uncompressing etc. will be created (default:
system-dependent, or given by environment variable TEMP or TMP,
or in /tmp).
HudsonMsgBase
The directory where your Hudson Message Base is stored (default:
none). The specification of a path causes the activation of an
appropriate entry in the mail file/database service list.
BBBSMsgBase
The directory where your BBBS Message Base is stored, i.e. the
BBBS main directory (default: none). The specification of a path
causes the activation of an appropriate entry in the mail
file/database service list.
mboxes The directory where multiple - Berkeley format (mbox) - mail
files are stored (default: none). The specification of a path
causes the activation of an appropriate entry in the mail
file/database service list.
[Files]
The file section contains the options concerning the files used. Most
of the files are stored in the blueMail main directory (bmail) by
default; using file options require full path names to be specified.
addressbook
The addressbook file (default: bmail/addressbook, or
bmail/address.bk in DOS or OS/2).
taglines
The taglines file (default: bmail/taglines).
signature
The signature file that should be appended to each letter; a
signature isn't used unless specified here (default: none). (See
bmail(1) for the effect of selecting a tagline without signature
file.)
statistics
The statistics file (default: bmail/stats) holding the informa-
tion about unread/total messages (like shown in the file list
window). This file is automatically maintained by blueMail and
self-reorganizing. If this file does not exist, it will be cre-
ated. You may delete this file at any time (temporarily losing
the information, though).
mbox The location of your - Berkeley format (mbox) - mail file
(default: environment variable MAIL). The specification (of a
file with complete path) causes the activation of an appropriate
entry in the mail file/database service list.
(Compatible with this format: Eudora mailbox.)
AreasHMB
The location of your AREAS.HMB file. This file is almost identi-
cal to a standard AREAS.BBS file, i.e. it contains the Hudson
Message Base board numbers, optional board descriptions and
optional addresses (one definition per line, separated by spa-
ces, comment lines start with semicolon, empty lines will be
ignored). The only difference to a standard AREAS.BBS file is
that the address belonging to a board isn't the uplink/downlink
address, but the address you are using in conjunction with this
area. If the address is missing, the area will be read-only.
Netmail areas will be recognized automatically, but this is only
possible if the area contains messages. If the recognition is
impossible (or fails) you may define netmail areas by adding a
comment line starting with "; Netmail: " and followed by a list
of netmail board numbers separated by spaces.
[Commands]
The command section contains the options concerning system commands
blueMail needs to execute. The (un)compression commands are selected
automatically depending on the type of the mail packet to be opened and
must include an option to junk/discard path names.
arjUncompress
Command to uncompress arj archives (default: unarj e, or arj e
in DOS or Windows).
zipUncompress
Command to uncompress zip archives (default: unzip -j -o -L, or
pkunzip in DOS).
lhaUncompress
Command to uncompress lha archives (default: lha efi, or lha e
in DOS or Windows).
unknownUncompress
Command to uncompress unknown archives (default: none).
arjCompress
Command to compress arj archives (default: none, or arj a -e -hf
in DOS, and arj a -e in Windows).
zipCompress
Command to compress zip archives (default: zip -j, or pkzip in
DOS).
lhaCompress
Command to compress lha archives (default: lha a, or lha a /m in
DOS or Windows).
unknownCompress
Command to compress unknown archives (default: none).
editor The editor to be called for message editing (default: given by
environment variable EDITOR, else vi, or edit in DOS, or start
/w notepad in Windows, or tedit in OS/2).
print The program (default: none) to be called for message printing.
(Even DOS, Windows or OS/2 printing won't be direct, but must be
performed by means of - for example - a batch file, because this
provides greater flexibility.)
userpgm
A user definable program (default: none) that will be called by
blueMail when pressing Meta-P. If there is a @P in this command,
blueMail will (prior to calling) prompt for a parameter and
insert it in place of the first occurrence of parameter place-
holder @P.
[Strings]
The string section contains the options for user definable strings.
UserName
The name used to identify personal mail (i.e. mail addressed to
you) for mail formats that don't know about the user's name
(default: "").
EmailAddress
Your Internet e-mail address (default: none) consisting of your
full name and the address itself in a format following the RFC
standards, like full name
, or address (full name).
(Please note that the option UserName above WILL NOT BE automat-
ically part of your EmailAddress. The e-mail address will
exactly be used as given here.)
