diff options
Diffstat (limited to 'README')
| -rw-r--r-- | README | 110 |
1 files changed, 110 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/README b/README new file mode 100644 index 0000000..16ec46b --- /dev/null +++ b/README @@ -0,0 +1,110 @@ +MINTRO(7) Miscellaneous Information Manual MINTRO(7) + +NAME + mintro – Santoku introduction + +DESCRIPTION + The Santoku message system is a set of Unix utilities to deal with mail + kept in Maildir folders. + + Its design is roughly inspired by MH, the RAND Message Handling System, + but its is a complete implementation from scratch. + + Santoku consists of a set of Unix tools that each do one job: + maddr(1) to extract addresses from mail + mcomp(1) to write and send mail + mdirs(1) to find Maildirs + mflag(1) to change flags (marks) of mail + mhdr(1) to extract mail headers + minc(1) to incorporate new mail + mless(1) to conveniently read mail in less(1) + mlist(1) to list and filter mail messages + mmime(1) to create MIME messages + mrepl(1) to reply to mail + mscan(1) to generate single line summaries of mail + mseq(1) to deal with mail sequences + msetseq(1) to set the mail sequence + mshow(1) to render mail and extract attachments + msort(1) to sort mail + mthread(1) to arrange mail into discussions + +PRINCIPLES + Santoku is a classic command line MUA with no features related to + receiving and transferring mail. You are expected to fetch your mail + using offlineimap(1), fdm(1), procmail(1), getmail(1) or similar and send + it using sendmail(8), as provided by OpenSMTPD, Postfix, msmtp(1), dma(8) + or similar. Santoku expects your mail to reside in Maildir folders. + + Santoku operates directly on Maildir and doesn't use caches or database. + There is no setup needed for many uses. All tools have been written with + performance in mind. Enumeration of all mails in a Maildir is avoided + unless necessary, and then optimized to use few syscalls. Parsing mail + metadata is optimized to use few I/O requests. Initial operations on big + Maildir may feel slow, but as soon as they are in cache, everything is + blazing fast. The tools are written to be memory efficient (i.e. not + wasteful), but whole messages are assumed to fit into RAM easily (at a + time). + + Santoku has been written from scratch and tested on a big pile of + personal mail, but is not actually 100% RFC conforming (which is neither + worth it nor desirable). There may be issues with very old, + nonconforming, messages. + + Santoku is written in portable C, using only POSIX functions (apart from + a tiny Linux-only optimization). It supports MIME and more than 7-bit + messages (everything the host iconv(3) can decode). It assumes you work + in a UTF-8 environment. Santoku works well together with other Unix mail + tools such as offlineimap(1), mairix(1), or mu(1). + +EXAMPLES + Santoku tools are designed to be composed together into a pipe. It is + suitable for interactive use and for scripting. It integrates well into + a Unix workflow. + + For example, you could decide you want to look at all unseen mail in your + INBOX, oldest first. + mlist -s ~/Maildir/INBOX | msort -d | mscan + To operate on a set of mails in multiple steps, you can save a list of + mail as a sequence. E.g. add a call to ‘msetseq’ to above command: + mlist -s ~/Maildir/INBOX | msort -d | msetseq | mscan + Now mscan will show message numbers and you could look at the first five + mails at once, for example: + mshow 1:5 + Likewise, you could decide to look at all freshly received mail in all + folders, thread it and look at it interactively: + mdirs ~/Maildir | xargs minc | mthread | mless + Or you could look at the attachments of the 20 largest mails in your + INBOX: + mlist ~/Maildir/INBOX | msort -s | tail -20 | mshow -t + Or apply the patches from the current mail: + mshow -O. '*.diff' | patch + As usual with pipes, the sky is the limit. + +CONCEPTS + Santoku deals with messages (which are files), folders (which are Maildir + folders), sequences (which are newline-seperated lists of messages, + possibly persisted on disk in ~/.santoku/map), and the current message + (kept as a symlink in ~/.santoku/cur). + + Messages in the persisted sequence can be referred to using special + syntax as explained in mmsg(7). + + Many utilities have a default behavior when used interactively from a + terminal (e.g. operate on the current message or the current sequence). + For scripting, you must make these arguments explicit. + +SEE ALSO + mailx(1), nmh(7) + +AUTHORS + Christian Neukirchen <chneukirchen@gmail.com> + +LICENSE + Santoku is in the public domain. + + To the extent possible under law, the creator of this work has waived all + copyright and related or neighboring rights to this work. + + http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ + +Void Linux July 22, 2016 Void Linux |