1MBLAZE(7) Miscellaneous Information Manual MBLAZE(7)
2
3NAME
4 mblaze – introduction to the mblaze message system
5
6DESCRIPTION
7 The mblaze message system is a set of Unix utilities for processing and
8 interacting with mail messages which are stored in maildir folders.
9
10 Its design is roughly inspired by MH, the RAND Message Handling System,
11 but it is a complete implementation from scratch.
12
13 mblaze consists of these Unix utilities that each do one job:
14
15 maddr(1) extract mail addresses from messages
16 magrep(1) search messages matching a pattern
17 mbnc(1) bounce messages
18 mcom(1) compose and send messages
19 mdeliver(1) deliver messages or import mbox file
20 mdirs(1) list maildir folders, recursively
21 mexport(1) export messages as mbox file
22 mflag(1) manipulate maildir message flags
23 mflow(1) reflow format=flowed plain text messages
24 mfwd(1) forward messages
25 mgenmid(1) generate a Message-ID
26 mhdr(1) print message headers
27 minc(1) incorporate new messages
28 mless(1) conveniently read messages in less(1)
29 mlist(1) list and filter messages
30 mmime(1) create MIME messages
31 mmkdir(1) create new maildir folders
32 mpick(1) advanced message filter
33 mrefile(1) move or copy messages between maildir folders
34 mrep(1) reply to messages
35 mscan(1) generate one-line message summaries
36 msed(1) manipulate message headers
37 mseq(1) manipulate message sequences
38 mshow(1) render messages and extract MIME parts
39 msort(1) sort messages
40 mthread(1) arrange messages into discussions
41
42 mblaze is a classic command line MUA and has no features for receiving or
43 transferring messages; you can operate on messages in a local maildir
44 spool, or fetch your messages using fdm(1), getmail(1), offlineimap(1),
45 or similar utilities, and send it using dma(8), msmtp(1), sendmail(8), as
46 provided by OpenSMTPD, Postfix, or similar.
47
48 mblaze operates directly on maildir folders and doesn't use its own
49 caches or databases. There is no setup needed for many uses. All
50 utilities have been written with performance in mind. Enumeration of all
51 messages in a maildir is avoided unless necessary, and then optimized to
52 limit syscalls. Parsing message metadata is optimized to limit I/O
53 requests. Initial operations on a large maildir may feel slow, but as
54 soon as they are in the file system cache, everything is blazingly fast.
55 The utilities are written to be memory efficient (i.e. not wasteful), but
56 whole messages are assumed to fit into RAM easily (one at a time).
57
58 mblaze has been written from scratch and is now well tested, but it is
59 not 100% RFC-conforming (which is neither worth it, nor desirable).
60 There may be issues with very old, nonconforming, messages.
61
62 mblaze is written in portable C, using only POSIX functions (apart from a
63 tiny Linux-only optimization), and has no external dependencies. It
64 supports MIME and more than 7-bit messages (everything the host iconv(3)
65 can decode). It assumes you work in a UTF-8 environment. mblaze works
66 well with other Unix utilities such as mairix(1), mu(1), or
67 offlineimap(1).
68
69EXAMPLES
70 mblaze utilities are designed to be composed together in a pipe. They
71 are suitable for interactive use and for scripting, and integrate well
72 into a Unix workflow.
73
74 For example, you could decide you want to look at all unseen messages in
75 your INBOX, oldest first.
76 mlist -s ~/Maildir/INBOX | msort -d | mscan
77
78 To operate on a set of messages in multiple steps, you can save it as a
79 sequence, e.g. add a call to ‘mseq -S’ to the above command:
80 mlist -s ~/Maildir/INBOX | msort -d | mseq -S | mscan
81
82 Now mscan will show message numbers and you could look at the first five
83 messages at once, for example:
84 mshow 1:5
85
86 Likewise, you could decide to incorporate (by moving from new to cur) all
87 new messages in all folders, thread it and look at it interactively:
88 mdirs ~/Maildir | xargs minc | mthread | mless
89
90 Or you could list the attachments of the 20 largest messages in your
91 INBOX:
92 mlist ~/Maildir/INBOX | msort -S | tail -20 | mshow -t
93
94 Or apply the patches from the current message:
95 mshow -O. '*.diff' | patch
96
97 As usual with pipes, the sky is the limit.
98
99CONCEPTS
100 mblaze deals with messages (which are files), folders (which are maildir
101 folders), sequences (which are newline-separated lists of messages,
102 possibly saved on disk in ${MBLAZE:-$HOME/.mblaze}/seq), and the current
103 message (kept as a symlink in ${MBLAZE:-$HOME/.mblaze}/cur).
104
105 Messages in the saved sequence can be referred to using special syntax as
106 explained in mmsg(7).
107
108 Many utilities have a default behavior when used interactively from a
109 terminal (e.g. operate on the current message or the current sequence).
110 For scripting, you must make these arguments explicit.
111
112 For configuration, see mblaze-profile(5).
113
114SEE ALSO
115 mailx(1), mblaze-profile(5), nmh(7)
116
117AUTHORS
118 Leah Neukirchen <leah@vuxu.org>
119
120 There is a mailing list available at mblaze@googlegroups.com (to
121 subscribe, send a message to mblaze+subscribe@googlegroups.com); archives
122 are available at https://inbox.vuxu.org/mblaze/. There also is an IRC
123 channel #vuxu on irc.freenode.net. Please report security-related bugs
124 directly to the author.
125
126LICENSE
127 mblaze is in the public domain.
128
129 To the extent possible under law, the creator of this work has waived all
130 copyright and related or neighboring rights to this work.
131
132 http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/
133
134Void Linux January 18, 2020 Void Linux
135