QuoteHeaderFido
The quote header placed at the beginning of replies in FidoNet
style areas. For customizing, several macros can be used which
will be expanded (limited to a result of a maximum of 255 char-
acters) before writing the string to a reply (default: -=> @O
wrote to @R <=-@N). The macros allowed are:
@f = FROM: first name
@F = FROM: last name
@O = FROM: full name (originator)
@A = originator's netmail address
@t = TO: first name
@T = TO: last name
@R = TO: full name (recipient)
@S = subject
@D = message date
@N = new line
@@ = @
@ = (for a space at the beginning)
QuoteHeaderInternet
Same as QuoteHeaderFido above, but for Internet style areas
(default: On @D, @O wrote:@N).
ToAll This will be used for the recipient field of new echomail
(default: All).
UpperLower
This will allow case-insensitive comparison between non-ASCII
(i.e. 8-bit) characters (such as German Umlaute) even on systems
without locale settings. Don't set this option if you prefer
the system's locale (which generally is the better choice).
The string (default: "") is a list of mappings from upper case
to lower case letters. Each mapping is a pair of an upper case
and a lower case letter without any separation. The different
pairs (members of the list) follow one after another without any
separation. Thus, the length of the string must be even.
Origin The string (default: "", limited to a maximum of 40 characters)
to be used in the origin line.
Organization
A string (default: none, limited to a maximum of 64 characters)
which describes the organization the messages come from - for
drivers supporting this, like the SOUP packet driver.
IsPersonal
The string (default: "") that should be used to identify per-
sonal messages (i.e. messages addressed to you) by scanning the
contents of the messages, necessary for drivers not supporting a
direct recipient - like the SOUP packet driver (where from
header lines won't be scanned). You should specify your full
name or your Internet e-mail address here, but please keep in
mind the insufficiency of this method.
ReplyExtension
A string (default: archiver extension, limited to a maximum of 3
characters or digits) used as file name extension for reply
packets which don't have a determined name, like SOUP reply
packets.
[Settings]
The setting section contains options to change blueMail's appearance or
behaviour. The values allowed may be given in upper or lower case char-
acters.
ConsoleCharset
The character set the terminal you are running blueMail on uses.
If the automatically selected character set, which is Latin-1
(ISO 8859-1) for the Unix version and IBMPC (codepage 437) for
the DOS, Windows or OS/2 version (see bmail(1) for details), is
the wrong one, you can change it here. Values allowed: Latin-1,
IBMPC.
StartupService
When blueMail starts, it normally presents a list of services
that are available. This list can be skipped and a specific ser-
vice can be auto-selected. Values allowed: packet, file, ar-
chive, reply.
SortFilesBy
How the files in the file list windows should be sorted at
startup. Values allowed: name (which is the default), date
(which sorts from the newest to oldest!).
SortLettersBy
How the letters in the letter list window should be sorted at
startup. Values allowed: subject (which is the default), number,
last name. (If letters are sorted by subject or last name, let-
ters with same subjects or last names will be sorted by their
message numbers.)
SortNetmailBy
How the letters in a netmail letter list window should be sorted
at startup. Values allowed: subject, number, last name. The
default is given by SortLettersBy.
SortSystemsBy
How the entries in the reply packet manager list window should
be sorted at startup. Values allowed: name (which is the
default), date (which sorts from the newest to oldest!).
Quote-O-Meter
blueMail has an internal quote percentage calculator that can
help you to keep the amount of quoted material in your replies
under control. When quoting messages, it is always best to keep
the amount of quoted material to only the essential clips of
text that you need by deleting lines that are unnecessary. The
Quote-O-Meter default is 50%, which means that after editing
your reply, the reader will scan it and warn you if over 50% of
it is quoted material. If you exceed the threshold designated
here, you'll immediately be given the option of re-editing your
message or continuing. (To disable the option, set it to 100%.)
ClockMode
The display mode of the clock in the letter header. Values
allowed: time (which is the default if blueMail is compiled
WITH_CLOCK support), off (which is the default else), or elapsed
(shows the time since blueMail started).
Pressing ':' in the letter window toggles between time and
elapsed mode.
MIMEBody
The mechanism used, if a message body must be MIME-encoded. Val-
ues allowed: quoted-printable (which is the default), or 8bit.
This only affects the body of a message. Header fields, if nec-
essary, will always be encoded in quoted-printable. The charac-
ter set used for both header fields and bodies will be ISO
8859-1.
OverlongReplyLines
When preparing a message text for reply, blueMail ensures that
the maximum line length won't exceed 78 characters. While normal
message text will be reformatted in order to guarantee this,
already quoted text won't, and thus may exceed the 78 characters
limit. This option only affects second-level quote lines, i.e.
lines which are already quoted in the message you are going to
reply, if they are too long and must be split. Values allowed:
quote (which prepends a simple second-level quote mark to the
continuation part(s) and is the default), or fold (which simply
folds the line leaving the continuation part(s) unquoted), or
permit (which leaves such overlong lines as they are - please
keep in mind that these lines may cause trouble when being
viewed by others).
[Miscellaneous]
The miscellaneous section contains those options to change blueMail's
appearance or behaviour which are off by default. To set them on, the
option value must be set to yes or y (upper or lower characters).
SuppressAreaListInfo
Use the space of the area info window (info on the packet, area
type) for the main area list at startup. (You can toggle the
display in the area list.)
LongAreaList
Display an area list containing all active (i.e. subscribed, in
the BBS selected) areas, whether there are letters in it or not
(can be changed by pressing 'l' in the area list).
SaveLastreadPointers
Don't ask, automatically save the last read pointers when blue-
Mail quits.
LongLetterList
Display a letter list containing read and unread letters (can be
changed by pressing 'l' in the letter list).
FullsizeLetterList
Don't adjust the letter list size (lines) to the number of let-
ters, always show a full screen size letter list.
SmartScrollLetterList
In case of scrolling up or down a single line, a whole page will
be scrolled instead and the selectable letter will be at the
bottom or the top of it.
SkipLetterList
When selecting an area from the area list, directly show the
first letter, skip the letter list (only if there is an unread
letter in the list).
SuppressLineCounter
Do not show a line counter in the letter header.
EnableSigdashes
Support for the common USENET news convention of preceding a
message signature with a special line consisting of the three
characters "-- " (i.e. dash, dash, and space).
DisplayKludgelines
Display the additional information embedded in a message that
start with ASCII character 1 (can be changed by pressing 'x' in
the letter).
BeepOnPersonalMail
Beep when displaying a letter addressed to you (or your alias
name).
SkipTaglineBox
Don't ask for a tagline to be appended to a new letter. (To
append a tagline to a specific letter with this option set, open
the tagline window and select one before entering or replying a
letter.)
StripRe
Strip all the "Re: " prefixes from the incoming messages' sub-
ject lines.
OmitReplyRe
Don't prefix the subject line of a reply to a message with the
"Re: " string.
ArrowNoQuote
Consider the two characters "->" (i.e dash and greater) to be an
arrow sign rather than a mark for a quoted part of a message.
Pos1Input
Set the cursor onto the first character of the string in an
input box rather than to the end of it.
StripSoftCR
Completely ignore character ASCII 141, which is used as a "soft
carriage return" in FidoNet.
DrawSortMark
Mark the column by which the display is sorted by drawing an
arrow behind the column name.
PersonalArea
Collect and show all personal messages (i.e. messages addressed
to you) in a separate area. (Note: This feature isn't supported
by the mbox mail file driver. For the SOUP packet driver, you
must set option IsPersonal above, too. For the QWK / QWKE packet
driver, omit this option to only get a personal area if the per-
sonal index file is present, and set it off, i.e. to no or n, to
never get a personal area.)
LetterMaxScroll
Allow the last line of the message to be scrolled up to the top
in the letter window and ANSI viewer. (The default is to stop
scrolling when the last line of the message appears at the bot-
tom.)
Transparency
Makes the background color used in MainBackground (black by
default, see below) transparent, i.e. all windows using this
background color will become transparent and show the terminal's
background instead (which will work only with ncurses and termi-
nals that support this). Moreover, the background area isn't
filled with any patterns.
OmitSystem
Omits the operating system name from the blueMail version string
written into messages, reply packets etc.
SaveReplies
Don't ask, automatically save the content of the reply packet
when blueMail quits.
OmitDemoService
Don't add the demo service to the service list.
DrawReplyMark
Mark entries in the reply packet manager list with a special
character if a reply packet exists.
CallReplyMgr
If the offline mail packet service cannot present any packet,
because there are none available, the reply packet manager will
be invoked instead.
OmitBulletins
Don't show bulletins and new file lists on opening a packet, but
only a short note.
SortAddressbook
Display the addressbook entries sorted (by last names) at
startup.
ClearFilter
Don't automatically close windows where empty lists aren't
allowed, but items can be edited, and an item that matches an
active filter has been changed to no longer match the filter
with the result that the list is empty now. Automatically clear
the filter then and stay in the window.
BBBSUser#1
By default, user #0 is SysOp of BBBS. If you are reading and
writing your messages as this user, you don't need this option,
but if you have registered another user (must be user #1) to
read and write your messages, set this option. (This only
affects which user's lastread pointers will be updated.)
IgnoreNDX
Don't use the *.NDX index files in QWK / QWKE packets. Turn this
option on if you get bogus packets from your BBS (making blue-
Mail crash).
OmitEmptyQuotes
Don't quote empty lines.
SaveAreaMarks
Don't ask, automatically save the area marks when blueMail
quits.
OmitAreaMarkInfo
Don't inform if some areas are marked, none of it contains let-
ters, option LongAreaList above isn't set and as a result no
areas are displayed.
[Colors]
The color section contains the options to adjust all the colors to the
user's preference.
blueMail presents information by using windows, and a typical window
consists of several parts, like the list of its items, a border, a top-
text (in the upper left of the border line), a header for the list of
items, help keys, a description of the help keys and edit input
fields/lines.
The option names (hopefully self-explaining) are: MainBorder, MainBack-
ground, MainBottomSeparator, WelcomeBorder, WelcomeHeader, WelcomeText,
HelpBorder, HelpText, HelpKeys, HelpDescription, ServiceListBorder,
ServiceListTopText, ServiceList, FileListBorder, FileListHeader,
FileList, ReplyMgrListBorder, ReplyMgrListHeader, ReplyMgrList, ReplyM-
grListPacket, AreaListBorder, AreaListTopText, AreaListHeader, AreaLis-
tUnread, AreaListRead, AreaListReply, AreaListInfoDescription, AreaL-
istInfoText, BulletinListBorder, BulletinListTopText, BulletinList,
OfflineConfListBorder, OfflineConfListTopText, OfflineConfList,
OfflineConfListAdded, OfflineConfListDropped, LittleAreaListBorder,
LittleAreaListTopText, LittleAreaList, LittleAreaListReadonly, Let-
terListBorder, LetterListClock, LetterListTopText, LetterListArea, Let-
terListHeader, LetterListUnread, LetterListRead, LetterListFromUser,
LetterListToUser, LetterHeaderBorder, LetterHeaderMsgnum, LetterHeader-
Text, LetterHeaderFrom, LetterHeaderTo, LetterHeaderSubject, Letter-
HeaderDate, LetterHeaderFlags, LetterHeaderFlagsHigh, LetterText, Let-
terQuotedText, LetterTagline, LetterSignature, LetterTearline, LetterO-
rigin, LetterKludgeline, LetterBottomline, AnsiviewHeader, Ansiview,
ReplyBoxBorder, ReplyBoxDescription, ReplyBoxText, ReplyBoxInput,
ReplyBoxHelpText, FileBoxBorder, FileBoxHeader, FileBoxInput, Query-
BoxBorder, QueryBoxHeader, QueryBoxInput, AddressbookBorder, Address-
bookTopText, AddressbookHeader, AddressbookList, AddressbookInput,
AddressbookKeys, AddressbookDescription, TaglineBoxBorder, TaglineBox-
TopText, TaglineBoxList, TaglineBoxInput, TaglineBoxKeys, TaglineBoxDe-
scription, WarningText, WarningKeys, InfoText, SystemCallHeader,
SearchResult, Shadow.
A color option value must have the form
foregroundcolor, backgroundcolor, attribute
where BLACK, BLUE, GREEN, CYAN, RED, MAGENTA, YELLOW and WHITE are
valid color names and NORMAL, BOLD and REVERSE valid attributes. All
names may be written in upper or lower case, there may be blanks or
tabs after the comma. NORMAL is the attribute for normal foreground
and background colors, BOLD will cause the foreground color to be
bright, and REVERSE will switch the foreground and background color.
Example:
WelcomeHeader: magenta, black, bold
will set the header line in the welcome window (Welcome to blueMail
Offline Mail Reader!) to bright magenta on a black background.
If you omit a color or attribute value, the corresponding blueMail
default value will be used which makes it easy to change either fore-
ground or background color only.
Example:
WelcomeHeader: ,blue
will set the background of the header line in the welcome window to
blue, leaving foreground color and attribute untouched to their
defaults.
One color pair has a special meaning: WHITE on WHITE stands for the
color pair that the terminal was using before blueMail started. This
means that colors WHITE on WHITE cannot be used.
FILES
.bmailrc user configuration file for blueMail (bmail.rc in
DOS or OS/2)
The environment variable BMAIL or HOME is used to find .bmailrc. BMAIL
takes precedence over HOME if it's defined. If neither is defined, the
startup directory is used.
Environment variables can't be used within .bmailrc, but ~/ (or ~\ in
DOS, Windows or OS/2) will be recognized and ~ will replaced with the
contents of the environment variable HOME.
SEE ALSO
bmail(1)
April 17, 2010 bmailrc(5)